Charity Coach, Trainer & Consultant - Rob Legge Consulting

Music as a great ice breaker or warm up activity

7/5/2021

I recently facilitated a team building training day via zoom for a charity in North London. I decided I would try out a music themed ice breaker as a warm up for the session and was pleased to see just how successful it was.

Ice breakers are important for setting the tone and encouraging engagement during a training session. Experienced trainers will typically allocate between 20 to 30 minutes for a warm up, so that they can get early on participation and tease out shared experiences.

Choosing a good ice breaker

The best ice breakers link to the topic being trained on.

At a recent Train the Trainers session I used the ice breaker question “What is the most difficult situation you have had as a trainer?”. Individuals then shared their nightmare problems which generated sympathy and a few laughs.

The purpose of this session was to bring out the elephants in the room - training is not always plain sailing. It also reminded the participants that they found a way to cope with the challenge and they survived.

For me as the trainer, I shared an example and set myself to be a fellow learner rather than the expert with all the experience. It also gave me some examples that I could reference in the afternoon session where we had a session called “Challenges in the training room.”

However, for the charity team building session I wanted something a little different. It worked like this;

- One week prior to the course I asked each participant for a favourite song.
- On the day I created a list of the songs and a separate list of the participants.
- In small groups they had to guess who chose which song.
- Finally the true connections were shared in the complete group.

To help break up a tiring full-day of Zooming, I played a minute of each song (at the end of each session, before and after lunch) while the individual spoke about why they chose that particular song. Here's one that was chosen.

what does a successful ice breaker do?

This ice breaker was a success on many different levels.

1) it got everyone talking, even the shy ones.
2) it revealed something unique about each person.
3) it built some connections between people who like similar music.

The ice breaker itself satisfied one of the objectives of the day which was to create social bonds between team members.

A variation on the theme is when staff share “inheritance” tracks. Individuals choose a song that they inherited (from parents, school etc) and also a track they want to pass on to the next generation and explain why they chose them. Bare in mind that it takes a bit longer to facilitate, so you need to be careful in scheduling if you use this variation.

So, my closing advice to anyone preparing a team building event or training session, don’t skip the positive use of a good ice breaker!

Celebrating 5 years of Just About Managing

26/2/2021

Image by Michael Schwarzenberger Pixabay.

The popular Just About Managing training course for charity leaders reaches the ripe old age of 5 this year. Since its launch in 2016, over 300 third sector managers have benefitted from focusing on enhancing their self management and team leadership skills.

The idea formed when Rob identified a gap in the training world for a leadership course that targeted managers or supervisors who had never attended a formal management course or who wanted to learn the basics quickly.

"Rob’s Just About Managing course really does enable you to make the most of your own abilities. It’s amazing quite how a different skilled perspective can allow you to refresh what you find you already know (even that which you may not have realised you knew) and transform your skill base into a more management-focused form. The one to one mentoring/coaching sessions are also invaluable to put a personal experience spin on the revelations from the group course sessions." - Sven Harvey, Age UK Birmingham

Comprising two interlinked half day group sessions plus two individual mentoring sessions the programme delivery can be flexed to suit specific situations. Originally BVSC Birmingham hosted open sessions but it quickly became apparent that the content was ideal for in house training. During the current pandemic the course has naturally moved online via Zoom.

If your charity is looking to enhance its in-house training programme then do consider getting in touch to find out how Just About Managing could help.

3 essential steps to survive redundancy

19/11/2020

"Your job is at risk!"

Is a phrase that is becoming familiar to too many people in our sector. The emotional turmoil it brings is enormous. Most of us in charity work have made an active choice to be part of our organisations. It is rarely just a job.

The threat of the redundancy is of course a challenge to the economics of an individual or family. The lack of a salary undermines the basic security of home, and how to pay the rent or feed the kids become basic questions that can dominate our thinking. This is stressful enough. However, the added challenge that feels like a personal attack on your core purpose can be as devastating and as debilitating as a divorce.

