Relocation of my Blog

Dear friends,

I moved my blog finally to my own page on www.conquer.ch! I have moved all of my blogs into this new page. My oldest and largest Blog hth_turns_into_life will be definitely taken off the net.

I want to thank you for all your support and special thanks to those guys, which motivated me to drive my own page! THX!

I'm looking forward to welcome you on www.conquer.ch!

Live with passion

Harry

SCARF-Model based on Rock

Before we rock, I'll give you a short excursion:

These kind of models have their origin in neuroscience. Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. For example: When you're afraid, your pulse rises – while you dance rock 'n' roll you can move slower and/or faster without thinking consciously… These kind of mechanics are based on your nervous system.

And now let's start to rock the house. (I'm sorry – somehow I'm constrained to abuse his name in many different ways…) ^^

The rocking SCARF-Model considers the fact, that our brain is aligned on a pain and pleasure principle. Our reward system likes to be activated, but on the other hand, it tries to keep us away from bad experience.

This system is also a drift in the teamwork at our workplace, which the SCARF-Model splits down in five dimensions:

S = Status

C = Certainty

A = Autonomy

R = Relatedness

F = Fairness

S. Status

Status is about relative importance to others. Already the bare feeling of superiority vis-à-vis an other employee activates our reward system. Through daily given situations, where you criticize or compliment an employee - you affect (control) his status. To give positive feedback rocks the brain and it shows that a good made work is honored by the company.

C. Certainty

Certainty concerns being able to predict the future. Through the predictability, resp. certainty the reward system will be activated. The brain can call up a familiar pattern, which triggers a feeling of safeness – certainty. In this case, if a big change is rock 'n' rolling, Rock suggest that the company (and you as leader) need to communicate transparent and corporation-wide processes should be cut down in smaller sub-projects.

A. Autonomy

Autonomy provides a sense of control over events. This means, that the employees have got the possibility to influence and arrange their surroundings by their own.  If this isn't warranted the brain takes it as a lack of autonomy, which it feels as a threat – it's an unproductive anxiety which doesn't rock. A leader is invited just to influence the working process of an employee a little and on the other side offer more tolerance, which rocks. (Already the perception of willing to give more autonomy activates the reward system!)

R. Relatedness

Relatedness is a sense of safety with others – of friend rather than foe. In everyday life, humans come together and build communities. In these communities they build up confidence to each other and 'protect' themselves against 'the unknown'. Because of the allegiance the second messenger 'Oxytocin' is released and causes a stabile relatedness. That's the reason, why the trust between the employees needs to be supported – for example by building smaller project-teams who rock the house. (Also coaching sessions with your employees affects this need.)

F. Fairness

Fairness is a perception of fair exchanges between people. If members of staff feel unfairness they trigger a defense mechanism – a further way how to avoid pain/threat. This antipathy can just be resolved if there will be a punishment against the unfairness – thus becomes again a rewarding feeling. If you as a leader want to rock with your team, Rock suggestion is, that you build the rules for the collaboration together with them!

The SCARF-model of Rock rocks. It concentrates on social relationship, which are based and confirmed in neuroscience. As a leader you can coach your staff with this model and activate the reward system and minimize threats.

For my next post I'll handle again the communication-part in my blog. I'm looking forward to present you the 'tool' of active listening. With this tool you can connect with your counterpart and provide her/him with the constructive answer she/ he needs to fulfill his work…

Four-sides-model

…here we are again. Today I’ll present you the four-sides-model from Schulz von Thun and I’ll add it with some useful examples.

Each comment includes – put that in your pipe and smoke it! – four messages at once:

Here the following example:

The man (sender) says to his wife at the wheel (receiver): “Babe, it’s green ahead!”

So what all is in this message, what has the sender (conscious or unconscious) inserted into and what can the receiver take out from it?

Factual level: In the beginning the message includes factual information.

“Babe, it’s green ahead!”

We find something out about the situation of the traffic light – it’s green. Every time when you deal with a situation, this level of the message has to come to the fore – or should at least.

Self-revelation level: Every message includes not only a factual content, but also information about the sender himself.

“Babe, it’s green ahead!”

The sender is obviously speaking English and isn’t color-blinded. He’s awake, internal present and he’s in hurry.

Relationship level: Out of the message it arises, in what kind of relation the conversational partners are in. For example in the way how they formulate, tone and other nonverbal accompanied signals.

“Babe, it’s green ahead!”

The man indicates that he doesn’t think the woman would be capable to drive the car optimal without his help. Maybe the woman could react a little snub: “Who drives the car, you?!” Note well: Her rejection addresses the relationship level and not the factual information level! (I guess in the latter case she agrees.) ;-)

Appeal level: Each message serves also to cause the receiver to affect to do or not to do something, to think or to feel in a certain way. This kind of effort to influent a person may be more or less free spoken or hidden…

“Babe, it’s green ahead!”

