Episode 15 - People Management Skills

Do your people managers have the necessary skills to develop high-performing teams? 

In todays conversation on People Matters at Realising Potential Ltd, Fiona Brookwell and Michael Jones are joined by Terri Bailey, an expert Predictive Index (PI) practitioner with nearly two decades of experience, both as a former HR director and now as a consultant and trainer. 

Terri specialises in helping organisations harness the power of the PI tool to build high-performance teams, understand individual motivators, and develop leaders from within.

This episode covers Terri’s journey, from her introduction to PI to her creation of the People Management Skills Workshop. You’ll hear insightful discussions on the nuances of effective management, from recognising team members’ unique strengths to navigating the challenges faced by middle managers. 

Terri shares practical advice for cultivating high-engagement, high-performance cultures and offers personal stories of success that illustrate the transformative power of tailored people management.

If you’re a manager looking to enhance your leadership approach or simply interested in understanding what it takes to build a thriving team, this episode is packed with valuable insights. Tune in now.

If you'd like to find out more about how we can help your people, teams and businesses realise their potential, please visit our website.

Transcript

Neale James: In this episode of our conversations on people matters at Realising Potential, Fiona and Michael are joined by Terri Bailey. Terri has been a passionate PI Practitioner for nearly twenty years, both in-house as a HR director and with clients as an independent PI Consultant. Terri also delivers PI training and refresher sessions, helping clients to get the most out of the PI tools. 

Terri has developed and delivers the People Management Skills workshop designed to make people managers more effective, enhance their leadership skills, and help them build high-performance teams.   

Fiona Brookwell: Terri, you and I, we've known each other for many, many years now, and it's been a long, long journey, a long Predictive Index journey. 

So, Terri and I first met 20 years ago, safe to say, when Terri was a HR director for a major holiday company and, um, you were one of my first clients. So, why did you choose to engage with Predictive Index and, uh, and, uh, tell us a bit about how you used it within your organisation.  

Terri Bailey: We were trying to develop a high-performance culture. 

That was my remit to develop this high-performance culture. And part of that was using sort of psychometric tools to help us understand people better. And somebody who had used this tool before had recommended it. And it was one of those tools that people could pick up and use very easily and understand it very easily. 

So, as soon as we started using it in recruitment, it became a tool that across the business people wanted to engage with. And then over time, we just started using it for just about everything, it became part of our DNA. So, we used it to identify our talent pool. We had a programme called Emerging Leaders. 

So, we used it as part of that process. Um, we used it to enable us to understand we got the right people in the right jobs. Um, we used it for conflict resolution so individuals could understand each other better.  And we used it for sort of team building as well. We’d do sort of these really great PI away days, where we'd go offsite with, with a team and we'd really talk PI, get them to understand their profiles, their personal motivators, what drives them, and also how people interact with each other. 

And what was, was fabulous to see over time was so many aha moments with people. Ah, so that's why that particular person responds in that way, or, you know, and it helped us understand individuals better. So, we could work out how do I work with this person and also help us drive that high-performance culture because we had a real focus on objectives on achieving objectives. 

Um, it was all very much performance driven and having that insight that PI gave us really helped us to make sure we had the right people in the right jobs, doing the right things. So, on the back of that, we had a huge amount of success, you know, even as a people team, we won lots of industry awards as a business. 

Although I can't put everything down to PI, it played an absolutely key part in what we were doing.  

Fiona Brookwell: And as well, I remember you telling me a number of years ago, obviously, HR director for the organisation, so implemented it into all your HR activities. But as a line manager, a line manager in your own right of a significant size team and some of the successes you had with your own team as a line manager. 

Terri Bailey: Absolutely. From my own perspective, it was quite enlightening because my management style was very much collaborative, and I wanted to treat everybody equally. So, I basically managed them all the same way, um, which was not the right thing to do.  

You know, once I understood about, you know, personal drives and how people are motivated, you know, for those individuals that were more independent, that were more driven, that wanted to take control more, if I'm really honest, I was managing them a little bit, thinking I was being helpful to them. Um, but for them, it was probably just ‘leave me alone, let me get on with it’, you know, ‘I've got the confidence to do this’.  

And then for those that maybe, um, were more collaborative or didn't maybe have that high level of confidence to drive things forward and, you know, wanted my help and encouragement and reassurance around things, I probably didn't spend enough time with them. 

So, this really opened up my eyes to how I was managing people. 

So, I started to change in the way I was managing people. Um, and we went on to get a hundred percent engagement in the team, which we'd always had very high levels, but we hadn't hit that point before. But what was really interesting was it had a domino effect. 

So, people below me started managing their individuals in the same way, in terms of understanding what their preferences are and how to get the best out of them. So as a team, we really embraced it.  

We used it. I think, you know, we did become a high performing team. Um, I think a number of times we was sort of noted as the Centre of Excellence as a, as a complete people team, the things that we were doing, um, the impact that we was having. 

And as I said, PI was sort of woven all the way through that and really helped us to achieve sort of, you know, some of those accolades, which was fantastic.  

Fiona Brookwell: We love a success or a story. Thanks for that. Um, and of course you got the bug. So, the PI bug got into your blood and, um, tell us about your, your sort of journey after corporate life, because you decided to take the step out of corporate life. 

And now you're actively working with, with PI and with, um, Michael and I to support our clients. So, tell us about your move into that Terri.  

Terri Bailey: One of the things I've always been passionate about is people developing and the people development and developing people and, moving into the consultancy work, um, I had a real passion for working with leaders. You know, to really focus on good leadership behaviours.  

Um, but also that middle manager level. And I know there's been lots of talk on this and I've certainly been talking about it for years, that actually, that middle manager level, the people that have probably the widest spans of control, um, in terms of who they're managing, they are absolutely key in a business to, um, driving motivation and performance. 