We have been on both sides of the phrase “Your job is at risk”. Senior managers also struggle as they try to do their best to ensure the organisation survives and the individuals under threat are thrown into a period of extreme anxiety.

Elisabeth Kubler Ross in her pioneering work with terminally ill patients developed a model of reaction to extreme personal change. She found that the change process was different for every individual and that the emotions expressed were not linear. In other words, we don’t go cleanly from one emotion to another and progress neatly to the end. In our “messy” reality we bounce from one to another and sometimes trigger regression or massive progression.

Despite the messy reality Kubler -Ross’s model is useful for us to begin to understand what is happening to our colleagues or to ourselves. This knowledge can help us begin to facilitate support and advice that helps us to get to a constructive place of change.

The model looks something like this:

Image credit – cleverism.com/understanding-kubler-ross-change-curve/

To take it a step further, as objectively as possible look at how you might increase these skills.

This might mean training, reading, volunteering or something else. When you are looking for your next role that fits your purpose and uses your strengths organisations respond well to candidates who are actively looking to continuously develop. You know change is the only constant, your experience of redundancy might be the change you needed.

essential steps to help you through redundancy

1. Have a good support network
This might be family, friends, colleagues. It is good to be able to express your emotions in a safe place. Keeping them controlled and bottled up only leads to damage and it leaking out of you at inappropriate times.

Rob interviewed people who have been made redundant who are still suffering emotionally and it has impacted on their performance in trying to get a new job. A safe place to vent, cry, scream or whatever you need to do is essential.

And because life is not logical you won’t do it just once. A saving grace for one of us when they were on the wrong end of a redundancy conversation was long walks with Steve, the Staffordshire bull terrier who took the rants stoically.

2. Take time to work out your purpose
This sounds a bit academic but it has practical application. After fourteen years with Oxfam Rob was made redundant and felt bereft. He felt he had lost family, and Oxfam was a bit like a religion to him and its values, mission were his.

It took a lot of self-examination and support from a skilled coach for Rob to work out that he was separate from the organisation. Over time he was able to see that his drivers of equality, fairness, hard work and teamwork had been shaped by Oxfam, but also by his parents, the Labour party, and other influencers during my life. It also began to free him up to see how he could use those values in other organisations.

Rob said, “This was a turning point for me.” Instead of the mindset of leaving Oxfam he began to look at moving towards another organisation. Another charity that could benefit from his skills and experience as well as looking for a new place to develop. The disaster of redundancy with Oxfam turned into a happy ten years as CEO of Focus Birmingham.

3. Examine your strengths
From your experiences at work and within life what are your strengths? If you can’t articulate them now ask the people who you trust to give their view of your skills.

It is a start.

Then, coldly examine how you have used those strengths and start to list examples. Your organisational skills might have been most tested being a wedding planner for a best friend as well as project organising at work. When we coach clients, they can be dismissive of their own strengths because it comes easy to them. This is precisely why you need to catch them and start to evidence them in preparation for the next job interview.

To take it a step further look at how you might increase these skills. This might mean training, reading, volunteering or something else.

When you are looking for your next role that fits your purpose and uses your strengths organisations respond well to candidates who are actively looking to continuously develop. You know change is the only constant, your experience of redundancy might be the change you needed.

building your cv and interview technique

We train individuals to identify their strengths and “show case” them with real examples which in turn will improve both their CV’s and interview performance. At interview we often recommend using the STAR technique to answer some question.

Situation
Task
Action
Result

For example, if an interview panel ask, “what are you most proud of achieving in a work context” the danger is that you waffle and confuse the panel. By using STAR, you can succinctly describe the key aspects of your answer.

Situation. For example: I was leading a team of volunteers to ......

Task we had to recruit another 10 volunteers in the next 30 days.

Action I led the team to do a. b. and c.

Result and we recruited 12 new volunteers that helped us succeed in the task.

And for a bonus point tell them what you learnt from that situation so that you would do it even better the next time!

