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UK Highest Paying Jobs

What would change in your life if you gain a high paying job? What would be the outcome of having a large income? Many people answer these questions with; security, a big house, a positive career, respect, a nice car, going on several holidays a year or to get away from poverty, to stop living in a bad neighbourhood, to get away from having no money or no future.

Whatever your desired outcome is, you can achieve it by following these two steps:

Achieving Your Outcome

Number One: write an action plan with all the steps needed to reach your career goal and outcomes, a career coach can help you complete your action plan. An action plan works as you are making a commitment on paper, research has shown that you are more likely to achieve goals which you have written down.

Number Two: think about the first two questions about your outcomes, the reason you want a high paid job; collect pictures of all the things you want; car, house, security, etc and put them on a board (in coaching we call this an image board) and place the board somewhere visible and some place you are likely to look each day. By seeing the images – your desired outcomes on a daily basis, will keep you motivated and focused.

High Paying UK Jobs

 

Below is a list of UK high paying jobs, under salary brackets. In any position you love and enjoy you will find you will automatically move up the career ladder, as people always put extra effort in to something they like and in most careers you can move up to a comfortable salary.

Having money is always a bonus and I would add your career goal should be based on your values and beliefs rather then just money. If you had the choice between a well paid job you did not enjoy or an average paid job you loved, which one would you choose?  

Career Coaching

 

If you have a dream of being successful and are currently unsure which career or job sector you should invest time in, you would benefit from a few career coaching sessions. In brief a career coach can support you into your career by matching your skills, qualities, personality, values and beliefs against a job specification. In short you can gain a job you will love and gain promotions in, gaining all the financial benefits to come with each new step up the career ladder.

UK Job Salary                                                                                                            

 

£40,000 and Above

  • Barrister
  • Dentist
  • Doctor
  • Financial controller       
  • GP        
  • Lawyer
  • Pilot    
  • Solicitor               
  • Teacher 

Between £30,000-£40,000

  • Accountant
  • Analyst
  • Architect
  • Business Analyst    
  • Developer   
  • Engineer    
  • Lecturer         
  • Pharmacist
  • Quantity surveyor 
  • Software developer 
  • Software Engineer                                         

Between £25,000-£30,000

  • Careers advisor                                         
  • Design engineer      
  • Designer       
  • Electrician         
  • Graduate    
  • Graphic designer              
  • HR  
  • Nurse  
  • Personal Assistant   Researcher
  • Sales Executive
  • Technician                                                          
  • Wed Designer                                                    

Below £25,000

  • Administrator
  • Car/Van delivery driver                         
  • Receptionist
  • Recruitment
  • Sales assistant                                                 
  • Secretary
  • Teaching assistant                                        

 

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How to get anyone to like you – Rapport Building Skills

Knowing how to gain instant rapport is a great skill to possess and an easy skill to learn, you can already think of a thousand situations when getting anyone to like you instantly would be useful.

Today, after reading this article you will have a better understanding of how to create rapport with a Stranger or Interviewer instantly and how to use this to your advantage.

Rapport

 

 

Rapport creates trust, helping us achieve our goal; getting a discount in a shop to passing a job interview. In NLP Rapport is defined as the establishment of trust, harmony and co-operation in a relationship.

Have you ever walked in to a room and you are instantly drawn to one group of people rather then another? This is because we like people who are similar to us.  

This can be conscious; you may go over to someone who is wearing a football shirt from the team you support or carrying a book from your favourite author. Similarity helps us break the ice and build rapport.

With your unconscious mind, you may be drawn to a group of people or an individual, without knowing why. This could be due to person(s) posture, body language and even the way they speak or dress.

When in rapport your conversation will feel “in the flow” or as Robert Dilts once said “a loop of mutual influence”

Building Rapport

 

We like people who seem familiar to us, who appear as we do. One way to increase rapport is to Match the other persons Posture.

While in conversation, match how the other person stands (creating a mirror effect) and copy their common gestures. Some NLP-ers will say Matching is a sign of rapport which is true and I would add to improve rapport matching body language and posture works really well.

 An Interview Coach can teach you how to build rapport with interviewers

Second listen to the person’s language and match their voice speed and tone – you can even match and build rapport over the phone.

