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Mike Chitty

Helping realise development since 1986

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What would it take for Leeds to delight you?

Mike Chitty · June 2, 2020 · Leave a Comment

Delightful Leeds?

This is the question set by Emma Bearman as the topic to be explored in a partnership between two cities, Liverpool and Leeds, over a two-part series of one hour online conversations.

Each city will host one conversation. The provisional plan is that Liverpool will start us off on June 20th, and Leeds will host on June 27th. Sessions will start at 7pm and be done by 8pm. Further details, including how to book to take part in the events will be published soon.

There will be a a panel drawn from Liverpool and Leeds who will comment on what they have heard and explore it further. The online audience will be able to submit questions through a ‘chat’ service.

The whole thing will be done in an hour.

Would You Like to Be Heard?

Whether or not you are interested in being in the online conversations we would love to hear your thoughts on what it would take for Leeds to delight you. Please do get in touch – we don’t just want to hear from those looking to be on the ‘big stage’… You can also use the form below to tell us what it would take for Leeds to delight you…

Who Would You Like to Hear From?

We want to hear some voices that are not usually heard from, with perspectives and experiences that are not those of the usual ‘Leeds’ voices. Three people will get to speak uninterrupted for 5-8 minutes about what it would take for Leeds to delight them.

Want to know more?

Then join us in a Zoom conversation on Wednesday June 10th at 10am. Fill in the form below and we will send you out joining details…

Making a Nomination

If you would like to nominate someone that you think would provide an interesting and seldom heard perspective, or nominate yourself, here is what to do:

  • Talk to them about why you think it would be good to hear from them and see if they agree to find out more before committing
  • If they agree to consider it ask them to get in touch with me using the contact form below

We will then be in touch. Many thanks!

    Leadership Dialogue #3 – On Listening

    Mike Chitty · May 20, 2020 · Leave a Comment

    John Varney, from the Centre for Management Creativity, read this to start off our third dialogue on Leadership Development and how we might transform it for a better future…

    “So I’m quoting from Isaac’s book Dialogue.

    “To listen, is to develop an inner silence. This is not a familiar habit for most of us. Emerson once joked that 95% of what goes on in our minds is none of our business”.

    William Isaacs – Dialogue

    Then there is a quote,

    “I do not know if you’ve ever examined how you listen, it doesn’t matter to what, whether to a bird, to the wind in the leaves to the rushing waters, or how you listen in a dialogue with yourself, to your conversation in various relationships with your intimate friends, your wife, or husband. If we try to listen, we find it extraordinarily difficult, because we’re always projecting our opinions and ideas, prejudices, our backgrounds our inclinations, our impulses. When they dominate, we hardly listen at all to what is being said. In that state, there is no value at all. One listens and therefore learns only in a state of attention. The state of silence in which this whole background is in abeyance, is quiet. Only then it seems to me is it possible to communicate”.

    William Isaacs – Dialogue

    So the other bit I want you to read from the same book was about respect.

    “To be able to see a person as a whole being we must learn another element in the practice of dialogue. Respect. Respect is not a passive act. To respect someone is to look for the spring that feeds the pool of their experience. The world word comes from the re-specsere, which means to look again, its most ancient roots mean to observe. It involves a sense of honouring or deferring to someone. Where once we saw one aspect of person, we look again and realise how much of them we had missed? This second look can let us take in more fully, the fact that here before me is a living, breathing being”.

    William Isaacs – Dialogue

    So, there are various other principles that Isaacs’ goes on to spell out in dialogue, but we’re trying to get past just conversation. If you look at the people present in this dialogue, there is an extraordinary spread of expertise of life experience of knowledge, that we can pool, we can bring that into relationship, if we, if we listen and if we respect.”

    And one of the things that I have learned recently about the etymology of leadership is that it shares the same roots as regard and respect…

    If you would like to book a place on a future Leadership Dialogue to help us explore how we can transform the business of leadership development to shape a better world you can book on here…

    Me and White Supremacy – part 1 – White Privilege

    Mike Chitty · May 20, 2020 · Leave a Comment

    The Basics – White Privilege

    In what ways do I hold white privilege?

