Developing Leadership with the Johari Window

What is the Johari Window?

Building good working relationships is a common leadership goal, but it can be difficult to know how and where to start. That is where the Johari Window comes into play.

The Johari Window (1955) was developed by Joseph Luft and Harrington Ingram it was created as an attempt to better understand ourselves and our relationships with others. They created the model below:

Open –  This section relates to all that is known about that individual. It is what is known by the individual themselves and what is known about them by the group. The information that is open can relate to their behaviour, feelings, knowledge, experience or skills etc.

Blind Spot – This area relates to what is known about the individual by the group, but that individual does not know about them self.

Hidden – This relates to what the individual knows about them self but does not reveal to the group. This could be related to their own feelings, fears, sensitivities, agenda or manipulations.

Unknown – This section deals with all the information, feelings, experiences such as a natural ability the individual does not know they possess etc. These are neither known to the individual or known to the group.

Putting the Johari Window into context

Understanding the premise of the Johari Window is one thing but being able to put it into the context of leadership is another! Below are the two most important aspects to focus on whilst using the Johari Window for leadership development.

When engaging in honest conversation as a leader, important information is placed into the open area. Leaders want others to know what the relevant details are to enable them to make informed decisions or understand the targets they must achieve. However, the complicated aspect is moving information from hidden into the open.

Moving information from the Hidden into the Open

It can seem strange to want to move things that are hidden into the open. However, when employees are not aware of what a leader’s goals or concerns are, often they will guess them. Keeping things hidden from employees is often problematic; how can your employees be expected to alleviate your concerns when they aren’t aware of them? When speaking with your team members, consider sharing these two crucial bits of information:

1. Your top priorities and in what timeframe
2. The issues that are keeping you up at night

When you share what’s on your mind with colleagues and team members, you are giving them the opportunity to offer their help.

Moving Information from the Blind Spot into Open

To develop this, you as a leader must provide an environment based safety and trust for your employees. It also takes a degree of courage to ask for honest feedback, both from the perspective of yourself and your team members. Your aim should be to have as few blind spots as possible. In our experience, one of the best methods of ensuring ongoing honest feedback is by having frequent one to one sessions with your direct reports. Within these sessions, it may help to ask these questions in order to uncover information on your blind spots:

1. What should I start doing?
2. What should I stop doing?
3. What should I keep doing?

An effective leadership development tool

The Johari Window is an effective tool for helping to develop leadership as it enables a leader to identify areas that they need to work on and issue they have. It is great for helping to create honest conversations within a business and for gaining the ability to build trust –  two elements that cannot be overstated within a productive business environment. Try using this for yourself and see how effective it can be.

Reward and recognition of employees without breaking your budget

Keep hold of your talent

Employee satisfaction is absolutely vital in any workplace, but that doesn’t mean salary reviews and end of year bonuses have to be the ‘be all and end all’. To motivate and retain talented employees for the year ahead, employers need to develop more innovative recognition and reward strategies that don’t rely on money alone. Doing so will protect against misalignment between company goals and individual activities and keep everyone on track. You will maintain and improve employee happiness without damaging the company’s budget.

Honesty is the best policy

Speculation and gossip surrounding pay increases and bonuses can be dangerous. It’s impossible to eliminate this completely but you can make sure that you’re delivering a consistent and honest message about opportunities for financial reward in the coming months and years. Employee wellness is important, so it’s important they know how things like pay increases work because, if for example, an employee had false information, and was hoping for a bonus/increase in the nearby future it could lead to constant disappointment and the employee might start doubting their work and lose motivation and interest. That’s why it’s important you provide accurate information. This will give your employees a sense of control over their futures and help to create an open, honest workplace.

Offer opportunities

A good way to recognise high performance is to offer opportunities to broaden your employees’ experience. For example, ask them to lead an internal knowledge sharing session or offer a day’s job shadowing. This could lead to creating a new role for them in another area of the business. Engaging with the aspirations of your employees and creating personal development plans that help them realise their ambitions is crucial to retaining talent.

Regular feedback

Taking the time to evaluate your communication and feedback processes sends a strong message that you care about employees’ development and that good work will be recognised. Without structured feedback employees can feel like the quality of their work, good or bad, goes unnoticed. Staff surveys and focus groups are a good way of achieving this.

Say ‘thanks’!

It’s common knowledge that  a lack of recognition from management is one of the most demotivating factors for employees. Taking the time to highlight good work will boost employees’ job satisfaction and put any constructive criticism in context. Drawing attention to achievements across teams can be a powerful motivation to other team members.

