Sådan sikrer lederen, at  medarbejderne kan lide hinanden og kan de lide deres arbejde:  Når medarbejderne kan lide deres kolleger kan de også lide deres arbejde. Nogle mennesker hader at gå på arbejde. Det skyldes, at de ikke kan lide alle deres kolleger eller ikke kan lide chefen. Det kan lederen gøre noget ved. Men umiddelbart lyder det ikke nemt, at få mennesker til at holde af hinanden, have det sjovt sammen, nyde hinandens selskab. Men hvad nu hvis lederen kan skabe et fællesskab, hvor alle kan lide hinanden? Løsningen kommer her: Lederen kan bruge FISH! som er det enkleste og billigste redskab på markedet. FISH! består af film, bøger, plakater, hæfter, fisk, øvelser og planer for at skabe et fællesskab med gode relationer - og god hjælp til at komme i gang og holde det ved lige. Enhver leder kan gøre det selv - uden at blande eksterne konsulenter ind i opgaven. Først lidt forhistorie. Det var Pike Place Fish i Seattle som skabte deres fællesskab i den nu verd...

And this is exactly what the four FISH! practices will do to you and your team. The four practices can help any individual and any team to become ‘friends’. Well, ‘friends at work’ at least. The four practices are BE THERE, PLAY, CHOOSE YOUR ATTITUDE and MAKE THEIR DAY. These fabulous four are not just smart headlines. They are interrelated and they are very practical. They are interrelated in the sense that you have to use all four simultaneously. You can not leave out one of them or just go with one of them.  They are practical in the sense that everyone can practise them daily - alone and in the team. FISH! delivers a series of methods and exercises easy to use - and fun too. The leader does not have to invent ways to keep on talking about FISH! - lots of material has been invented. Why is it vitally important that your employees are friends or ‘friends’ at work? The answer is quite easy - and you know it already. People like what they are doing with people they like. The opposi...

5 FISH! Philosophy Strategies for Avoiding Burnout:  For many people, they think that burnout is the same as stress, but that’s not entirely accurate. Stress is acute – we experience it in-the-moment due to a particular trigger. But burnout? Burnout is more long-term. It stems from accumulated stress over time, and often manifests almost like a depression: you may feel perpetually exhausted and anxious. You may feel like you can’t catch up on sleep, or that nothing brings you pleasure. You have trouble concentrating and connecting with people you love. Burnout takes time to set in, and also takes time to heal, and it’s often caused by long-term workplace stressors (although it can definitely be caused by non-work-related concerns such as marital problems or ongoing crises). What can you do if you’re feeling burned out at work? Here are five things you can do as a coworker or manager to help yourself and others find relief: 1. Take care of yourself (physically and emotionally) One o...

Play can’t be forced:  How Children Can Teach Us to Play “The opposite of play is not work. It’s depression,” says Play expert Stuart Brown. Far too often, we think of play and work as being mutually exclusive concepts positioned on opposite ends of the same spectrum, and that’s why we so often hear from people that Play is the most difficult-to-grasp pillar of the FISH! Philosophy. But Play is not mutually exclusive from work; instead, it’s something that can be integrated into our workspaces and our work processes to help improve the quality of our ideas, our outputs, and our collaborative processes. If you’re struggling to wrap your head around the idea of what Play looks like in the workplace, let’s remove the idea of “the workplace” entirely and take a step back to a time when Play was a natural way of being: childhood. Children are the ultimate experts in Play, and adults could learn a thing or two about it from them: after all, we all need to play, and humans (and animals...

Every departmental meeting, team meeting, kick-off meeting needs the participants to hear new things, learn new things and understand new things. This does not happen when the leader is talking everyone to sleep. As you know, nobody learns anything when they are bored or have fallen asleep. Hence this helping hand in the form of a collection of MEETING JOKERS, who create awake and fresh and enterprising employees who are given the opportunity to reflect on what they see, hear and perceive. The manager must therefore accept that the employees challenge and provoke and twist what they have heard. This does not mean that the decisions must therefore be overturned or annulled. This means that all employees must understand and internalize (take it in) and make the 'news' their own. The manager is also not going to hear everything that is said. But there is nothing new in that. What is not said in the conference room is said at the coffee machine or even later - at home. The 'new...