Last words
Redundancy feels awful. The impact on the individual can be devastating. Most of us find a way to survive. We can look back at redundancy and see it as an opportunity to re-evaluate our lives, our careers and move to a better path.

Eight years ago, Rob was made redundant from a senior role at Sense. The worries of paying the mortgage, the loss of status and bruises to his ego were enormous. But this led him to take up the risky option of becoming a self-employed coach and trainer. Now looking back redundancy was a blessing he felt he needed to help fulfil one of his ambitions.

We hope the same for you.

About the authors
Rob Legge is an ex-senior manager at a range of National and Regional Charities. He is now a qualified coach and trainer and a leadership trainer for BVSC.

Dan O’Driscoll is an Executive Coach and Third Sector consultant at Engagement Consultancy. Dan has previously worked in senior leadership roles at Oxfam, University of Birmingham and The Royal Bank of Scotland.

Could career coaching help you through redundancy?

1/10/2020

This is a blog we hoped we wouldn’t have to write. Unfortunately the reality of restructures and redundancies across the third sector warrants focused advice and support for charities. We want to give some practical help and support to individuals who are affected by a change process.

The impact of Covid-19 has been devastating and it’s been especially felt by charities. Fundraising income has been severely affected which has bought expenditure into sharp focus. Support has been provided by Government, with £750 million in funding for frontline charities, but that hasn’t gone far enough to prevent really difficult restructuring and redundancy decisions.

a change process can be hard

In normal times change processes can be difficult. But the added pressure of not being able to interact with colleagues face to face, being on furlough, or having to write a counter proposal remotely, can make that process feel even harder. Understanding that you’ll go through a change cycle can be really helpful in managing your emotions and getting focused on what you can do and taking control of the situation.

Image credit – cleverism.com/understanding-kubler-ross-change-curve/Image credit – cleverism.com/understanding-kubler-ross-change-curve/

what can i do that's practical?

1. Understand your financial situation
Use expertise that is available. Money Saving Expert has some excellent resources to support you in good financial planning. They have created new materials and advice for people who are going through a change process during Covid-19. It is no good ignoring the possibility that you might lose your job. If you already have a plan review it and strengthen it.

2. Revise your CV
Update your CV and get someone from outside your organisation to cast a critical eye over it. Often, we use our current organisation’s technical terms that makes little sense to another charity and certainly not to other sectors. Make sure yours is jargon free and that your skills and experience show how they can be transferred to other roles. There are also new websites to help support you in finding a new job, such as Job Help.

3. Prepare for internal interviews
Engage in your organisation’s redundancy process. You should be given an opportunity to apply for newly created jobs. Internal interviews are challenging, and you need to treat it as the formal process just as you would if you were being recruited by a new organisation. Assume the interviewing panel have no knowledge of your skills and experience apart from the application form or resume you provide.

We suggest an effective way to respond to interview questions is the STAR process. This allows you to give responses without waffling.
S – what is the situation?
T – is the task that you completed.
A – what action did you take?
R - demonstrates the results you achieved.

4. Advice and help for the staff affected
Charites can also supply quality support to the staff concerned so that they can better understand the impact of the change upon them and develop coping strategies. They can also prepare them for any internal applications and deliver interview and career coaching.

use specialists to support those threatened with redundancy

Sometimes this service can be delivered more effectively by a team independent of the charity’s management or HR function. Bringing in specialist experts who can create rapport with the staff as well as deliver timely support is critical. Career coaching can be an affective way to support staff affected by redundancy through this process.

Experienced third sector coaches like myself and Dan O’Driscoll deliver this targeted training and advice to affected staff of national and local charities. If you would like a discussion about our services, please contact either of us for more information.

how to work from home.... successfully

7/9/2020

My last guest blog for the BVSC tackled the tricky subject of working from home successfully. Unsurprisingly this is a hot topic at the moment and the number of charity staff working from home during the Covid-19 pandemic is extremely high. Prior to lockdown only a handful of charity staff would work remotely.

Below is a summary of my top strategies for successful homeworking. You can read the full article on the BVSC website here.