So, these individuals really need to be trained well on how to manage people. So, um, working with PI, understanding PI a lot better, um, I've actually developed a management development programme that's focused on developing people management skills to help those individuals drive high performance in their teams. 

Um, so I've, I've done a lot of work with organisations around this, obviously learned lots of things along the way, um, put this programme together to really help line managers to develop those skills and have more confidence.  

Because quite often people are promoted as we know, because they've done a great job, they're promoted into their role, but without any of the tools and techniques, um, and support that they need to be successful. 

As well as doing that, I've also been working with a lot of execs, um, around their ways of working and how they are as a team, how they work as a team. So yeah, lots of exciting stuff all connected to PI.  

Fiona Brookwell: So, really coming at it from two angles. So, sort of management and leadership training and support that you can give to your own Predictive Index clients. And then maybe work that you're doing freelance with clients who don't currently use Predictive Index, but then as a consequence of the work you're doing with them, then become PI clients.  

Terri Bailey: That's happened quite a lot. Um, and which is fantastic, obviously, because, um, I've got so much insight around PI that I can really help them if they do, you know, if they do adopt it. And there's, and I would always say once people sort of, you know, look at PI, they understand it, they really do want to work with it because I guess they see the value that it brings and the amount of insights. And you'll probably agree with this that, you know, when I'm doing feedback, the word that I hear most often is that’s spooky. 

How do you know that about me? You know, and it's obviously all from the, from the tool, but it's nice to know, cause it's, it's good. It gives us an understanding of those individuals and really, we can give some advice on the types of roles or the types of industries that they would probably thrive in. 

And the ones where, you know, it's not that they can't do things, they just might not be naturally motivated to do it. So, helping individuals look for their own career paths, um, and what's going to motivate them, what's going to drive them. Uh, all of those things, um, I think is hugely valuable in the work that I do with clients, um, whether they're using PI or not, there's still lots of things that we can do to understand how to drive that high performance. 

Michael Jones: So, Terri, how do you weave The Predictive Index into your management training programme that you developed.  

Terri Bailey: Yeah, so for those individuals that are PI clients and have access to all of the tools, I will break it down specifically in terms of the different elements of somebody's profile and what their natural preferences are and how to get the most out of them. 

So, if I give you an example, if somebody has maybe a higher level of kind of determination and self-confidence and they want to take control, the best way to work with that is not do what I did in the beginning and try and micromanage. It’s to give them some freedom. So, if you do have, for example, maybe a department plan or they've got objectives or OKRs, you know, give them the freedom to get on and do it. 

If it's, if it's their responsibility, maybe they're a department head, and the way I put kind of some sort of safety nets in place as such is, I would always have an agreement with my direct reports that, you know, it's your plan, you go ahead, implement it. We're catching up every week, you know, all the time that we've got that RAG report, everything's on green, that's fine. 

I'm not going to get involved. I'll leave you to it. Nothing goes to amber or red on the RAG report before we have a conversation. So, at least I'm aware of, you know, if I do need to feedback sort of, you know, higher up to the exec team, I'm aware of what's going on.  

But in terms of how they do it, the way they do it, it's all up to them. It’s giving them that freedom to get on and do it in a way that they want to and that that's, obviously, you need trust to do that. So, you've got to learn to trust people that, you know, they're gonna do a good job.  

And then for those individuals that maybe don't have that level of self-confidence, and I usually find it more in the technical experts, you know, maybe they're a head of department, but it's more of a technical expert role. 

Um, I would just make sure that I'm available to talk things through because nine times out of 10, they've got the answer. They know what they want to do. It's just that self-confidence to take it forward and do it. So, with those individuals, I'll make sure I'm using more of a coaching approach with them to increase their self-confidence. 

In terms of weaving PI all the way through, it is based on each individual and sort of personal motivators and I break it down.  

Michael Jones: How would you do that if a client commissioned you to come in and deliver some management training and they are a PI client, so you don't know the organisation. 

How would you structure, how do you structure the course that you run to somebody who may be a PI client. 

Terri Bailey: Yeah. So, um, first of all, I want to know what the challenges are, because obviously the work that I've done around managing people, I've done it in lots of different modules.  

So, it could be a little bit of a pick and mix for them. So, I'd really focus on what are the challenges? You know, what are the real kind of issues that you've got that you need to fix? 

Because I don't want to use modules or, or, um, toolkits on, on things that is not relevant for them. Um, so obviously that would be the first conversation.  

And then also try and find out if they do use PI, how are they using it? Because they might not be using it to its full capability. And then I will be able to weave all the way through.  

Kind of like these are the tools that would help maybe during onboarding, or these are the tools that would help you manage performance, et cetera, et cetera. So, I've really kind of had that exploratory conversation first to find out what the issues are and how they're using PI at the moment.  

If they're not using it to the full capacity, I'll weave some of that into the programme as well. 

Michael Jones: So, Terri, if, if, uh, if, if I'm a manager and I want to, if I'm a leader and I decide to commission you to come in and do some management training for my people, what could I expect?  

Terri Bailey: Um, based on, uh, maybe the challenges that you have with people, obviously we would, we would go through, we would discuss that, but the content of the people management is, um, course is very much around getting individuals to understand themselves better. 

So, you know, what are their drives? What are their kind of personal motivators? Also to understand their teammates as well, you know, how do they work best with different individuals? You know, that they kind of have a different way of doing things or are motivated in a different way. So, talking about understanding the rest of the team is going to be really important. 

And then also as the team, what type of team are they, uh, what are they focused on? How can they help each other? How can they use, what we call their superpowers, um, as a team to really drive performance. