Tag Archives: Strengths

Podcast Episodes, Podcast Interviews, Teams

Podcast Episode 039: Team-working with Kirt Hunte

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2Steve Morgan in conversation with Kirt Hunte about what contributes to good team-working. We frequently make a claim to be a team but function more as a group of individuals.

What influence does the team manager or team leader have on the identity and function of the team? Can a talented group of individuals simply come together as a great team? Does the size of the team have any affect on its ability to function as a team?

The creativity and risk-taking required for developing a new initiative is very different from the long term sustainability of an established team or service. Kirt and Steve reflect on football teams and mental health teams through their observations and experiences over many years. Reference is also made to the book entitled ‘Organizing Genius’ by Warren Bennis and Patricia Biederman describing and analysing seven case studies of great teams.

For the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://soundcloud.com/stevemorgan57/039-team-working-with-kirt-hunte

 

Podcast Episodes, Teams

Podcast Episode 038: Strengths Focused Teams

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2Good teamworking, as with so many things, is easily stated and claimed, but not always so easily evidenced. Bringing people together under the name of a specific ‘team’ doesn’t necessarily mean that they function as a true team.

From a strengths perspective, Steve Morgan offers a taxonomy of strengths focused teams… looking at three different levels in relation to the degree of strengths thinking and working that are incorporated into routine teamworking. He further develops the analysis of teamworking through outlining six principles of strengths-based teams… adapted from the original strengths principles focused on how we work with service users or clients.

It is recognised that in any given team there will be individuals who function at different levels in relation to strengths-based principles and practice; however, the extensive Gallup organisation research invites us to improve our overall effectiveness and value by focusing more in a strengths way of working.

For the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/038-strengths-focused-teams/id867043694?i=327596020&mt=2

“With an enthusiastic team you can achieve almost anything.” [Tahir Shah].

Podcast Episodes, Teams

Podcast Episode 037: Making Great Teams

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Risk Decision-MakingWhat makes a great team? A great leader? Talented individuals? A clear purpose? All of the above and more. This episode helps to define what we mean by ‘team’, as most of us function within a range of different types of teams… sports, management, service provision or focused task or product, all require good team-working. However, teamwork is often easier to talk about than to deliver.

In this episode Steve Morgan focuses on an influential book on his team development work, written by Warren Bennis and Patricia Biederman ‘Organising Genius: The Secrets of Creative Collaboration’. A combination of great leadership and talented individuals are required, but the great groups studied in this seminal publication help to identify fifteen components of what contribute to the development of ‘great groups’. In connection with previous episodes, it is also important to recognise that interfering bureaucracy is entirely absent from the works of the historic great groups!

For the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/037-making-great-teams/id867043694?i=327154253&mt=2

“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” [H E Luccock].

Positive Risk-Taking

Dementia and Positive Risk-Taking

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JRF screenshotSteve Morgan (Practice Based Evidence) and Toby Williamson (Mental Health Foundation) were commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation to produce a ‘Viewpoint’ think piece for their published series of thought-provoking topics. The focus was to apply the concept of ‘Positive Risk-Taking’ (developed from 1994 by Steve Morgan) to the relatively new UK government initiative of ‘Dementia-friendly Communities’.

Check out the following link for the full publication, which sets out an explanation of ‘Positive Risk-Taking’, ‘Dementia-Friendly Communities’, and the benefit of taking risks to support people to live with dementia better:

http://www.jrf.org.uk/publications/how-can-positive-risk-taking-help-build-dementia-friendly-communities

 

A Strengths Approach, Personal passions, Podcast Episodes

Podcast Episode 036: Blight of Bureaucracy Part 1

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2As western industrialised societies have drifted into a post-industrial service industries world, one thing proliferates more than the most infectious of diseases… bureaucracy! Now anything to do with paper, or its electronic offspring, reigns supreme. Managing, auditing and regulating have become effective barriers to creativity and innovation.

The new mantra is standardisation, systematisation, uniformity and safety… conformity ensures mediocrity will be the outer limits of permitted imagination. Do the children of today dream and aspire to become a bureaucrat when they grow up? Do they loose sleep over the excitement of their first suit and form to fill? Take with a large degree of caution any bureaucrat promising to reduce the plethora of bureaucracy. It is not in their interests to free up other people to exercise their talents, initiative and decision-making skills.

To access the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/036-blight-bureaucracy-part/id867043694?i=327153565&mt=2

“Bureaucracies force us to practice nonsense. And if you rehearse nonsense, you may one day find yourself the victim of it.” [Laurence Gonzales].