Also, listen to the words the person uses, do they use Visual, Auditory or Kinaesthetic language? You can use a person’s language to gain rapport and influence them.

The Power of a Smile.

 

If you entered a room with two people stood in it and you had to choice one person to talk to, they both looked the same and had a similar posture, the only difference was one was smiling – who would you prefer to talk to?

Everyone is attracted more to someone who smiles, as a smile shows warmth, confidence, happiness and acceptance. During an interview where we all know first impressions count, if you walk into the room confidently with a big wide smile you will instantly be liked.

Listen.

 

There is a lot more to learn on rapport building to get people to like you and for you to be able to influence others, far too much for one article. So we will return to this again as the next rapport building article will hold some powerful secrets.

But before you go, I will teach you one last tactic – Listening. We have all hear the old saying “we have two ears and one mouth, we should listen twice as much as we talk” this is very true.

Start a conversation by asking a question, as the other person talks keep listening and nod throughout the conversation. This will increase Rapport especially when you match their body language.

Listening builds rapport, by listening instead of interrupting with your own thoughts; it shows the other person the conversation is about them not you.

Future Pace.

You can even take this one step further; after listening to the other person build up and expand on what they have said, showing you have further knowledge and expertise. If possible add an idea/suggestion they have not thought of.

This technique, when learnt can be used to influence others, you can already think of ways this technique can improve your interview techniques.

As an example, many interviewers will tell you about a new contract they have won (the reason they are recruiting – as an example building FLT engines), as you sit their, smile, nod and listen-building up rapport. As the interviewer finishes, tell them how great it is to win a contract in these competitive times, and how (add in a further knowledge) the company could also use the engineers to delivery on site maintenance and breakdown repairs, as this would not increase overheads and pays well.

It doesn’t matter if the company will take on this idea, it shows you have knowledge in their sector and can think out of the box, plus your first goal was to establish excellent rapport which you have easily done, now all you have to do is answer the other interview questions positively and wait for your job offer.
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Motivating Your Team with The GROW Model

Having the skills to motivate your team is not as easy as many new mangers think it will be. Do you find that you can easily motivate some employees and not others, even when you are using the same approach? Why is that? Because we all have different personality types and while two people’s personalities may work well together, other personalities will not, it often down to how the individual filters the information you give them.

If you had a motivational tool that worked with all staff members, how would you implement this technique in your place of work? Today’s article will teach you how to use the GROW model (a coaching technique) to motivate your team.

GROW – Goal, Reality, Options and Will

The GROW model is a set of coaching questions to help your team achieve their goals, by asking a set of questions to move your teams thinking into a positive direction you can start to motivate your team and improve their performance.

First, you need to agree a Goal and Outcome with your team. What is your team goal? You can ask this question to your team; make the goal specific, measurable and realistic. You have to believe in your goal if you want your employees to believe in it, also be consistent don’t have a goal that conflicts with another company goal or you will lose motivation in an instant. 

Under each GROW heading you will find an explanation for the section and a list of potential questions you can use/ask to help your team achieve their goals. Each question is designed to move your employee’s way of thinking to a solution focus outcome.

Questions can be asked to a team or on an individual basis. You do not need to use all questions, rather use the questions as a reference or pick and choice questions that suit your goal or job sector.  

Goal Questions:

The Goal – what do I/We want to achieve? Keep this as simple as possible! The goal questions will support your team to understand the goal and when it will be achieved.  

  • What is the aim of this discussion?
  • What is the long term goal?
  • What is the short term goal?
  • Who is it for? Who are your end customers?
  • What do they really want? What is the benefit for your customers and you? What would make your customers/managers happy?
  • What do you need to deliver so your customer/line managers get what they want?
  • How long might it take to deliver? Is this feasible?
  • What would you consider as a milestone?
  • If everything went as well as possible, what would be the best possible outcome?
  • What does success look like to you?
  • How will you know that you have achieved your goal?
  • What is your budget? Is this feasible?
  • What will you look for when you deliver it? What would make the team unhappy? What would motivate them?
  • How will you measure your goal?
  • How can your passed experience help you achieve this goal?
  • What can you personally do to achieve your goal?
  • How much control does each of the team members have over the goal?