    In many ways. If I am at a meeting, especially of senior leaders, then most of them will share my gender and ethnicity. When I see role models in the media many of them will be white. If I apply for a job or bid for work it is highly likely that those selecting will be from my ethnic groups. Since childhood to be white was to be ‘the norm’.

    Growing up in the 60s in the rural home counties any skin colour but white was seen as a rarity. I had to choose whether to be racist or anti-racist. Arthur Ashe or Buster Mottram? National Front or Anti Nazi League and Rock against Racism? It was not a choice my black school mates had.

    When I go through Peggy Macintosh’s list of the items that structure white privilege in a day to day and very practical way – yes they all apply. All the time. And they work differently in different contexts and at different times. Even when I lived in a rural village in The Gambia in sub-saharan Africa my white privilege was still with me.

    The fact that I can afford to take my own skin colour for granted is an enormous white privilege. It was never a source of worry or fear. Or pride for that matter. I could safely ignore it. However by ignoring my skin colour I was also blinded to the power of whiteness. To my own white power.

    I thought white power was a ridiculous, white supremacists’ chant rather than something that directly and unfairly benefitted me.

    What negative experiences has white privilege protected me from throughout my life?

    I have always had easy access to the culture of my own ethnic group. Even when I lived in sub-saharan Africa, while I physically did not see many white people in the village I could easily tune the radio to access my own culture. So I never felt that my culture was denied or absent in my life. It was always the dominant culture. The successful culture. It has only been in recent years that China has emerged as a global power to seriously threaten the dominance of Caucasians.

    I was in The Gambia for just over a year, and for much of that time it was quite difficult to meet another white person. There were a couple of Peace Corps in the village and generally The Gambia was full of ex-pats, but generally I lived and socialised with Gambians; Mandinka, Wolof, Jola, Serahule and Fula. And I learned that Gambia is the shape it is because of the way Africa was divided post war, largely using rulers and compasses, ands how the imposition of borders in the Sahara had made apparently made very little difference to the day to day life in tribal West Africa. I remember walking one day up to the border with Senegal. Just sand. But even here my whiteness protected me from some of the racism that black Africans from other countries received from Gambians. I remember one teacher had walked from Cameroon to the The Gambia to take up a teaching post and he got a hard time because he was not of the Gambia or from one of the local tribes. I was protected from all that because of my association with power and money that came with my skin colour.

    I don’t think I have ever been discriminated against unfairly because of my ethnicity – again even in West Africa to be white was seen to bestow power; education and access to networks and resources.

    I have never been subjected to violence because of my skin colour. For my politics and football allegiances yes – but never skin colour.

    In what ways have I wielded my white privilege over black, indigenous and people of colour?

    I find this question hard to answer. I know I have often been invited to speak with BAME networks and feel guilty when I am the white man at the front of the room teaching the BAME networks about power and empowerment. I always feel conflicted in this work as historical power structures are re-created. I have always tried to name it and to talk about it – but even my choice to do that is an exercise in white privilege.

    I don't like the acronym BAME but don't know what else might work.
    Layla F Saad uses BIPOC meaning Black, indigenous and people of colour but again that does not feel appropriate for me to use.  Getting used to the inadequacy of words, their clumsiness and the vulnerability they bestow on the user who as at the edge is another thing that those of with white privilege, using our first language to explore our concepts of race,  perhaps don't experience that often.

    In political processes I have always supported the candidates who most closely fit with my political beliefs rather than perhaps vote for the person or party most likely to pursue racial justice. I wold NEVER vote or someone who was overtly racist – but I perhaps have never gone deeply enough into the record of politicians on anti-racism.

    I have competed with BAME people for jobs and tenders without ever really considering the privileges I enjoy in that competition.

    What have I learned about my white privilege that makes me uncomfortable?