A Strengths Approach, Podcast Episodes, Positive Risk-Taking

Podcast Episode 034: Planning your business Part 2

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2Putting together a business plan is vitally important but requires some caution. We are reminded that the realities of life happen to us while we are busy making other plans.

For all the well thought out plans we still need to respond to events and circumstances. This episode explores five reasons why we should be cautious about the amount of time invested in planning, as well as the danger of becoming rigidly attached to our plans. Steve Morgan uses his own experiences through the Practice Based Evidence Consultancy in response to each of the points of caution.

For the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/034-planning-your-business/id867043694?i=326162015&mt=2

“There is nothing more frightful than ignorance in action.” [Goethe].

 

A Strengths Approach, Podcast Episodes, Positive Risk-Taking

Podcast Episode 033: Planning your business Part 1

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2Whatever your career or business that you are involved in, you may engage in degrees of forward planning. So why put together a business plan? Whether you are ‘planning’ (i.e. the vision thing) or making plans (i.e. the detail thing), there are a number of good reasons to have a plan for your business or career in place, and also to keep reviewing that plan.

This episode sets out 6 reasons in favour of degrees of planning, and uses the presenter’s own personal experience in moving from employment in a national organisation to going it alone in self-employment as a case study to illustrate the reasons. The episode finishes with a message of caution through a reality check, life may rarely mirror your plans.

For the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes or Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/033-planning-your-business/id867043694?i=324631141&mt=2

“In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” [Dwight D. Eisenhower].

Person-centred working, Podcast Episodes

Podcast Episode 032: Why plan?

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2This episode raises the philosophical question of ‘why plan?’, and what role does planning play in our day-to-day lives? We all have needs and wants, and it is the conscious or subconscious plans that help us to exert some control in our aim of achieving them.

We engage in relationship plans, financial goals, career planning, and chosen uses of leisure time. It is a natural human activity that can become quickly mired in the bureaucratic jargon of goal-setting, care planning, support planning, where we talk of being person-centred when our systems are imposing service-centred solutions on people.

It can be a conflict between a requirement for order and a way of managing chaos, even though some people claim to prefer chaos. Plans can’t guarantee success but they can help to build confidence, apply order and structure, focus our energy, provide a road map. In the event of a crisis we have means of responding with our own personal crisis plans; and in anticipation of something desired going wrong we should have some kind of contingency plans.

For the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/032-why-plan/id867043694?i=322813027&mt=2

“Failing to plan is planning to fail.” [Alan Lakein].

A Strengths Approach, Personal passions, Podcast Episodes, Podcast Interviews

Tables turned

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Steve @ Hydra 2Well, it was only a matter of time. Your host and occasional interviewer was recently approached by Nicola Cairncross, who runs the Business Success Factory podcast show. So, who am I to turn down the possibility of being interviewed by a successful business source?

Here I discuss a little bit about my career falling into and out of things, and why I focus on a strengths perspective in my own work. Nicola is also interested in business success and money success tips, though why ask me about such things I have no idea… certainly not because I am coming to you weekly from a sun-drenched tax haven in a particularly exotic part of the world (don’t be fooled by the background in the picture above!).

Click on the following links to hear the full interview:

http://TheBusinessSuccessFactory.com/iTunes

http://thebusinesssuccessfactory.com/tbsf-070-steve-morgan/

“What’s right is what’s left if you do everything else wrong.” [Robin Williams].

 

A Strengths Approach, Person-centred working, Podcast Episodes

Podcast Episode 031: Say hi to Dave

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TheStrengthsRevolution_albumart_2-2Dave is a reported case example (not interview) of someone advancing in age and who is not only coming to terms with complex health problems, but is also adamant about exerting his own views of what a plan for his life should look like when in contact with health care professionals.

Dave has recently lost his wife in a road traffic accident, and his children are concerned about his care needs as he is now diagnosed with Alzheimers disease. Dave puts his strengths to work, using skills he has developed over many years as a financial advisor, as well as his passion for reading up about his condition and the way services should work for him, not making him fit into a standard bureaucratic process. He challenges his local services to be genuinely person-centred and flexible in the way they meet with him, listen to him, and document his wishes. He also makes it very clear that he will not become a token gesture to service user involvement by refusing an invitation to join a local strategic committee.

To access the full content of this episode click on the links to iTunes and Sound Cloud (or go to Stitcher Radio):

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/strengths-revolution-steve/id867043694

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/podcast/031-say-hi-to-dave/id867043694?i=321218937&mt=2

“It is not true that people stop pursuing dreams because they grow old, they grow old because they stop pursuing dreams.” [Gabriel Garcia Marquez].