10 Business Thought Leaders You Need to Follow Today

Here’s our top ten thought leaders who will actually inspire you, help you genuinely motivate your workplace, or seriously develop your conversational abilities. Follow them on Twitter for some quick snippet intros into what makes them tick.

Gary Vaynerchuk (GaryVee)

Known for: CEO of VaynerMedia and VaynerSports. Investor in (and vocal on the topic of) social media.

Follow him if: You want to know how to wield social media to your advantage.

https://twitter.com/garyvee

Elon Musk

Known for: Tesla, SpaceX, PayPal and SolarCity (to name a few).

Follow him if: You are interested in sustainable energy and businesses that invest in humanity.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk

Alice Korngold

Known for: Philanthropic thought leader, and consultant for global businesses and non-profit organisations in corporate community involvement.

Follow her if: You are interested in leadership and development with a positive social impact.

https://twitter.com/alicekorngold

Tim Ferriss

Known for: Leading tech investor. Ferriss is an angel investor to a number of companies including Facebook, Twitter, Evernote and Uber. Author and inspirational speaker.

Follow him if: You want to read the latest business book everyone is talking about.

https://twitter.com/tferriss

Kate Darling

Known for: Expert in robot ethics at MIT, nominated for Digital Thinking awards.

Follow her if: You are interested in the relationships between humans and robots as they evolve.

https://twitter.com/grok_

Michael Porter

Known for: The most cited author in business and economics. Winner of multiple business leadership awards.

Follow him if: You want wisdom backed by a lifetime in the industry.

https://twitter.com/michaeleporter

Nilofer Merchant

Known for: Ted Talk ‘Sitting is the new smoking’. Made over $18b in sales from personally launching over 100 products.

Follow her if: You want to know how to best unlock the capacities of others, and other business strategy solutions.

https://twitter.com/nilofer

Tony Robbins

Known for: American author and entrepreneur. One of the most popular and well known thought leaders.

Follow him if: You want motivation to succeed.

https://twitter.com/TonyRobbins

Simon Sinek

Known for: Motivational speaker and marketing consultant. Focus on inspirational leadership and organisational structure.

Follow him if: You want be a great leader.

https://twitter.com/simonsinek

Eric Brynjolfsson

Known for: Academic and professor at MIT. Brynjolfsson co-wrote ‘Race Against the Machine’ .

Follow him if: You are interested in the co-working of digital tech, employment and organisations.

https://twitter.com/erikbryn

Anyone you think we should be following? Let us know.

Team up with INSPIRING…

Click on the links below to follow INSPIRING:

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Want more sales? Have happy employees

Happy, productive employees

There’s plenty of evidence around relating to the link between employee engagement and productivity. A study from the University of Warwick suggested that happy employees were 12% more productive. The research was carried out by Professor Andrew Oswald, Dr Eugenio Proto and Dr Daniel Sgroi from the Department of Economics at the University of Warwick. Professor Oswald said: “Companies like Google have invested more in employee support and employee satisfaction has risen as a result. For Google, it rose by 37%, they know what they are talking about. Under scientifically controlled conditions, making workers happier really pays off.” Dr Sgroi added: “The driving force seems to be that happier workers use the time they have more effectively, increasing the pace at which they can work without sacrificing quality.”

Happiness and your bottom line

When it comes to the impact of employee happiness on sales, research by the Hay Group found that organisations scoring within the top 25% for employee engagement achieve 2.5 times the revenue growth of organisations in the bottom 25%. The Hay Group reported more evidence of the positive impact of employee engagement, finding that high engagement levels can reduce employee turnover by 4%, which reduces recruitment costs. It also found a direct link between employee engagement and customer satisfaction, suggesting that employees who are happy at work will often go the extra mile when it comes to customer service (backing up the theory behind the title of this blog!).

Valuing your people

The key to employee happiness is balancing the value that you place on your employees with the value that they get out of working for your organisation. If your business plan includes a strategy for valuing people and ensuring the happiness of employees, the benefits could be huge. For example, more ideas, greater commitment, improved customer service and, ultimately, better productivity that will help to gain a competitive advantage.

If working for your organisation creates a valuable experience for your employees, they are more likely to remain loyal and put in extra effort.  The result of that extra effort is an employee whose value to your organisation far outweighs their cost.

This may sound like the holy grail of employee relations, but it really doesn’t require complex or expensive investment in new ways of working. What it does rely on is wholehearted support from your senior leadership team, through their vision, leadership and communication.

