Yesterday I attended a focus group hosted by Severn Trent Water on behalf of Best Practice Club. The event was held at the remarkably beautiful Cropston Reserviour visitor centre just outside Leicester.
The group consisted of a remarkably diverse bunch of people all keen to improve how change happens within their respective organisations. It was also particularly interesting to see how may people from completely different industries were grappling with similar problems.
The afternoon focused on how to engage emotionally with people and questioned people’s ‘emotional intelligence’. This led to some great discussion about whether this was a MAN/Woman thing, it was really interesting to hear people’s views on emotions in the workplace, particularly from those coming from a more industrial/systems-based environments.
Also, thanks to Alex and Georgina from Penguin who let me share their cab back to Leicester – it’s a long walk!
Dec 13th, Ray Wilkinson said:
Paul,
Jan passed on your email and I was really pleased to see that you found the event at Severn Trent so informative. From the feedback we’ve had from the other delegates I know others enjoyed the event too. I’m only sorry that I couldn’t be there as I was making a presentation to an NHS shared services performance improvement network that day.
Emotional intelligence and the engagement of people in the complex process of change is a thorny subject and, from the research that’s been done on this, the UK is failing to do so. Literally billions of pounds are being lost in the economy each year because we’re not harnessing people’s emotional energy effectively. Howevere we will keep trying!
Ray Wilkinson
Best Practice Club