    I think the thing that makes me most uncomfortable about it is that it is slippery, evasive, structural as well as personal and difficult for me to see. Whiteness is like an invisible superpower. I feel like a fish coming to terms with water.

    I was involved to small degree back in the late 70s and early 80s with movements like Rock against Racism and the Anti-Nazi League. However I realise now that while that was helpful in uncovering and combatting overt racism it did little to explore and reveal the more subtle and structural racism that patterns our society. That pattern me. It was as simple as ‘good white people and their black allies’ against the ‘bad white people’.

    Whenever I try to work in a way that I hope is ‘anti-racist’ it feels like an expression of privilege and hubris. Even writing as honestly as I can about the reflections prompted by the book I have this nagging sense of doubt. Doubting my own intentions in this exercise of privilege.

    Who am I to think I can help? Especially uninvited…

    But then who would I be to do nothing?

    Me and White Supremacy

    Mike Chitty · May 20, 2020 · Leave a Comment

    Introduction

    I first got involved in issues around the politics of race back in the late 70s when I was a teenager. Back then we were faced with a number of stark choices about how to fit in.

    I wasn’t especially informed but choices had to be made. Choosing football teams, musical genres and orientation towards or away from skin colour felt compulsory. So Rock against Racism and Anti Nazi League badges joined the Chelsea scarf and the Led Zeppelin, Genesis and Pink Floyd albums in defining me as a teenager. It wasn’t until Sandinista that I really got into The Clash and worked my way back through time into punk…

    Those early choices have stayed with me. It might have been so very easy for me to choose differently because they were not especially well informed by inquiries into morality, ethics and human rights. They more informed by my own survival instincts…

    I can see now having that choice was an example of white privilege.

    My current development around the issue of racial justice is to work through Me and White Supremacy by Layla F Saad. The title alone grabbed me gently by the throat. No weasel words of inclusion and diversity – but a very direct naming of a power dynamic.

    The book offers, after a short introduction, 28 prompts for reflection through a brief introduction to some key concepts and then some questions that invite you to reflect personally on how the concept has played out in your life as a white person. The book is written for white people.

    I decided that I would journal some of my reflections for several reasons:

    • it would create some sort of accountability – I won’t do something every day – but I will work my way through the book
    • it will make me externalise my thinking. Writing stuff down allows me to re-visit, re-think and explore further – and sometimes see, with hindsight, how shallow my thinking can sometimes be. How it can lack awareness. Indeed as I write this my mind is racing around in circles – is this an honest attempt at reflection and learning?
    • Layla F Saad recommends journalling as a way through the book
    • Working out loud, usually helps, for me at least – it gets the chance for feedback, guidance and fresh ideas to be offered

    So over the next few weeks and months as I work through the book I will be as open and honest as I can in sharing reflections. I am sure that some days they might be pretty shallow and rushed – but I can always go back and develop further.

    I am also worried about language. Im sure it will be clumsy, perhaps at times ignorant as I try to find the right words to express reflections and partly formed thoughts. If they ever trigger offence, anger or any other emotion or though tin you please do find a way to let me know. You can use the comments on a post or through the contact form

    Management skills: be a better manager

    Meg Chitty · May 18, 2020 · Leave a Comment

    Powerful management skills to make you a better manager.

    Management skills to be a better manager, from the Outstanding Manager Program. Including Great Working Relationships, Give and Get Feedback, Be a Brillian Coach, Maximum Delegation, as well as Time and Priority Management.

    Keen to develop your leadership and management skills?
    Do you want to be a better manager?

    Mike Chitty, developer of the Outstanding Manager program, has outlined here some top management skills and tips.

    If you want to develop your management skills but perhaps feel hesitant about management courses… then read the top tips below.

    .

    What makes a good manager?

    Firstly, a good manager knows how to help others to do their best work. This requires a set of skills and behaviours as well as attitudes.

