Some people seem to sail through life without getting emotionally affected by the everyday actions of others they encounter, while others even though as affected and as skilled to deal with situation are significantly more impacted.

Our attitude to things and expectations in terms of what is right, has significant impact on the extent to which these things affect us. Taking the example of queue jumping you can have a wide range of opinions about queues including

-          Everyone should wait their turn – no exceptions

-          Everyone should wait their turn – but not everyone does, although it generally works out evenly

-          The person who gets to the front first is first

-          A queue is good, but if you can find a back way in even better

Then consider how your reaction to some-one queue jumping could be drastically altered by the opinion you hold on this.

For some a good way to reduce day to day stress is to examine their rules and modify these to support lower levels of negative or high stress reactions. So a useful activity can be to rewrite your rule to

-          Everyone should wait their turn – but not everyone does, but to avoid getting stressed I’ll accept/challenge it and not get annoyed by the outcome.

These small steps of making decisions to accept or influence everyday frustrations  rather than passively observing and become emotionally affected by them can be good way to reduce stress in your life.

The challenge comes when the rules are more deeply programmed and less obviously apparent in their influence of reactions. Our next set of blogs will investigate our values and the impact the have on our reactions and behaviours.

If you would like to discuss how coaching may help you to better understand and influence your behaviour, contact Paula Duncan on 07572 480 829.

The post Reduce Stress – What are your unwritten rules and how do they influence your reactions appeared first on STM Specialists.

It stands to reason that not only does the economic environment make it hard to get paid what we believe we are worth. Our belief it probably won’t happen, has a huge effect on our approach. 

In influencing others your belief that your point is legitimate has a huge impact on the conviction you convey and therefore the likelihood of your success.  It is hard to make a successful pay raise request. So how do you get people to take you seriously?

Step 1: Convince yourself

It may be that your uncertainty that the business can afford a pay rise for you is warranted. Do your research.  Consider your context and your worth to the business;

• How is the business doing?
• What are you doing to support or ensure the businesses success?
•  What, if any, return have you brought to the business in terms of cost reduction, profit increases, productivity improvements, increases in turnover, opportunity conversation?
• How do your skills, experience, motivation and results compare to that of your peers in your or other organisations?
• Ask yourself why you want a pay rise, if it is because your role has grown or the return you bring to the business has increased since the last award – great. If it is because you want a new car/house/nice holiday – think again!

Step 2: Build your case

Get your figures straight

• How does your package equate to other roles within your area? A simple chat with a local recruiter or online job search of similar roles can tell you this.
• What in terms of tangible results have you done to increase your value to the business since you last pay rise? – Be clear on this as you need to ensure you silence you inner critic before making your request.
• Set a fallback position – What other adjustments or improvements to your package would you consider? (Additional of holiday entitlement, provision of shares etc can be ways to ensure you get reasonable reward in a situation where the business doesn’t have the spare money to fund an increase in salary.)

Step 3: Present your case

Take this seriously, don’t just try and catch your boss in a corridor or tag onto another discussion. Make sure you know who has the power of making such decisions and make a formal request to discuss this with them.  It can also be useful to set out in an e-mail the reasons why you want to initiate the discussion. This gives your boss the time to consider their position before they met with you. It shows you are serious in your request and reduces the chance of an automatic no. Sample templates for the initial request in writing can be found here.

Be brave, use the pre-thinking around your capabilities and comparison to wider market to evidence the reason for your request and push back if initially refused. Your research should allow you to know what you want as an ideal, compromise and a fallback position. Thinking this through before the discussion allows you to focus on reading and responding to your manager, not thinking about figures and demands.

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If you have read and reflected on our last blog you probably recognised that at times our survival instinct takes over making it difficult to manage our emotions at work, causing you to respond in one of the following modes:

Now we need to consider how you can manage this. In our experience, this is a challenge. The secret is to be able to separate yourself from the situation long enough to check your state and then make a conscious decision about how you want to react. It may be a challenge, but it is possible. Although the earlier you can recognise the behaviours of your fight, flight or freeze response and hold yourself to account for these, the better.

So the first stage of managing yourself in these situations is to be vigilant for the signs you are sliding into survival mode:

• Are you more testy or confrontational than usual?
• Have you started to avoid certain people or phone calls?
• Have you stopped contributing or engaging with others in a meeting?

Monitoring your behaviour when under pressure and questioning whether it is targeted to overcome the problems in a informed and proactive way, or not, will allow you to consider what is driving your behaviour.

If you find that your behaviour is linked to survival mode, rather than competent decision making about what the situation needs, it is time to take action!

So what action should you take?

As we explored in the last blog, our survival instincts come from the pre-evolutionary elements of our brain. To get back into competency mode we have to move our decision making into the more analytical and competent part of our brains.

