InterACT WA

So do you work for a dynamic organization with professional staff that develops quality customized solutions for its customers?  
That is a coincidence ...  So do I. 

And almost everybody else for that matter.   

It is a tale that is often told which has usually little to no impact. 
Because people don't not like facts. They want to hear stories. 
By telling a real story you will make a much bigger impact.   

For example: 

In the Netherlands I worked for Randstad, an international Recruitment & HR Services provider. Every single employee knew the following story: 

Randstad was founded in the sixties by Dutch student Frits Goldschmeding who was studying economics. Frits had written a thesis about the phenomenon of temporary work and was passionate about the benefits of additional but temporary staff during peak periods. His first ever advertising flyers were created in the dorm room in his student house. And when he was in his twenties, he brought his first temporary worker to his firs…

During a training workshop on Redundancy Interviews one of the participants asked me the following question:

"How can I break bad news to someone without feeling so awful?"

It's a beautiful question because it touches the essence of the problem.
Because giving someone bad news is not supposed to feel good...

It just needs to hurt a little, otherwise there is something wrong.
We all know that empathy is an essential leadership quality.

But no one likes to feel bad either.
And since we are all little creatures of habit, we instinctively try to avoid pain as much as we can.

So when we have to break bad news to someone we start to postpone it.
Or we avoid it by talking about other things first.
We try to bring the news very carefully.
Or we start by saying that we feel so bad about it ourselves...

Or worse: it looks like this:



So what is the best way to do it?

Well, first of all you start by accepting the fact that breaking bad news to someone is hard and feels very, very un…

Have a look at this picture:






Did you smile a little because they're so cute? 

But have you ever really looked closely at a penguin? 
Because it is kind of a weird animal. 

He has wings, but he cant fly. 
He has feet but can only make really small steps. 
And on land the penguin is not very agile and is pretty slow. 

But when you see that same penguin in the water, you see where he's made for. Everything makes sense. He swims super fast and is amazingly agile. You would almost think a penguin smiles a little when he's in the water...

It's a beautiful metaphor for a hot topic at the moment: Talent Management.  

And with the word Talent we quickly think about extraordinary talents like musicians, scientists or athletes might have. But talent is present in everybody and a lot closer than you think.

The trick is to focus on it. And that can be pretty hard in a society that is more focused on things that should improve. 

Thinking back off my school time, I remember my fails always got …