Team up with INSPIRING

INSPIRING provides valuable, practical advice for organisations who want to improve employee engagement or look more generally at achieving performance improvements. Take a look at our employee surveys or find out more about BS 76000 – the British Standard for Valuing People. Get in touch using the form on the left, email us or call us free on 0800 612 3098.

Employee Engagement Surveys: using benchmarking to compare your results with other organisations

Providing benchmark scores

As all of the surveys that we conduct for our clients are designed specifically for their own organisation, it would be impossible (and unethical!) to compare scores between surveys to determine if one organisation is ‘better’ than another. However, many organisations do want the ability to be able to rate themselves against similar organisations.  External benchmarking resources can be particularly useful when referring to results which indicate levels of employee engagement, as this has been proven to have a significant impact on employee, and in turn, organisational performance. Back in 2003, Towers Perrin (now WillisTowersWatson) identified the items that define employee engagement:

• Emotional Items – to determine an employee’s personal satisfaction and the sense of inspiration and affirmation they get from their work and being part of an organisation
• Rational Items – relating to the relationship between the employee and the broader organisation.

A set of questions were included in the Towers Perrin 2003 Talent Report and subsequently in their 2005 Global Workforce Study to determine employee engagement levels in line with the above items. Inspiring have drawn on this set of questions to create our own ‘engagement index’ and have used these when designing employee engagement surveys for many of our clients, ever since we began providing employee surveys 13 years ago.

Of course, the headings and questions have changed somewhat in more recent Global Workforce Studies (find out more about the 2016 study on the WillisTowersWatson website), however for Inspiring, using our original set of questions as a constant has allowed us to monitor ‘engagement index’ scores over the past 13 years and provide a benchmark for our clients to measure their own results against.

In the majority of our surveys, we use uniform distribution to calculate a percentage figure that reflects the positivity score of each question. From within our engagement index, here are the questions that have resulted in the highest and lowest average scores (as of 30th June 2017) for surveys undertaken since January 2014:

• I care about the future of XYZ: 84%
• I would recommend XYZ as a great place to work: 71%

These scores, along with those from our other engagement index questions, provide a useful reference to help organisations put their own results into context, as well as give an indication of what can be achieved by having an effective employee engagement strategy. For those organisations who have undertaken repeat surveys with us, it’s usual for their scores to improve year on year across the engagement index, especially when they have developed and implemented an action plan following their survey feedback. Our engagement index average scores are of course changing all the time as we conduct more surveys in which these questions are included – in fact, over the past 12 months the average overall engagement index score has increased by 0.5%.

Identifying the reasons for high or low survey scores

Having conducted hundreds of surveys over the years, we’ve had the benefit of gaining insight into the trends which affect employee engagement levels within organisations. Here are some of the factors that we’ve found to have had the greatest effect on employee engagement scores:

Higher levels of employee engagement

• Being people-focused
• Good communications
• Opportunities for training, learning and personal development
• Strong leadership
• Culture of trust and empowerment.
• Good work-life balance

Lower levels of employee engagement

• Lack of communication
• Organisational Change
• Workload / staff shortages
• Poor leadership and direction
• Lack of respect or concern for non-managerial staff

The effect of pay on employee engagement

Although pay and benefits do not feature in our engagement index questions, perhaps unsurprisingly, research conducted by other organisations suggests that this is a major factor in employee engagement. In the XpertHR Employee Engagement Survey 2015, Pay ranked highest as the most substantial influence on employee engagement, cited by 37.1% of respondents. In addition, an HBR study, published in Human Resource Management Journal earlier this year, showed that performance-related pay was positively associated with job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and trust in management.

Useful Resources

Benchmarking is often confusing, as there are so many surveys and reports out there to consider. If you’re looking for some free resources to help benchmark your organisation externally here are three places which might provide some useful statistics:

The CIPD’s Spring Outlook provides findings from their latest survey and it’s free to download.

The Global Workforce Study conducted by WillisTowersWatson mentioned earlier in our blog is also an interesting read for anyone concerned with employee engagement.

XpertHR offers a free HR benchmark tool to help you find out how your organisation compares on key HR and employment benchmarks.

Team up with Inspiring…

Find out more about our employee surveys on our website. If you are considering undertaking an employee engagement survey and would like more information about our services or would like to chat to one of our team about benchmarking, get in touch on 0800 612 3098 or email us at info@inspiring.uk.com.

Things to consider when restructuring your business

Restructuring your business inevitably results in having to implement changes within your organisation, which will in turn test the skills of your leaders and managers.