The way to do that is to invite that part to do some work by requiring it to make a logical decision. Ask yourself a question that makes you ‘think’.

For example, if you normally suffer from road rage, the next time someone ‘sets you off’, before you react, ask yourself ‘do I want to feel upset/angry/anxious/threatened?’.  This process pushes your brain to seek a logical answer and make a rational decision and is powerful way of re-engaging your competency mode.

This deceptively simple process creates a shift and can be a very effective step in moving back to a logical, rather than emotion, decision making process. If you can make it, it will have a direct impact on your ability to act competently in such situations.

However, we know it takes practice and self awareness. A useful step is to start by identifying the situations where you know you easily flip into survival mode or are driven by your emotions. In these circumstances start to look out for that shift and begin to ask yourself questions about how you want to feel and act in those circumstances. This should allow you to become good at noticing the signs of a survival reaction and allow you to better manage this. Once you recognise it in easily identifiable situations you will find you can effectively transfer these leanings and strategies into more complex or less obvious contexts.

In the next blog we will consider how and why certain situations make us more likely to adopt a survival mode or have an emotional reaction when compared to others. Understanding this is also a useful way to explore and manage disproportionate emotional reactions to what others may see as everyday events.

We welcome your thoughts, comments and additional insights on the above post.

Also if you want to know more, follow us on Twitter @Pauladunc or sign up for our RSS feed to be updated when the next blog is published.

The post Leadership Development – Managing Emotions at work- stay smart under pressure appeared first on STM Specialists.

• Over explaining why you lost your last job. It’s okay to mention that in your last position and why you left or if you were made redundant, but then move on to what you can do for this employer.
• Conveying that you’re not over it. During job interviews, some people can appear wounded, angry or sad about their previous job role. Whilst these are normal emotions after a redundancy, they don’t belong in a job interview.
• Lacking humour, warmth or personality. Many anxious job candidates can seem one dimensional during a job interview, being too focused on getting their points across, rather than listening and tailoring their responses. Don’t forget to show qualities that can be a real plus in the decision making process, including humour in good taste, warmth and understanding. One thing interviewers want to know is how pleasant you would be to work with so don’t let nerves stop your personality from shining through.
• Not showing enough interest or enthusiasm. After all, companies are looking for people who are excited about working with them.
• Inadequate research about a potential employer. It’s essential to be up on the latest news, so be sure to research the company before the interview. Be prepared with well informed, thoughtful questions about its products or services and its future plans. Many applicants don’t bother and it shows.
• Concentrating too much on what you want. Focus more on what the interviewer is saying. Listening carefully is crucial in steering the conversation towards how you would fit in and what you have to offer. Remember the job interview is a chance for the company to get information about you, give them what they want.
• Trying to be all things to all people. Devote most of your effort to talking about what you know you do well, and don’t try to stretch your actual qualifications too far. A good rule of thumb is don’t apply for any job unless you have at least 75% of the stated qualifications.
• “Winging” the interview. Recruiters observe that candidates often aren’t ready to answer difficult questions, so make sure you rehearse prior to a job interview. Prepare and practice a 90 second verbal resume, and some answers to possible questions, so you come across as articulate and succinct.
• Failing to set yourself apart from other candidates. You have to make the strongest possible case for why you are the best person for the job. Specifically address what impact you can have in the area you will be working within the next three to six months. Use quantifiable achievements from past positions to back up your performance promise.
• Failing to ask for the job. You have a much better chance of getting the job if you ask for it. Close the interview by summing up what you can bring to the job, and ask for the opportunity to deliver those results.

What tips do you have for job interviews? Let us know in the comment section below.

The post Biggest Job Interview Mistakes appeared first on STM Specialists.

We have all been in work situations where the pressure of the circumstances or attitudes of others makes the hairs on the back of our neck stand on end. Often we find ourselves
slipping into the comfortable space of giving into our emotional reactions and losing sense of reason. The next time we are thinking clearly we are on the other side of the experience trying to unpick the situation, with little clear recollection of what happened and why. Typical high pressure situations you might recognise include:

• Job interviews
• Presenting
• Having a conversation we have been worried about
• Reacting to an unexpected customer or colleague complaint we feel is unjustified or poorly delivered

While we can all agree a healthy dose of adrenaline is useful to get us moving in challenging situations, there are definitely times when that jump start is replaced by a
rush to the head. We all know it would be better to harness that initial belly flip rather than it allowing it to signify a series of events we later regret.

So how do we take control in these circumstances? The basis of my understanding
of the mechanisms involved and therefore thoughts on how manage it come from
neuropsychology.

