Jackie Cameron - Coaching and Communication

A post over at  the excellent Ask A Manager  blog caught my attention.  A manager blows up - in front of customers - to berate an employee for calling him to ask for a break.

We all know that there are some managers out there who are not up to their job. And there are many many examples of really bad behaviour from people in responsible positions. But there is something about this story that made me stop for a moment.

This manager screamed at the employee in front of the customers. By any standards that is both inappropriate and  - on the face of it - behaviour disproportionate to the incident itself. So of course, someone has to take this up with the manager involved because I suspect that their breaking point might just have been reached!

I posted about stress a couple of weeks ago. We all live with stress - it’s part of live - but when it becomes distress something has to be done.

Over the past few weeks of really confusing and downright bad news on the economy front most of us will have wondered what that means for us.  The wait to see if you will lose your job is really distressing.  But even if that is not immediately on the cards what about your partner’s job ? What about paying he mortgage? What about being able to pay for the food and fuel bills?  It seems like even those who had financial planning nailed are now finding themselves caught out.

So here is a call out for us all to pay a bit more attention to how our colleagues are right now. If you see signs of behaviour that is a bit out of the ordinary - be it shouting or being really quiet - note it. Offer a hand - or an ear.  It’s always a tricky call to decide if and when to get involved but if you feel you can do something helpful and supportive - please do - even if it is just to ask for advice from someone more experienced on how to help.

As part of the third and final session of the Emotional Intelligence programme at Napier University in Edinburgh yesterday we did an exercise on how to tell if someone is lying.

I had long believed that when telling a lie a person will leak with their body language and indeed that does play a part though maybe not in such a clear cut way as maybe I had understood. For example I had read that if someone touches their nose or ear when they are talking they may be lying. I have watched sportsmen being interviewed after a game where their team has not done well and noticed how often they do that. But I guess that might also be because they are uncomfortable and/or embarrassed too.

Little kids tend to  tell elaborate stories when they are lying. It turns out that adults sometimes do that too in the belief that the more detail in the story they are spinning the less likely the lie will be noticed. As we were learning about emotional intelligence Mike, our leader, told us to ask questions about how they felt at the time and if they answer with more details about things - the colour of the coat they were wearing, the number of the bus that went by  - be deeply suspicious!

This was  a fun session leading us on to thinking about observing facial expressions - and specifically the eyes. Mike flashed 36 pairs of eyes( only the eyes -  no other part of the face) - on the screen and asked us to choose an expression from 4 options.  Turns out that my score shows that I am pretty good at reading eyes - so beware if we ever meet face to face!

I told my family about this and it has been suggested I take up poker but I have never been good at card games ( I get bored easily) and don’t like gambling ( I don’t disapprove of gambling per se - it just does nothing for me) so maybe I will give that one a miss.

Why don’t you try reading people’s eyes? A word of warning though - depending on how focussed you are the other person might pick up signals you did not intend!

 What are these eyes saying?

There will no doubt be a fair number of you who  - having read the title of this post - know where I am going. However I expect many many more might think I have made the penultimate word up!

So before I tell my story let me explain.

In his book “Emotional Intelligence at Work” Daniel Goleman describes the amygdala as “the brain’s emotional memory bank” - of triumphs and failure etc. At any point he says the amygdala  is checking to match  ”what is happening now to the stored templates of our past experiences”. So if you are having a bad experience this may be made worse by equating it to something that happened in the past which has lingering bad memories associated too.

Clear? Well maybe it will be when I tell this story.

Regular readers will know that I have been taking part in an Emotional Intelligence in Leadership programme at Napier University here in Edinburgh. After the first 2 days we were given a workbook - and challenged to use what we had learned so that we can review this when we get together for day 3 next week. I have found it very helpful already.

The story.

I need to go to my bank to do some transactions and open a new account.  Edinburgh is having a tram system installed right now and the traffic disruption is dreadful. I had been at a meeting what should have been a short bus ride away from the bank but it took a bit longer. It had started to rain and was windy so I was a bit bedraggled. The branch is in the most beautiful old building in the City Centre. I stood in the queue in this glorious old banking hall admiring the wonderful ceiling and the marble pillars and patiently waiting my turn. I was called forward. All of the banking advisors are sitting behind desks - no glass barriers - very civilised. I sit down, tell the young man what I want to do and he tells me that I will have to see a specialist to do that and I will have to make an appointment to do so.

Now…….on my previous visit to this branch I  had a major fall out with the staff when they would not do anything I needed them to do - for a whole load of reasons that seemed to me to be for their benefit and not mine. I ended up storming out and going back to my desk where I did everything by phone. I had made a special trip into town for no good reason. I vowed that when I decided what I was going to do with my money they were not getting it!

So you can see what my amygdala was doing this morning can’t you?

But - I took a deep breath and calmly explained that I was not willing to make another trip to keep an appointment and could I speak to the manager. A very nice lady came over and explained why the young man could not help me ( he was not at the right level) but I did not need to see the person for whom I needed and appointment ( that was a misunderstanding between me and him - no blame) and she would find someone to help me as soon as possible. Five minutes later another very nice lady took me over to her desk and within 20 minutes I was done and dusted with her direct number to call for any future enquiries. I told her that they young man had actually handled a potentially irate customer very well and wanted her to tell him ( and his boss) that.

So there’s the proof. With a wee bit of practice you can stop an amygdala hijack. I kept cool. I told myself that there was no need to accept what had happened before. I also told myself that that was not what was happening anyway.  I calmly explained to someone who could do something about it what I wanted and why. And let me tell you it is a very good feeling.

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4 days later and there is a footnote to this story. When I checked my bank book over the weekend it had been made up wrongly.  I called the lady who gave me the card but she was not available. The lady I spoke to asked if she could help and I told her what had happened. On her advice I visited another more accesible branch where the mistake was rectified and I got an apology from both. Still staying cool - but for goodness sake how many mistakes with one customer can a bank make??!?!?!?