Ice-breaker unlocks people power

By VICKI JAYNE

Hunkering down with a bunch of people from whom there is no escape as the dark months drag on can throw a powerful spotlight on group dynamics and the part each person plays in making the whole thing work - or not.

And this is an environment whose inhospitable beauty constantly stresses one's flimsy grip on survival.

Angela Neighbours became acutely aware of this when her role as managing director of Auckland training and development company People Dynamics took her to Scott Base this year.

She was there to carry out in-depth interviews with both summer and winter work teams as part of a development programme for Antarctica New Zealand.

"They employ highly skilled specialists to maintain the base, and these people lock themselves away in some pretty astonishing conditions.

"With no outside contact, they're very dependent on one another, so finding out about their competencies and how they work together is vital."

Vital, but not unique to that environment. She reckons the lessons learned from teamwork in extreme environments are equally relevant in a space where living dangerously means having two fudge brownies with your latte.

"It's all about having your eyes wide open to the environment you work in and the people around you," says Angela Neighbours.

"What we've found is that there are a lot of people in today's business world whose eyes aren't open.

"They are too busy heading down a predictable path, meeting current business expectations and focused more on processes than on people."

One result is that the pace of change is often forced, rather than generated from within by developing and inspiring individuals.

"Everything is so rushed and hurried that there's no space to take a deep breath, tell team members how valuable they are and make time to get to know them better."

People Dynamics starts from the inside out in its organisational change work with companies.

"If you see each company as a circle, the outer ring of which is the organisation, within which are work teams and within that, the individual team members, you find a lot of change companies start from the outside. They look at changing aspects of the organisation - its processes, systems, customer base or products.

"We start with the individual because by empowering them, you can change the whole company from the inside out."

Rather than follow specific prescriptions, the company takes a deliberately open-minded approach, says Angela Neighbours.

"There's no one magic button because everyone is different.

"Every time we start work with a client, we start with a totally blank sheet of paper and work with what we find."

The eyes-wide-open approach - a cinch when dropped by Hercules aircraft on to the frozen wilderness of Ross Island - can be applied to every workplace, she says.

It is a matter of tuning in to the prevailing atmosphere. Is it warm and welcoming or buttoned-down and dismissive?

Are people prevented from giving their best by practices or people who stifle innovation? Where and why is dysfunction occurring?

"If you're looking, it's not hard to pick up clues," says Angela Neighbours.

"We hear some CEOs say, 'We are a people-focused company,' and know by the words they use, their body language or from the atmosphere of the place that there's just no way."

The impact of poor leadership helped to prompt her to establish People Dynamics five years ago after a 25-year career that included senior management roles in London, New York, Sydney and New Zealand.

Angela Neighbours' turning point came after years spent on a company project she knew could have achieved a better result if the board had believed in its people.

"That disturbed me because if you don't value people you'll never get the results you want."

She retrained, then spent a few years in a training and development company, only to find that delivering skills is not in itself the right way to help people be different.

"It does nothing to change behaviour or attitude."

So she took her children to Fiji for three weeks, sat on a beach, wrote her business plan and came home to put it into action.

Her company now includes four advisers who generally work in pairs on the premise that two or more brains working together achieve a lot more than they could separately.

The People Dynamics approach involves probing interviews with employees at all levels within the organisation - from senior management to cleaning staff.

"We spend 45 minutes to an hour with each person, which involves building trust that they can safely talk about workplace issues openly and honestly."

The anonymous feedback goes into creating an overall picture of the corporate body: the bits that are healthy and flexible; the areas where communication blockages are affecting vitality.

Specific skills development reports are written for each business and the People Dynamics team follows up with coaching, mentoring and developing team leadership and business communications skills.

"We generally work with a lead team to set them alight, get them thinking in new ways about what their vision means to them and how they are going to make a difference.

"I read a lot about [explorer Ernest] Shackleton before I went south and see him as a truly inspirational leader because everything he did was geared to his people."

* vjayne@iconz.co.nz