It seems we have pre-evolutionary elements of our brain devoid of logic and reason; they react instinctively when something is perceived as a threat. This drives an emotion lead response that is widely believed to fall into 1 of 3 categories:

Have a think about
yourself in a work situation that you perceive as challenging and could be seen
by your pre-evolutionary brain as a ‘threat’, perhaps a time when, looking back,
you did not respond logically. Ask yourself:

• What was your response?
• Does that response fall into one of the three categories?

If not logical it is likely that your response was based on one of three deep routed instincts,
which while very effective in stopping you getting eaten by predators when hunting and gathering, are not so useful in business context.

• Fight response creates the need for one winner, often people finding themselves acting inappropriately assertively, even aggressively, this instinct creates entrenched positions and breaks down relationships
• Flight response reduces ability to work through a problem, avoidance means that you may be seen as blocking momentum towards a conclusion or even perhaps be seen as unable to do what is required. In general such a reaction means you cannot be instrumental in moving things forward. Eventually people will start to move forward without you, meaning your views are not considered.
• Freeze response means your point of view is not considered or met, if
  you disengage in a meeting because you feel under threat, hoping the difficult
  situation will pass, it removes your ability to influence it, creating a passive acceptance that often means you are stuck with consequences.

Considering if your emotional/instinctive response ever takes over, and what approach it adopts when it does, is a helpful starting point for beginning to control it and avoid
taking on an instinctive survival mode stance when under pressure. Our next blog investigates the mechanisms for control further.

We would welcome your thoughts, comments and additional insights on the above post.

Also if you want to know more, Follow us on twitter @Pauladunc or sign up for our RSS feed to get an update on when the next blog is published.

The post Hit a Business Crisis? Do You Act Competently or Try to Survive? appeared first on STM Specialists.

As experienced managers in our own right we may recognise the models and theories, yet we routinely look back at work situations, especially when things haven’t turned out as well as we intended, and can point out things we could have done differently. We often reflect on how much more effective we could be if it did not take a respective view to gain clarity on a situation.

This Leadership Development Series is designed to prompt you (and me) to step away from the models and the idea that you must morph yourself into a caricature of the latest model or popular technique. Instead we will focus on really understanding your inherent strengths and capabilities, consider how these match the demands of your current environment and consider what changes you can make to allow you to understand and challenge your leadership habits.

Our aim within this Leadership Development Series is to prompt your thinking about how you can manage yourself to make choices which allow you to meet the wide range of circumstances you encounter as a leader.

Topics over the coming weeks will include:

■ Who am I? – Understanding what influences your reactions and approaches to different situations, consider the skills, experience and knowledge you have and how you can harness these.

■ What is my purpose as a leader? - Developing a clear sense of whether you are really focusing your energy in the right places and fulfilling the role your business expects you to.

■ Am I slave to my habits? – Considering the risk of overplaying your strengths.

■ What drives me? – It is great to know your habits, but knowing what created and embedded these can help you better combat their automatic deployment under pressure.

■ Can I seize control of my work environment? – Strategies for creating space for proactive and purposeful work.

■ Can I do more with less? – Encouraging flexibility and personal ownership in your team.

■ What next? – Focusing and directing your own personal development to ensure it supports your ultimate career goals.

We don’t believe there is any one right answer around effective leadership, so this series is designed to present you with areas to consider from a range of current leadership literature. We value your views and interpretation of these, so please feel free to share these with us.

The post STMS Specialists – Leadership Development Series appeared first on STM Specialists.

Sourcing and Creating Job Opportunities

• Developing a Job Search Plan
• Getting Started on LinkedIn
• CV Tips to Help You Stand Out in a Competitive Job Market
• Writing A CV – Starting with the Basics of Structure and Content
• CV Cover Letters and Statements of Interest – Guidance

Interview Preparation and Advice 

• Structuring a Response to a Competency Based Interview Question
• Interview Top Tips
• Preparing for  Informal Interviews – Know Your USPs

Psychometric Tests 

• Rough Guide to Psychometrics – Personality Profiles – Candidate Guide
• Rough Guide to Psychometrics – Ability Tests – Candidate Guide
• Rough Guide to Psychometrics – Managing the Logistics of Online Assessment
• Rough Guide to Psychometrics – Understanding Your Psychometric Assessment Results
• Candidate Guide to Situational Judgment Tests

Assessment Centres 

• Assessment Centres – Dispelling the Myths
• Succeeding at Assessment Centres – Top Insider Tips

The post Candidate Advice and Guidance appeared first on STM Specialists.

■ What is the dress code?

The dress code is usually business dress unless stated otherwise.

■ How do they decide if I have been successful?

All the assessors pool their observations and evidence around your performance throughout the session. An agreed evaluation is then made on whether to progress with your application.

■ What happens if I do badly in one exercise?