A friend of mine has a job in a local community. She is head of Human Resources. She has lots of transactions with her leader on a daily basis. The leader happens to be quite aggressive. Last week my friend fainted from stress and was taken to hospital with a stroke that paralysed half of her face. My friend is very dutyful and may be a sensitive woman but this incident is without discussion pure terror. The incident happened at work during daytime. And this is not the first time employees meet terror from this leader. Local newspaper has had several articles about the horrible leader. No colleagues stod up helping my friend. Nobody did a thing. Lots of people knew about it and nobody stopped the leader from repeated actions. This terror is not OK This is not OK at all. We can’t accept a leader with a temper like this, a behaviour this aggressive and a series of consequences like this. I suggest that time has come to introduce a leaders license. I know that lots of companies are able t...

Coaching Cubes with 36 questions on 6 different theme cubes: Explore new areas of discussion with Coaching Cubes  Colorful foam dice that feature positive coaching questions and they are great for promoting discussion and unblocking stuck conversations with your coachees. One of the most effective techniques to help someone develop their own thinking is to ask them questions. Good questions prompt new thoughts, bring previous experiences to bear on present dilemmas, shed new light on the issue, and prompt plans for action. This activity consists of six coloured, soft cubes with positive coaching questions on them. The cubes are designed to be rolled as dice, with each cube having its own theme relating to the coaching process. The Coaching Cubes follow this model. The PRISMM COACHING CUBES Model The PRISMM coaching model combines systemic consulting, appreciative inquiry and positive psychology to create a powerful coaching process. A colourful, tactile, innovative addition to any ...

Colourblind® is used to simulate modern day communication when a shared visual reference is not always available e.g. communicating via text / email / telephone, or even face-to-face, and using active listening and questioning skills for mutual understanding: The original Colourblind ® game relies on participants being blindfolded and asked to describe abstract shapes in their hand to figure out, as a team, which two pieces from a complete set of 30 have been removed. This requires active listening and questioning skills, as well as problem solving and team leadership in order to come to a consensus. Whether new entrants to the workforce or seasoned Executives, everyone can benefit from taking some time to further develop their communications skills - whether it is active listening, communicating abstract and difficult concepts to others, or indeed ensuring that the message being received is that which was intended! All of these are required to be successful both individually and as a ...

Why Team Small Talk is vitally important to working life: Team Small Talk is important at work - actually, it's an important and essential part of work. It enables us to find common ground and shared interests. It improves active listening skills. It helps us build muscles to overcome social discomfort and it improve spontaneity. Team Small Talk sparks collaboration, improve creativity, innovation and performance. Team Small Talk boost energy and make everybody feel 'seen'. It lays the groundwork for transitioning into more serious, deeper topics which require a greater degree of psychological safety. Here are 7 groundrules for making Team Small Talk work. But before this you have to come closer to all your colleagues in order to give these groundrules a chance to work: Be friendly. Be enthusiastic. Be curious. Be helpful. Send the right signals with face. Send the right signals with body. Send the right signals with voice. How to learn to become a Team Small Talker Practic...

FISH! testing: Test yourself with these 28 different FISH! practice questions. You can also use the questions with a colleague and have a great conversation while you fill out the form. How Well Do You live The Practices? This self-assessment tool gives you a quick scan of how well you are living the FISH! practices with your coworkers and customers. Take it again in the future and see where you’ve made changes. Use the following scale to respond to each statement: 1 Never. 2 Rarely. 3 Sometimes. 4 Consistently. Circle the number with a red pen describing the situation NOW. Circle the number with a green pen describing the situation 14 DAYS LATER. Circle the number with a blue pen describing your WISH. Be There I focus on others when they are talking to me.  ❶      ❷      ❸      ❹ I listen to understand, not just to reply.   ❶    ❷    ❸    ❹ I quiet my judgments about others when talking ...