 

Reality Questions:

 

To achieve your goal you need to understand the Reality of your team’s current situation, skills, time constraints, attitudes, process and how far or near you are to achieving your goal.

  • What is happening now? – Who, what, where, how and when?
  • What is the effect or result of that?
  • How busy are you?
  • When things aren’t going well, who else can be brought in?
  • What is the current situation like?
  • Who is involved? What are they like? What can they add?
  • What’s working and not working?
  • Do you have enough time to achieve your gaol?
  • What is missing?
  • What is holding you back?
  • What can get you started?
  • What keeps you awake at night?
  • How easy is it to get things done?
  • How often have you tried?
  • Who is involved?
  • What is your part in the team?
  • What has already been started?

 

Option Questions:

First look at the overall big picture and the break this down in to smaller details, in NLP we call this chunking down. Remember that all your team members are all different and have different experiences and knowledge, this experience and knowledge will open new possibilities and options.

  • What are the two main options?
  • What else could you do?
  • What other options do you have?
    What if all constraints were removed?
  • What are the benefits and negatives of each option?
  • What factors will you use to weigh up the options?
  • If you had more time, what would you do?
  • If money was not an issue, what resources would you have?
  • If you had complete power what would you try?
  • How could you go about doing this?
  • How else could you go about doing it?
  • What could go wrong with that approach?
  • What would work well?
  • How long would it take to achieve each option?
  • What resource and expenditure would be needed?
  • What are the risks in each option?
  • What criteria will you use to select the main option?
  • What should you do first, next, last?
  • What are the cost and benefits of each of these ideas?
  • If you had more confidence, what would you try?
  • What could you sue as a back up plan?

 

Will Questions:

Once the team understands and believes in the goal and can see that this goal is achievable and realistic, they will have chosen their options and in most cases made a backup plan, your team will be ready to start moving towards their goal. The Will questions are designed to get the team thinking about starting their task.

  • So what will you do now?
  • What options will you choice?
  • To what extent does this meet all of your objectives?
  • What will you start first?
  • When will start (each step)?
  • What could stop you moving forward?
  • And how will you overcome it?
  • Will this address your goal?
  • How likely is this option to succeed?
  • What else will you do?
  • When will you know you are ready for this? How does it light your fire?
  • What will light your fire?
  • Is there anything stopping you from committing whole-heartedly to this?
  • Who else needs to buy in to it?
  • Who needs to know about the goal or action plan?
  • What needs to happen to make people enthusiastic?
  • What rewards for completion would help?
  • What additional help do you need?
  • What could I do to support you?
  • What can get you real excited about starting this project?
  • Is there anything thing else you need to before we start?

 

From a mangers point of view, you will agree that a list of questions does not always create the desired outcome, plan your questions in-advance and add them in the form of a discussion. You would have already noticed that none of the questions can be answered with a “yes” or “no” answer, the question are designed to form a discussion with your team.

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Future Jobs

The world changes at an ever increasing fast pace which means Technologies, Industries and Jobs are changing just as quickly.

This article will help you understand what pushes these changes and how they can affect your career choice and the future of UK jobs.

Why should you look at the Future of Jobs? Just imagine as a teenager you decide you want X career, you spend all of high school and college studying for exams that you pass with flying colours, you attend university to specialise in your career. Several years later, you leave university with your industry qualification only to find the job you have studied so hard for, no longer exist.

Technology Changes Jobs

Let’s take a simple example, in the 1940’s-1950’s thousands of women were employed to copy type, using a type writer. These jobs are now redundant as one person can now write a letter on a computer and have the computer personalise it for thousands of customers, many companies go one step further and use an automatic e-mail systems.

More recently you can see how new technology is changing industries and jobs; in most supermarkets you will now find a Self-Service Checkout, where one employee monitors on average 8 self service tills, compared to 8 workers working on 8 tills. It won’t be long until the percentages of checkouts are self service tills, leading to a loss of supermarket cashier jobs.

 

What Drives the Changes?

When you understand the Drivers you can often predict the future of jobs. There 5 main factors that drive industry changes.