As a leader, you have a responsibility to stay positive, upbeat and focused on the future. You will need to utilise all those coaching and interpersonal skills you’ve learnt along the way to allay any concerns people may have whilst maintaining a grip on the day to day business. In addition, having a management team who possess good people skills and display positive behaviour is crucial to managing change effectively.

John Telfer, Managing Director of Inspiring says “In my experience of working with businesses undergoing change, the thing they often have in common is the problem of Accidental Managers. They are the people that get promoted to management positions because they have the technical skills to do their job brilliantly, but they don’t have the people skills to manage a team effectively.”

Here are some other key points to consider when you’re planning and implementing a restructure from a people aspect:

1. Why is a re-structure being planned? Being clear on the purpose of the exercise is vital as this will be the starting point for of all other planning and implementation activities.

2. Enable clear communications to all those involved and use the purpose to describe what the end result will look like and how associated benefits will help the organisation.

3. Essential to success when re-structuring is to identify any areas of resistance. People get attached to structures just like all other familiar aspects of their organisation – some people may be reluctant to give these up unless the reasons make sense.

4. Inviting people to ask questions and get involved are important elements which if ignored may result in bad compromises and ineffective arrangements as the restructuring unfolds.

5. Ask line managers to keep an eye on their team to spot early signs as to how people are reacting to the changes and whether this is having an impact on their performance.

Develop talent within your team to plug your skills gaps

According to the CBI/Pertemps Network Group Employment Trends Survey from December 2016, the outlook for 2017 is positive, with expectations for further increases in people finding employment, particularly on a permanent basis. However, there are continuing issues in the UK regarding lack of leadership skills and talent management. In the report, Carmen Watson, Managing Director and Chair of Pertemps Network Group, comments “The survey results show very little sign of the skills shortage easing, and employers are increasingly concerned about where they will find the future talent essential to fill crucial roles.”

The CIPD’s 2015 Resourcing and Talent Planning survey (in partnership with Hays) found that only half of CEOs have talent management as a key priority. The survey also found that skill shortages are escalating, with over four-fifths of respondents believing that competition for talent has increased.

John Telfer, Managing Director of Inspiring comments: “Recruitment can be an expensive business, not just financially, but also in regards to time. The right talent management system will help you understand which skills you need to look out for, and reduce the costs involved with staff turnover.”

Using a tool such as Inspiring’s Leadership Framework can highlight skill gaps in up and coming managers, help to identify suitable mentors and spot employees with the potential for internal promotion.

Offering training that fills these skills gaps is a good way to help your staff develop. This could be done formally through an external training provider or informally through work-shadowing or internal coaching on specific skills and leadership competencies.

John Telfer added: “The people within your organisation are what makes your business. Choosing to focus on your workforce and ensuring you can keep hold of talent will help your business to achieve its goals and drive success”.

TEAM UP WITH INSPIRING!

Read more about the Inspiring Leadership Framework
Call us on 0800 612 3098, email info@inspiring.uk.com or get in touch using the enquiry form on the left.

Nurturing Leadership Qualities

A great leader can engage your staff and encourage increased productivity. Spotting employees with leadership potential and helping them to develop their skills and behaviours will reap big rewards for both the individual and your organisation.

There is an argument that great leaders are born rather than taught, however many people do recognise that leadership is indeed a skill you can learn. Leicester City Manager Claudio Ranieri is a prime example of how leadership skills can be developed and perfected over time, with the help of personal knowledge and experience.

Writing in an article in The Psychologist, with Professor Alex Haslam of the University of Queensland, the psychologists explained: “Ultimately, Claudio Ranieri’s redemption follows a trajectory from ‘I’ to ‘we’. From his first day as Leicester manager he was keen to make it clear that it was not he who was special, but the team and league that he had come to serve.” Professor Haslam added: ‘Ranieri’s failures and successes teach us critical lessons about how to be a good leader – and also how to be a bad leader. Indeed, there is a long history of leaders in sport – but also in politics and business, moving in precisely the opposite direction to Ranieri.

Leadership may be a skill, but it is understood that many leaders share similar traits, and it’s these traits that you can identify in your employees. In an article for the Guardian, Senior management coach, Steve Nicholls, was quoted as saying: “There is something built into leaders about the kind of personality traits which enable them to be effective. A strong self belief is very important. Natural qualities are fundamental to leadership. You can learn the techniques of leadership, but in terms of personality I don’t think you can.”

Once you’ve identified leadership qualities in individuals it’s your job as an employer to encourage and assist them to reach their full potential.

How to nurture?