You may find this article published by MindGenius about Homeschooling and Homeworking another useful source of insight.

Homeworking & Homeschooling in COVID-19 by Brad Egeland

6 success secrets for a great start to your working day

3/7/2020

Image by Štěpán Vraný from Pixabay

As I speak to more and more people who are furloughed or working from home, it is evident that to thrive in this new world we need a good morning routine. Successful people have the similar routines and I am going to share the six secrets that I have learnt and give you a practical example of my routine to consider.

keep regular start times

Get up!

It is so easy to let this slip and lie in. After all, you have the easiest of commutes from bedroom to workspace via the kitchen.

However most productive people are maintaining an outline of their usual work-life pattern. They are off to bed at normal times and don’t binge watch a Netflix series or YouTube. They get up at their usual times.

Don't start the day with social media

Part of the morning routine can be imposed on you. If you have a toddler you are responsible for, they must be fed and changed (otherwise social services will be on your case).

But if you have some control over your morning, a surprising amount of people do something that is extraordinarily effective. For the first sixty minutes after waking up they don’t look at social media or news feeds.

do something selfish

Successful people do something to set themselves up for the day. Some will exercise, some will listen to music or podcasts, others will read. This commences the day in a positive way that has a knock-on effect for the rest of the day.

They don’t start work immediately.

Image by photochur from Pixabay

plan and prioritise your work

Work starts for productive people in a purposeful way. They don’t switch on their laptops and dive into emails. Most decide what they want to achieve and prioritise their to- do lists, schedule important tasks as well as review any appointments they have.

Most feel it is important to dress for work to help get into work mode even when no one will see them.

start with focus

They concentrate, finding a way to shut the door on the rest of the family or any electronic distractions.

This allows for focus on the most important piece of work of the day. It is so easy to be caught up by emails that take you away from your priorities.

Successful people seem to be able to keep attention on the essential tasks and make significant progress on the important few tasks rather than get overwhelmed with a list of jobs that might not make a difference.

....then engage with the rest of the world

They then look at the rest of the world and pick up on emails, zoom calls, social media etc for a limited time before returning to progress the important stuff.

This sounds very disciplined, but I don’t think it is. Successful people tell me it is a series of habits that sets them up for a good day. They just know it works for them and so do it, routinely.

For those of you curious, here's an example of my morning routine;

7:00 Alarm goes off
7:15 Get up
7:20 Read something uplifting (a couple of poems, my current choice is RS Thomas or sometimes it can be a couple of pages from the humourist David Sedaris, it depends on what takes my fancy.)
7:30 Do some stretches
7:40 Jog (In my case slowly)
8:15 Shower
8:30 Dressed, at my desk and reviewing the priorities for the day
8:45 First session of work (writing a blog post, planning a training session, or arranging to talk to a client) I am a big fan of the Pomodoro technique - if you are not aware of it read my blog post
9:30 Healthy breakfast (I eat porridge). I seem to  start work better on an empty stomach.  Like many people, I’ve found working so close to my fridge a constant temptation to snack, so having breakfast later in the morning helps me avoid overindulging
9:45 E-Mails and Social Media
I stop for lunch around 1pm.  I usually stop work around 4:30pm to walk our dog. The big unknown in my work-from-home schedule is my two-year-old grandson, Joshua. With his mom and dad, he is currently living with us.  Joshua might want a walk or a play time with Grandad. Apart from zoom meetings with clients, he tends to push his way to the top of my to-do list.

Final reflections
As we work from home or are furloughed, our self-discipline needs to increase.  However, we should plan to use this opportunity to benefit the quality of our life. Successful people have a relaxed habitual routine that works for them.

A common theme seems to be starting the day off with, in the nicest possible way, some self-centred activity. This might be meditation, exercise, reading for pleasure or something else before entering a focused work time. A number of people talk about being in the zone, where work flows, time slows down and they do some of their most creative work. And only after that comes engagement with work colleagues, friends and family.