  • Environment
  • Cost
  • Speed
  • Safety
  • Reliability

Using a simple example, to help reduce the destruction of forests and improve the environment companies may send out fewer letters by post. To save cost on stamps a business might use e-mails as a preferred method of communication. E-mails also help to increase speed, compared to hand delivered mail.  There is a reduction in safety risk using e-mails compared to hand delivered mail and  e-mails are less likely to be stolen or lost (even thought this can happen with e-mails) meaning they are more reliable then hand delivered mail.

The example above was written to give you an idea of what can push a change, but if a large amount of organisations reduce the amount of hand delivered mail they send out, this could lead to a loss in postal worker jobs. At the same time this could increase the amount of ITC jobs, Internet fraud protection jobs and Internet marketing jobs. What changes are being made in your workplace, job sector or location that will decrease current jobs or bring in new job sectors?

Future Jobs

We are already aware that the UK will see a reduction in low skilled jobs and an increase in highly skilled jobs (the government are looking to have a work force at a minimum of a Level 3 – equivalent to A-Levels, workforce) in the near future, in many sectors that change has already started to take place.

Below is a taster list of possible future UK jobs, you need to see which career would suit you? A careers advisor can help you pick a career that will match your personality, identity and beliefs.

Medical Robots – really? Yes hospitals have already started to use medical robots to help with technical operations.

Organ Designer – designing and growing organs for made to measure for human and animal implants.

Mind Capacity Doctors – we are now trying to understand how the brain works, how to access and store large amounts of different information and research is being undertaken in the study of excellence. There will also be a need for stress release doctors.

We will also still need Doctors, Dentist and Nurses.

Space Tour Guides and Space Travel Agents – many countries are investing in space, using satellites to improve communication and media; imagine in the future, as the fire service receiving a 999 call, the operator will be able to check by satellite if the call is real or not. The next step in the space sector may be space as a holiday destination.

Energy Researcher – with the green policy, scientist are always looking for new renewable energy, we have already heard of vehicles being run of potatoes, there will be high amounts of investment into energy research.

Skilled Manufacturing – with an increase in space activity, manufactures will be making, testing and producing space goods, space food and space equipment.

High Raised Farming – with a growing population, farming could be on the change with high rise farming, similar to a block of flats but with food sources growing on each level.

We have already seen farms, where cows can milk themselves by standing on a computerised milking machine.

Internet Marketing– with the I-Pad and Internet phones, we can already see the increase in Internet marketing and the selling of the Internet goods such as e-books.  There are many young millionaires who have stared a successful business from their bedroom.

Green Auditors – auditors to check how green a company is, giving advice on becoming greener. On a bigger scale, greener homes using renewable energy, cities with green areas, reducing city pollution and having urban farms. 

Wind Turbine Engineers – as you travel to the country or out to sea, you will often see wind turbines, the amount of turbines you will see are set to increase and this will bring new engineering and maintenance jobs.

Cyber Security– with increasing Internet companies, Internet marketing and Internet banking, we are all aware of the Internet pirates. The cyber security team will help you lower Internet risk.

Designers and Inventors– with new technologies, Internet phones, green cars, new energy, there has always been and will be in the future a need for inventors and designers throughout all business sectors.

  • What jobs do you predict will be available in 5, 10 or 15 years?

 

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10 Goal Setting Questions

Do you have a goal or a dream that often pops up, making you feel excited, that same sort of feeling you got when you were a child heading out on holiday – a little buzzy feeling, starting in your stomach and rushing through your body like a rush of electricity. And then just as quick your dream or goal fades away, disappearing into the far distance, is the why you never achieve your goals? Is this why you never even start to work towards your dreams, the same reason why you’re in the same place now as you were in a few years ago.

You already know a Life Coach can help you achieve your goals, challenging your personal beliefs about yourself and helping you move forward step by step. To help get you started, read and answer these 10 Goal Setting Questions; read each question one by one, once you have read the question, empty your mind of all thoughts, like having a blank cinema screen in your mind. This way your unconscious mind will search for your answers and you will start them appear, in most cases on the blank screen.