The first step is to talk to the person, let them know how well they’re doing and find out if they’re interesting in stepping up into a leadership role within the company. This is your opportunity to discuss development areas and see which path the individual would like their career to take. Once you know that the potential leader wants to progress, you can help them to reach the required level to step into the role when a vacancy appears.

Give increased responsibility

Providing opportunities to take on additional responsibility will show your employee how much you trust them. How you do this depends on the person’s role and your organisation but there are usually ways to offer small leadership roles, such as a place on a committee or chairing a team meeting.

Other ways to increase an individual’s responsibility include delegating challenging assignments and tasking them with special projects. Give those you’re nurturing the autonomy and freedom to solve problems for your organisation. Managing director of INSPIRING John Telfer says that it’s important to make sure that managers aren’t using all of their time on reporting and line management duties however. “This can hinder their own progress by making them focus on what has been, instead of what could be achieved if they are allowed to develop their own inspiring leadership skills,” he explains.

Mentoring programme

Offering a mentor programme can help to support those in whom you spot potential. Pairing them with a senior leader will give your junior staff the opportunity to benefit from the senior member’s experience and they can be inspired to push forward and achieve their goals. Providing mentors can also assist your future leaders in growing their leadership skills. The mentors could suggest books to read, TED talks to watch, and so on.

Provide training in areas of development

In their current role it might not be possible for your future leaders to be exposed to areas that they need to develop, for example commercial knowledge. Offering training that fills these knowledge gaps is a good way to help your staff develop. This could be done formally through an external training provider or informally through work-shadowing or internal coaching on specific skills and leadership competencies.

Recognise achievements and show your appreciation

One of the traits of a good leader is commitment and dedication to the organisation. Your leadership team needs to be fully invested in your company, aiming to be able to encourage and engage junior employees. Thanking your staff and giving honest recognition for their work achievements can help them to feel appreciated and enhance their job satisfaction. As Bart Cleveland wrote for Ad Age, “Sure, it is an employee’s job to do their best. But ask yourself, would you give even more if you knew you were appreciated?”

INSPIRING can provide your team with a personalised development programme, to help you to retain talent and aligns with your business needs, directly benefiting your bottom line. Find out more about INSPIRING Leadership here.

Why people are leaving your organisation (and what you can do about it)

If people are leaving your business, it will usually be for one or more of the following reasons:

Lack of manager support…

Unsupportive managers are a key reason for people leaving. It’s a common saying that people leave their manager, not their job.
The skills and behaviours required for leaders and managers are different. An Inspiring Leader has a clear and compelling vision for the organisation. They can engage their team and encourage increased productivity. An Inspiring Manager will be able to set objectives and communicate effectively to their team, helping your employees to pull together and achieve your business goals.
INSPIRING can help you diagnose problem areas and provide tailored development through our Inspiring Leadership programmes.

Not such a great place to work…

Culture, physical working environment and operating policies all factor highly in ensuring a healthy, engaged and productive workforce.
The culture within your organisation impacts the happiness and satisfaction of your employees. It also strengthens, or weakens, employee retention and affects how your business attracts new talent. Conducting a culture survey will pinpoint what’s needed to create and maintain a positive culture: i.e. valuing, recognising and supporting individuals contribution to the company, both from the perspective of the employer and employee.
You could also look into having a wellbeing survey , which measures the physical, emotional and social wellbeing of your employees, as well as identifying areas where you can improve wellbeing within the workplace.

Career progression…

You will have a better chance of holding on to your employees if you have plans in place for talent management, succession planning and learning and development.
Spotting employees with leadership potential and helping them to develop their skills and behaviours will reap big rewards for both the individual and your organisation. Have a look at our recent article ‘How to identify future leaders in your organisation’ for more about this.
As well as offering learning and development solutions, INSPIRING can help with design and implementation of a tailored performance management system to ensure that your team is set relevant KPIs / objectives that not only reflect your business needs, but also correlate to their personal development.

Not feeling valued…

Employees will leave if they are disengaged and don’t feel appreciated. Reward and recognition isn’t always about money. Everyone would like to get paid more for what they do, but other important factors for job satisfaction include opportunities to:
• grow and learn new skills;
• to progress their career;
• to work on challenging and stimulating projects;
• to be acknowledged and praised for their efforts; and
• to feel that they are an important a part of the overall business.

The best way to find out why your people are leaving is to ask them!

Conducting Exit Surveys will help you understand why employees leave, enabling you to identify any problem areas. INSPIRING’s bespoke exit surveys, with reports tailored to your business, will help you to understand and reduce staff turnover.