These ideas are not provided so you beat yourself up if you don’t have a morning routine.  However, if you are dissatisfied with the way your days are going, focus on improving the first ninety minutes and then notice how the rest of the day feels.

five things all charity leaders needs to think about now

25/6/2020

Image by William Iven from Pixabay

A lot has been written about how nearly everyone is getting used to home working and the impact this will have on how we organise our work. Increasingly people will expect a greater flexibility about how and where they work rather than being based at an office.

This means charity leaders will need to rethink office requirements. This might mean that less space is required, or it could suggest that we need to change our office layout so that colleagues can use the space for things other than desk work. The office might have to be reengineered to provide for informal networking, information sharing, gossip and the social interaction that keeps organisational culture strong. More meeting will have remote participants so do we need meeting rooms and, if so, what needs to be in them?

I have discussed with clients that a more radical approach might be to have no office and that organisations hire café spaces by the day for informal get togethers, coaching sessions etc.

How will we attract the best staff?

To attract the best in our industry organisations will have to consider an even more flexible approach to where and when we do our work. Before lockdown many of my clients said that if they needed to have a productive day they would work away from the office. For some roles this had, up until the pandemic, appeared impossible. Now that we have had our limiting beliefs challenged and our creativity expanded new ways of delivering old roles should be the norm.

For charity leaders this means we need think flexibly about job descriptions and ensure we are not falling into unconscious discrimination by tying some roles to an office.

We have an opportunity to consider recruitment and any geographical restrictions of positions based on location. Thinking particularly of senior charity or specialist jobs it should be feasible for a Birmingham based charity to recruit someone in, for example, Edinburgh and make it work.

Image by Jackson David from Pixabay

It has been heart-warming to see how furloughed staff and others have volunteered to help in the fight against COVID-19. It is also interesting to see the creative methods people have used to volunteer remotely.

Leaders need to plan how they can harness this new phenomenon. As charities come out of the pandemic, we can bring in the skills of everyone whose tasks are no longer restricted to be on site for specific times. Social media volunteers immediately come to mind. And with creativity, the volunteering standard should be that, unless the role has to be based in a particular place at a particular time, let’s offer it on-line.

How will leadership styles evolve?

Management are used to seeing their staff on a regular basis. Bosses in some cases equated people turning up to the office with being productivity. Leaders could also often see when things were not going right and appropriately intervene.

With remote working becoming more mainstream, we need to reassess how best to lead staff without being able to see them in the office. This requires a subtle blend of hands-off management focused on results and hands-on wellbeing support to ensure resilience and motivation remain high.

What are the opportunities for a new generation of volunteers?

The future is collaboration

We have seen some wonderful examples of private, public and third sector organisations coming together during COVID-19. What Brian Carr, CEO of BVSC calls “coalitions of kindness.”.

Charity leaders can use this to strengthen their organisations. One of my clients has been able to meet with a partner in a large finance corporation after struggling unsuccessfully for two years. Oher clients have been looking at ways to twin organisations to provide staff development through peer to peer discussions. Others are looking at ways in which they can work closer, share assets or even merge.

There are great opportunities within the challenges of this pandemic for charities to reinvent themselves. Senior charity staff must be on top of the operational challenges here and now. And yet they must also find space to look at the strategic opportunities they need to address for their organisation to thrive.

REthinking the future

21/6/2020

The pandemic has forced a lot of organisations to shrink. I don’t mean in size but in thinking as they concentrate on survival. A necessary reality for some.

It is also a great opportunity for expansion. I don’t mean in size but in thinking as they concentrate on survival and the future. A necessary reality for all.

BVSC’s innovative link with Birmingham City Council and a wide range of 3rd sector local organisations is creative and an appropriate response to a challenge that is bigger than any one organisation. Brian Carr, BVSC CEO is helping to harness what he calls “coalitions of kindness.”

It appears that the future will involve some level partnership working so now is your chance to reach out at a time some are turning in on themselves.

One client of mine is exploring how to upskill her team by linking with a similar organisation and buddying up individuals to share ideas, learn from problems and get tips from successes. How cool is that? And who knows what that cooperation might lead to in the future.