  • If you decided to live your life to the full, knowing you could not fail, what would be the first change you would make?
  • What is the one thing you would start working on today that will make a big difference in your life?
  • If you had a list of 5 things in your life that you wanted to do more off, what would they be?
  • What’s the one thing you would love to do/achieve before you die?
  • What do you really love about your life and how can you make time do this thing more? – What would you sacrifice to achieve your goal?
  • If you were 92 years old, and this older you could give the you now some advice, what one piece of advice what would it be?
  • How do you know you are committed to achieving your goal?
  • If you wrote your goal down on a card to commit to achieving that goal, who would you give it to with purpose of them checking by a certain date, that you have started to move towards your goal?
  • By what date do you want to achieve your goal? – be specific.
  • What would change once you achieved your goal? – What would be the biggest difference in your life?
  • Finally one extra question; What day will you commit to, to start to achieve your goal?

 

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Be At Your Very Best In Every Job Interview – Interview Confidence

Using NLP, the study of Human Excellence, this article will help you be at your very best during every job interview. Imagine you could perform at your optimum during all your future interviews, how would this increase the amount of job offers you receive? How confident would you feel knowing you are at your very best?

These techniques are powerful, to gain a full understanding you will need to commit to practicing them, I would also add for many, NLP techniques will be new and as you read the technique you will not be aware of the power of the technique until you practice the technique for real.

Give a Description.

Grab a pad of paper and a pen and write a description of how you would perform in an interview where you felt highly confident. Start with how you look, what you are wearing, how do you walk, what does your posture look like, are you carrying anything? Do you look relaxed? Calm? Confident?

How do you act, do you start conversations, what are you doing with your hands, do you pay attention to other people in the waiting or interview room? Write it all down “I feel…I  act…I see myself…”

How do you sound when your answering interview questions, write down your tone of voice, the speed you are speaking at, do you sound confident? In charge? Professional?

Write lots of detail, don’t just think it, write it down!                                  

What does your Best Look and Feel like?                                              

To become your best in every interview, you need to know what your best looks and feels like, close your eyes and imagine if you were at an interview performing to your very best. See yourself now; you look and feel great imagine you knew how to word your answers and see an air of confidence surrounding you, as you are being interviewed.

As you see yourself in your minds eye notice the way this confident version of you acts, notice your positive posture and listen to the tone of your voice. Become aware of everything that makes this new you feel good, how do you walk? Is your head held high or looking down? Is your handshake firm or soft? Do you look and sound like you belong there? Imagine you could smell the confidence of this new you, what does your confidence smell like?

Imagine if you could step out of your body, and float across to the body of this new confident you, step into your new body and see the world from the eyes of a confident you. Notice the confident feeling running strongly through your body, where does it start from? Which direction does it spread in? What is the speed? Is the confident feeling warm or cold? Fast or slow?  Become aware of what makes you feel confident right now. If you could give the confident feeling a colour, what colour would it be? If you could double the intensity of the colour, how much more confident does this make you feel?

Become aware of your posture, how you hold your head, your shoulders and how confidently you walk. What positive thoughts do you say to yourself as you feel confident? What else makes you feel confident? What could make you feel more confident?

Now you have already started to feel more confident, as you repeat this exercise two more times you will notice the confident and positive feelings becoming stronger more quickly.

Set up an Interview Anchor.

As you completed the last two exercises you would have started to feel more confident, this is because when you think about feeling confident you start to become confident. If you could access these confident and positive feelings before an interview, how would this increase your chances of passing the interview? You already know it would, think about feeling confident at an interview – you probably accessed these emotion really quickly this time.

When would it be useful for you to access your instant confident feelings (we will call this the trigger) for an interview? When you walk into the reception? When you shake the interviewer’s hand? When you take your coat off? At what point in the interview or lead up to an interview would you want to access instant interview confidence?

Remember when we asked where does your confident feeling come from? Think about that now, the start of your confident emotion. Many others say their confident feeling starts in their stomach, so we will use this as the example.

Think about the feeling in your stomach, the colour and speed you gave it and the direction it travels in.   Now think about your trigger, did you pick taking your coat off, shaking the interviewers hand or anything else? What ever you picked imagine doing that action now in slow motion, as you think about this trigger also think about the confident feeling starting in your stomach and spreading in slow motion around your body. Do this 8-10 times thinking about the trigger and emotion at the same time, each time make this happen faster and faster until it seems like they naturally happen at the same time, instantly.

Some people prefer to use an NLP Coach to help them master these confident building techniques.