Don’t worry, this will not necessarily jeopardise your success as the assessor team look at your performance throughout the session. No one exercise is judged in isolation.

■ Am I in competition with other candidates?

Your performance will be assessed against the specific competencies, not the performance of the other candidates. It is possible for all candidates at an assessment centre to be successful, or none, depending on each individual performance.

■ Will I be assessed the whole time e.g. at coffee and lunch breaks?

You will probably be assessed from the time you arrive, as everyone you come into contact with is likely to form an impression of you. So although company tours, breaks and social activities may be regarded as informal, you will still need to make a good impression and behave in a way that reflects favourably on you.

■ Who will have access to my results?

Your results will be retained in confidence. Only those who are making decisions about candidates will have access to the results.

■ Can I find out how I performed?

You should be entitled to receive feedback on how you performed at an assessment centre and it’s wise to take the opportunity to ask for feedback, whether you have been successful or not. It will provide a valuable insight into how you performed against the specific role and competency requirements and highlight any potential development areas. If you are offered the role it will give you an insight into what your new employer sees as your strengths they wish to use as well as possible areas where you may want to ask for early support.

Have you attended an assessment centre? What was your experience like? Let us know in the comment section below.

The post Assessment Centres – Frequently Asked Questions appeared first on STM Specialists.

Each question provides a range of possible solutions to addressing the issues presented and typically you will be asked to identify the option that either:

■ You would do (measuring how you are likely to act in the same situation).

■ You should do (measuring whether you know the right way to respond).

The aim of these assessments is to see whether you would make accurate and appropriate decisions when facing issues at work. Assessments can be theory/best practise based or organisationally specific.

Theory based assessments are designed for the mass market and are brought in by businesses. As such they are typically focused on a specific behaviour area or work level, for example there are graduate, manager and leadership SJTs available. These tell the business how you are likely to behave and it is then up to the recruiting manager to decide if that fits with what they need in their new employee.

Organisationally specific assessments are designed to match the organisation’s culture and expectation, with the right answer often being defined by how the company’s best performers would act in the situation. The scenarios in this type of SJT are often related to a specific area of work, or very reflective of the day to day challenges faced by the business. This type of assessment gives an indication of whether your work style, knowledge and
experience enables you to respond to issues in the way the business would want
you to.

Example question format:

You are called to a meeting with your colleagues and told by your manager that a large amount of property is going missing from the building. You have noticed some of your colleagues packing company stationery into their bags over the last few weeks. Do you:

A)     Tell your manager during the meeting who and what you have seen

B)      Take your manager aside after the meeting and tell them your observations

C)      Approach your colleagues and ask them to admit and explain their actions to your manager

D)     Approach your colleagues and explain while you won’t tell your manager on this occasion, you will inform them of your observations if anything else goes missing

E)      Do nothing

Typically there are no example questions provided for these assessments as they are designed to assess the types of on the spot judgments you make when dealing with problems or issues at work.

What has been your experience with SJTs? Let us know in the comment section below.

The post Candidate Guide to Situational Judgment Tests appeared first on STM Specialists.

Ask what the sessions entail – Companies don’t always take enough time to fully explain what exercises you will be completing as part of the assessment centre, if this
happens don’t be afraid to ask. A brief email or phone call to ask what the exercise format is and if there is anything you should prepare could give you a much better sense of the types of things you may encounter.

Be yourself – A big frustration for us as assessors is when candidates tell us during a
feedback session that how they acted wasn’t ‘how they would behave in real life’. Even when asked to take part in role-plays or adopt a fictional role approach, treat the exercise as if it was your first day on the job, do not try to ‘play’ the role as this will come across as inauthentic and ineffective.

Don’t get put off if the exercise doesn’t match the job perfectly – The exercises are sometimes chosen away from the specific job context to ensure they are fairly measuring all the candidates’ transferable skills and not accidentally assessing people on a task that they may have varying levels of expertise in.

Even if you don’t agree with the process, engage with it – Too often candidates’ discomfort or disbelief in the value of a process impacts the amount of effort or honesty
they put into the activities. No matter what you think of the process it will be used to make the decision about the job, so do the best you can to use the process to gain the best outcome for you.

Declare any required reasonable adjustments ASAP – Make sure you give the assessment team as much time as possible to understand your disability so they can make sure they provide the right reasonable adjustments to a process.

Be thorough – Remember the assessment session is your chance to shine, so go prepared. If you have been asked to pre-prepare a presentation for example, even if you have been
asked to email the content through prior to the day, not only take a soft copy of your PowerPoint slides but also take copies of the presentation for the panel. An easy way to impress is to give the panel an easy solution to any technology issues they encounter.

Let us know your tips and advice for succeeding at assessment centres in the comments section below.

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