Talk to your landlord, how can you help them? What can they do for you?

Connect with neighbouring organisations. What do you have in common? What local information can you share? What help can you provide?

Reach out to people in other organisations like yours, now might be a time for sharing ideas and skills or combining to organise future events together.

challenges of leading a team remotely

26/5/2020

Published recently on BVSC's Update Brum, this blog is for those of you in the charity sector that are now leading teams remotely. This is a big challenge for you, your staff and your organisation and can take its toll. Your previous ways of leading often need a tweak or in some cases a radical overhaul.

Here I explore the tricky subject of communicating with remote staff, which will make or break your leadership.

https://updatebrum.co.uk/c19supportbrum/successful-communications-as-a-remote-manager/

Home working: recipe for stress or a dream come true?

26/5/2020

Source: Image by butterflystroke from Pixabay

With many of us working from home it has thrown up a number of issues that we haven't had to think about before. For some it is a dream come true as you don’t have to deal with a long and expensive commute or deal with the friendly but ultimately annoying colleague. For some the freedom to work uninterrupted has turbo charged their output.

For others the reality is not so idyllic. They are perched on a stool in the Kitchen with a laptop while partner or children are in the lounge working or home schooling.

The combination of work colleague isolation and the constant distractions of family or fridge can be a recipe for stress.

how the humble tomato can help

An Italian student many years ago faced a similar problem when he had the daunting task of revising for his University finals. He developed a simple system that has increasingly been adopted and adapted by many others to increase focus and minise distraction resulting in fantastic achievements.

The technique is called the Pomodoro technique. Pomodoro is Italian for tomato and he called it this after “borrowing” his mother's plastic tomato shaped kitchen timer.

the pomodoro technique

So what is the Pomodoro technique??

Get the rest of the house occupants onside.
Get all the equipment: laptop, paper, pens, notes etc ready
Switch off all distractions, mobile, email pings, other non relevant programmes
Work for twenty five minutes on one topic only and make as much progress on it as you can.
Stop and take a break, physically get up and walk (to get a drink, go to the loo, talk with someone) for five minutes.

And that is it!

I have found this gets me to work effectively through small stuff (in box emails) to big stuff (developing leadership programmes for 45 managers).

break the task down

For me 25 minutes of laser like focus is just right.

I can complete a lot in just the time period and it leaves me wanting to do more. If I have more space in my diary I will do another “Pomodoro”. Twenty five minutes is not too long to not be connected to emails or social media and similarly for work or home colleagues to leave you in peace.

If I have big tasks I am in danger of procrastinating. Starting off with a Pomodoro session breaks the task down and I can see progress and the momentum encourages me to progress the thing I have been resisting.

The five minute break is important.

It tells your brain that it will have a rest soon. There is something important about physically moving from your workspace to refresh body and mind. But five minutes is enough and then back to work, another focused Pomodoro session perhaps.

I know what you are thinking, where did my mom put the plastic tomato timer?

Well don’t worry, there is an app for that!

<<Previous

Music as a great ice breaker or warm up activity

Choosing a good ice breaker

what does a successful ice breaker do?

Celebrating 5 years of Just About Managing

3 essential steps to survive redundancy

essential steps to help you through redundancy

building your cv and interview technique

Could career coaching help you through redundancy?

a change process can be hard

what can i do that's practical?

use specialists to support those threatened with redundancy

how to work from home.... successfully

6 success secrets for a great start to your working day

keep regular start times

Don't start the day with social media

do something selfish

plan and prioritise your work

start with focus

....then engage with the rest of the world

five things all charity leaders needs to think about now

How will we attract the best staff?

How will leadership styles evolve?

What are the opportunities for a new generation of volunteers?

The future is collaboration

REthinking the future

challenges of leading a team remotely

Home working: recipe for stress or a dream come true?

how the humble tomato can help

the pomodoro technique

break the task down

Author

follow rob on linkedin

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