By reprogramming your brain you can access positive feelings to any trigger, giving you in this case instant confidence during your interview. There are many other techniques to help reduce interview fears and increase confidence, keep a look out for upcoming blog articles.  

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Motivating Your Team – Towards and Away From Motivation

When learning about motivation one of the first lessons you will learn is about “Towards or Away From” Motivation, also known as “Pain or Pleasure” Motivation.

This article will help you understand why people are motivated by Towards or Away From language, how to know who is motivated by which motivation preference and which language you can use to motivate both Towards and Away From Motivated People. 

NLP-Meta Model

NLP is the study of excellence, one part of NLP is the Meta Model (this helps us understand how people input, sort and filter information) The Meta Model has helped us learn how language has different effects on different people.  As you may be motivated by the Carrot, others are motivated by the Stick.

Motivation

If you could know which language would motivate your team would you want to learn it? Helping your team achieve all of its goals, moving towards a successful year with a new positive team, knowing each year would bring in better results, is this something you could use to benefit future team moral?

If you could speak to your team, knowing the language that would stop your team from being unmotivated, reducing common errors and to stop the team from wasting time. Would this knowledge move you away from poor results?

It’s not about who is motivated by what language, as we are all individuals, it’s about how you can use language to motivate your team, if you new how to motivate your team, what would you different when you returned to work on Monday morning?

How to know who is motivated by what language?

Ask your staff members “What’s important to you in work?”

They will often give you a list of criteria, example: Training, Reviews, Good Atmosphere, Big Wage, My Own Desk, etc

Secondly ask “why is Criteria important to you?” what ever answer they give, ask “why is this new criteria important to you?”

Listen to their answer: do they use Towards or Away From Language?

Example from a Social Worker Review:

 

Manager “what is important to you in work?”

Staff“erm, I need to know that I am helping other people”

Manager “why is helping other people important?”

Staff “Because I want people to move forward with their lives, to have a good future”

Manager “why is helping people move forward with their lives important to you?”

Staff “I want to feel that I have helped people to achieve something with their lives”

 

You have already stared to notice the thousands of ways you can use language to motivate your own team.

TOWARD MOTIVATION                                              

To motivate people who are Towards motivated use words, such as:

  • Attain
  • Gain
  • Achieve
  • Get
  • Include
  • Towards
  • Can’t wait to get there
  • Accomplish
  • Reward
  • End Result
  • Goals

Towards people are motivated to achieve or attain goals. They have trouble recognizing problems. They are good at managing priorities

AWAY-FROM MOTIVATION

To motivate people who are Away From motivated use words such as;

  • Avoid
  • Exclude
  • Recognize
  • Problem
  • Don’t like…
  • Trouble Shooting
  • Fix
  • Steer Clear of
  • Prevent
  • Solve
  • Fix
  • Prohibit

Away From people focus on what may be and is going wrong. They are motivated to solve problems and have trouble keeping focused on goals

Summary

 

A little goes a long way; as you read this article, many of you will be thinking do words really make a difference? They do and more importantly, words motivate people. As with many good techniques, you will agree you will need to practice, re-read this article and practice listening to your friends and colleagues language, you can probably already start noticing who is Towards or Away from motivated.

Once you recognise their motivational pattern, talk “using their language” and look for the difference your language is making; do they respond to you differently? Are they listening to your ideas and suggestions? To increase your awareness of motivational patterns, you can apply for a motivational training course to learn all aspects of motivational language to Motivate the Unmotivated.

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CV Template Word

You can either have a Word CV or a Web CV, it’s not about which CV style you have, it’s about your CV securing you job interviews, how many job interviewers has your current CV gain you?

The percentages of CVs are written on word documents, web CV’s are increasing all the time especially in the ITC and Media job sectors.

When using a CV Template in Word, beware, as some companies will have an old word computer package and when you write a CV in a new version of word your CV may be unreadable to the employer. To prevent this from happening always attach you’re CV as a PDF. As a CV writing service, employment king will always send you copies of your CV in an open and PDF file.