    In summary, a good manager:

    • Succeeds in building positive and trusting relationships
    • Is respected by the people who work for them
    • Regularly gets the right things done
    • Is coachable, and as a result is always open to learning
    • Not only has the courage to be honest about what is going well, but is also honest about what isn’t going so well

    .

    With the above in mind, key managment skills from the Outstanding Manager program by Mike Chitty are outlined below, coupled with 5 corresponding top tips.

    Mike is an experienced facilitator, trainer, coach and consultant. Currently, he offers online management training workshops at £25.00. View the upcoming sessions here or book straight onto the next session below. Limited free spaces are also available, so please take one if needed.

    Register on Eventbrite

    .

    Management skills:

    1. Great Working Relationships
    2. Giving and Getting Great Feedback
    3. Being a Brilliant Coach
    4. Maximum Effective Delegation
    5. Time and Priority Management

    .

    1. Great Working Relationships

    Undeniably, great working relationships are vital to outstanding people management. Recognising different personality types and then changing your approach accordingly will certainly get you the best response.

    Tip 1: We all under-perform at times. To manage an underperformer and get them back on track, you must want them to succeed. Unless you can be positive about them, you and they, are unlikely to otherwise succeed.

    .

    2. Giving and Getting Great Feedback

    Simply put, feedback is information that changes behaviour. This is a powerful tool to get more of the behaviours that work, and less of the behaviours that don’t. As a result, feedback is the answer to most of your performance management challenges.

    Before you can start to give feedback however, you must understand the behaviours that create or destroy value. What do you need more of? Or less of? Recognise these labels i.e. ‘professional’, ‘unprofessional’, ‘caring’, ‘lazy’, ‘pedantic’ and ‘detailed’ for example. Then, comment on the behaviours that trigger these words to provide feedback.

    More commonly, the focus of most managers is on improving the behaviours of others. An outstanding manager focuses on improving their own behaviours. Getting feedback without a doubt helps you to be a better manager. With this in mind, develop a way in which your colleagues can easily give you feedback.

    Tip 2: Only give feedback when you see a behaviour that you want more of or less of at work. Use it positively and deliberately to shape future behaviours, and most importantly, never to punish.

    .

    In truth, sometimes feedback doesn’t work. Simply because the person getting the feedback does not have the knowledge, skills or desire to change their behaviours. In this situation, the outstanding manager has to move into a coaching role.

    .

    3. Being a Brilliant Coach

    An outstanding manager will coach every member of their team so that all of them learn something every week that helps improve the organisation, making things better overall. From agreeing objectives to planning the learning process, as well as celebrating success.

    Tip 3: Expect learning to happen every week. Ask about what your team member has learned in their 121s. Share your learning too.

    You can learn more about this management skill in Session 4 of the Outstanding Manager Program.

    Make.EE

    4. Maximum Effective Delegation

    Delegation is essentially about empowering others to develop their careers, to take on new responsibilities and work at the leading edge of their abilities. Equally, it also helps you to retain talented people who might otherwise outgrow their jobs.

    Along with the above, you can get the most value out of your team and get them working at the edge of their potential too.  So many managers have bad experiences with delegation. For this reason, they often end up just doing the job themselves.

    Tip 4: Offer each team member two or three significant delegations a year. In this way, they will develop quickly and start to feel comfortable with accepting greater responsibility.

    .

    5. Time and Priority Management

    In reality, it is impossible to manage time.  It slips by at the rate of one hour, every hour. We cannot make time, nor can we find it.  But we can make choices about what we spend our time doing.

    Tip 5: Set hard stops for at least three days of your week and get every team member to do the same. A hard stop is a fixed time at which you are going to stop working and finish for the day. When we have a hard stop it forces us to manage our priorities to get things done. No hard stop and time can just slip away…

    .

    In summary, developing key management skills will help you to be a better manager overall. But, if you really want to get the most of the people you manage, online coaching to develop essential management skills should really be your next step.

    .

    Find out more about these management skills from the Outstanding Manager Program.
    Alternatively, feel free to contact Mike Chitty with any questions.
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