Who Are You Being?: One of the most profound statements in FISH! comes when one of the fishmongers, says, “It’s about who you’re being while you’re doing what you’re doing.” “Doing” is necessary, but it’s the mechanical side of our lives.  It’s easy to get wrapped up in our doings, especially all the tasks we have to complete. When that happens, we get stuck on autopilot and react without thinking. We feel rushed, impatient. Sometimes it feels like we are human doings rather than human beings. When we say “being,” we mean making a conscious choice to take a stand for something. It requires thinking about and taking responsibility for how you react, how you treat others, how you treat yourself. “Being” is the most important commitment there is. When we focus on being who we want to be, it influences everything we are doing. We are free to deal with difficult people and situations more calmly. We are able to notice when we are not being who we want to be. The principles of FI...

Lots of leaders have shown the 18 minute film FISH! to their teams and done nothing after that. Silence. Never say anything about it again.  Yes, it's a funny film. It is full of important messages. We should all learn from it. Can't you see that you should all take it in and start behaving in a proper way? With any film you use there is a BEFORE, DURING and AFTER. Before You have to make a plan with what you are doing. Why would you like to use this film in particular? Does it really underline the messages you want to highlight? Does the film carry stuff enough so you can renovate your company culture? Or do you just want to use the film as an icebreaker and thats it? Make up your mind!  You are in a position to do important things in the days and hours before you show the film: Tell your team what they can expect. Invite your team to this extraordinary experience. When they are all seated appoint a few to count or spot important things. Refer to the analysis that points out ...

The best leader exercise in the world: Boss Watching: Leading through relationships Pat O`Donnell of Aspen Skiing Company says: 'The favorite hobby of employees all over the globe is Boss Watching'. The moment you are appointed leader, every word you say, every eyebrow you raise and every smile you smile will be weighed on a golden scale. If you lose your temper with one of your employees, the whole team will think, 'When will I get the same treatment?' If you are in a hurry and walk past your employees without greeting them, they will wonder if you care about them. Every time you sincerely recognize your employees for their contributions, you send the signal that you care about them and that they matter to you. Because you are the manager, your employees will invent a story about you inside their heads every single day. How do you want this story to sound? Really? This exercise is for you who would like to control whats going on inside their heads. And you can control ...

The leader can deliver this workshop in a few hours:  Every team member and every leader needs praise and acknowledgement. But how much? Is it 10 times a day? Is it 100 times a day? Deliver this workshop and agree how and how much! If you have a 'democracy' (psychological safety) in your workplace that allows everyone to speek and ventilate ideas and thoughts and problems - try out this praise-workshop. Here comes a plan: Start by telling everyone how important this workshop is Next - deliver this example: Ask everyone to stand up and enter the floor. Now distribute a blank A4 cardboard with two holes in top plus one meter of a string to every team member - including yourself. Ask them to fasten the cardboard on their backs. Make sure that everyone has a pen to write with. Tell them that you are all going to write praise on backs - as many as they can in 3 minutes. Be strict about time and end the exercise on time. Allow them to finish writing if they have started. Thank them a...

Have this great workshop with only a quote:  Yes, quotes like this below really makes a difference. But only a small one. Very small to be honest. But this quote could be the intro to a workshop that involves all team members. If you have a 'democracy' in your workplace that allows everyone to speek and ventilate ideas and thoughts and problems - try it. Here comes a plan: Start by showing the quote. Tell your team that great customer service is essential to becoming a world class company. Ask: So what do you see when you read this quote? 10 usable statements Acknowledge every message by saying: Good point. Very accurate. I like it. Now tell them that you are all going to work with how the service culture really works in your company. The workshop must end up with 10 statements ready for use by everybody. Workshop target The target of the workshop is to find answers and actions to: This is how we like it. This is how we prefer to deliver service. This is the behaviour we must a...

Your questions shape your life:  I once learned that 'The questions you ask determine the answers you get.' At that time, a whole lot occurred to me. Just think that the questioner has so many options to control the answerer and thus the answers. Ask stupid questions and you get stupid answers. Ask technical questions and you will get technical answers. Ask closed questions and you will get YES and NO answers. Ask negative questions and you will get negative answers. Example: 'How bad can our climate go?' Answer: 'Yes, it's going to go all the way.' Example: 'What's the worst that can happen?' Answer: 'That you meet 7 violent men on a dark night.' Example: 'So what, mollusk?' Answer: 'Hold the bucket you clammy cousin.' When setting up solution-oriented answers, the questions sound like this: 'How do you think we can get started with climate-friendly thinking?' 'What must each of us do to look after our country...