The woman could find the appeal reasonable, but could react a little harsh by the paternalism. Or the opposite – she finds the appeal unreasonable (“I shouldn’t drive more than 50…”), but finds it okay, when the man makes her some suggestions in this way…

Of course you might say, that this example is theoretic, than in real life you might know the person and can see his facial expressions, his gestures and can hear his tone – but nevertheless the fact exists: you always send more messages at once and the counterpart has to pick the right one out…

In my next post I’ll focus again on leadership and will deal with the SCARF-Model of Rock. I know this will rock! xD

To you all – enjoy your Sunday and live with passion!

The five basic rules of communication in practice

As I mentioned in my last post, I’ll present you today the five basic rules of communication in practice. The following rules are my own recommendations. If you search in the net after rules of communication you get countless suggestions – so I finally felt free to create my own individual components, which suit as well to my generation.

The five basic rules of communication

1. “It’s not possible – not to communicate!” As soon you come across to someone, you communicate.
2. “Every communication has a sender-receiver relationship.” As long as there is no disruption the communications goes (‘swimmingly’) on.
3. “There is no correct, ideal, but rather suitable communication.” You always deal with a situation, your counterparty and yourself.

           4.  “What you say about a person, says more about yourself than the other person.”
     5.  “Blind alley of disputation.” The communication in disputation or stressful situation  

               is very challenging. Here some reasons:

• Desire to be right after all
• Indirect affront
• Aggressivity
• Not listening
• Blaming and “you” messages
• Passivity
• Fixation on rational arguments
• Interpretation
• Irony and sarcasm
• Conciliate
• At all cost want to achieve harmony
• To wander from the subject

As a study has shown some years ago (I guess it was PWC, 2008 or PewResearch, 2010), the elder are more pushy and aggressive in business-matters and negotiations, than our generation. (Hard-facts vs. Soft-skills/facts) The reasons are amongst others:  In past you had to hold more together to survive than in our times. The work has been more dangerous – more manual. “Climb the social ladder and get rich.” was a maxim!

We are more ‘casual’, ‘easy’, living in an affluent society, focusing on work-life-balance and communicate almost naturally with smartphones, FB, in forums, and so on…

So this also comes down to our communication – keep this in your mind for later posts. ;-)

Next time we’ll dedicate to the model of Schultz von Thun: The four-sides model (also known as communication square or four-ears model).

Stage of development in Leadership

Before we can immerse into different models, we need to start with the very beginning. –The process, where every leader needs to go through.

In their development leaders are passing through the following three stages:

In the first stage it comes down to learn the basics in “leadership”. In the second and third stages the point is to develop its own self-conception of leadership and to expand its own “action-repertoire”. The expansion of the role flexibility is a central importance. An empirically big step is the change over from the personnel management into the role of “leading the leaders”. 

So… for all younger members of the generation Y – be patient! In short this means, get clear about this procedure, reflect yourself often and the more leadership skills you learn and train – the more quickly you’ll move up the stages! ;-)

In the next post I’ll introduce you into the basics of communications. To mention in advance – communication is the key of success – not only in business…

What is 'Leadership'?

The word 'Leader(-ship)'  arises in plenty combination of words. In literature there's no consistent definition established. Also many complex synonyms are in use, which give additional confusion.

But:

Leadership is a fundamental phenomena in human history. There's no social system, no human community – family, group of any kind, organizations of any type or states – where the question of leadership, dominance, power and influence wouldn't be of meaning. That's why human communities react so sensitive to it and on account of this matter it's being taboo and even bounded with prejudice. The phenomena 'Leadership' has from time immemorial bothered philosopher, social scientist, general, commander, theologian, intellectual and so on… There are good reasons, why we'll never find an assured solution for this question – it's not like for example a formula in mathematics or a construction manual for machines. (cf. Steiger-Lippman, 2008)

Leadership is not equal management! The quick difference is:

Management = handling of complexity

Leadership = mobilization and leading of human and their ideas

In business administration there are two aspects – personnel management and business management. This blog is focused on the interaction between leader and employee – the personnel management!

Basic idea:

(Leadership-)Models are simplified imaginations of the reality and show the concurrence of different factors. Models become techniques and instructions, those who (can) turn into normative models of behavior for personnel management.

The alternation of generations forces the organizations to change the paradigm of leadership in diverse ways. Companies need to get more a way from hard facts and focus more on soft skills. Finally the human resources are responsible for more sales – total revenue. And therefore the generation Y wants to be leaded also in a different way. Nevertheless there will be different tools presented in this blog, which can help the members of our generation to master their daily business.

You are very welcome to accompany me through the next days, weeks, months or even longer – with lots of new and exciting things to come!