If you need a CV quickly use a CV Template Package, this package will give you the options of several CV Templates, designed in Word, as well as a list of Job Descriptions’, Personal Profiles and Hobbies Paragraphs to copy and paste into your CV template before you personalise it; imagine if you could create a Professional CV in less then 5 minutes, how would that make you feel, to be able to spend more time applying for vacancies.

If you are keen for you’re CV to stand out, use a CV Writing Service and receive a FREE Covering Letter Template. CV writing services will individualise your CV to you and your job goal, helping to secure you more job interviews.

When choosing to write and design your own CV, first read CV writing articles as they are full of tips and hints to ensure your CV gains you job interviews.

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Why Managers should never ask “Why?”

Many managers, supervisors and employees will tell you they are great communicators, you will often see “communication skills” on a persons CV as part of their personal profile and/or skills section.

To be a “great communicator” you will first need to understand the power of “words” and “questions,” you will find many articles on this blog that will help you improve your communication skill’s, to understand language patterns and influencing techniques,  today you will learn about the importance of the question “Why”                                   

Why you should never ask “why?”                             

 Why is the why question so important? This is a good question and this article will explain all you need to know, first I would like to add that in some circumstances the “why” question can be very powerful, but today we look at the reasons, why Mangers should not use the “why” question with employees.

Why, oh Why, oh Why                                                       

Have you ever been asked “why didn’t you meet your targets?” “why is your team under-performing?” “why is that customer storming out?” when asked a Why question, is your first reaction is to feel Accused?

When asked a Why question, you will feel accused and automatically reply in a defensive way and as a manger you now know that your employees will also respond to why questions in the same way.

Why do people respond this way? You may ask a why question not meaning to accuse the employee, just wanting to understand more about the “subject.”As the why question automatically starts a defensive response, your employees will answer trying to justify their actions, often as the employee feels angry and defensive, they will unconsciously show these negative feelings as they communicate to you.

Many mangers will respond to this negative response (remember in many cases the manager was not originally accusing anyone of anything) with their own negative response to the employee “I don’t want to hear excuses..” this can go backwards and forwards, getting quickly out of hand, de-motivating your workforce.

Why Consistency?                                                        

I recently read a scientific book on persuasions skills; the book explained how people like to be consistent. As a manger finds themselves in the battle of the why question, trying to breakdown the reason the employee“didn’t meet their targets” “team is under-performing” “customer is storming out?” the employee will want to stay consistent with their first negative response and will often bring the conversation (or argument) back to this subject.

 Why do you do the things you do?                                  

We do a thousands task each day, why do you do them? The truth is we don’t always have a reason for everything we do; often people work an automatic pilot.

When you ask an employee “why” they did something, they often won’t know why, as their automatic pilot was in play. An employee when asked why will look for an answer and may not be able to find it, in some cases the employee’s subconscious will create a reason, why they might have done what they did.

Why the Cause, why not the solution?                                      

When asked a question the mind will look for answers, when asked why? The mind will look for the cause not the solution

  • “I never get any support”                                          
  • “The targets are not realistic”                                    
  • “The customer was never interested from the beginning”          

What if you could use questions that change your employees mind from looking for the cause to look for the solution? Would this help you and your team to communicate in a more productive way? Would a solution focused question help you move forward? Would looking at solutions instead of problems, put your employee in a more productive and positive mood?

Let’s re-look at the original Why questions – how could you re-word these question to direct your employees mind to be more focused on the solutions?

  • “Why didn’t you meet your targets?”
  • “Why is your team under-performing?”
  • “Why is that customer storming out?”

I agree in some cases the “problem” needs to be addressed, but as a manager would you prefer to be able to communicate with your employees in a way that motivates them to achieve your outcome? In this way you can look at the problem as an area of development.

  • “What can you do different next week to help you achieve your targets?”
  • “How can you manage your team differently to ensure they perform well?”
  • “If you could re-wind the tape, and handle the situation with the customer differently, what would you do to ensure the customer left with a smile?”

As you can see by re-wording the Why question you can gain a better response from the employee, we all work better when our emotions are in a positive place. With the second question, I have added a presumption, “how can you mange your team differently..” the mind will automatically presume you can manage your team differently. Compare this to an alternative question “can you manage your team differently?” Now you have a choice and you may choose to say “no” – you can already start to understand the power of words, how can you use this new knowledge to improve your Management Skills.

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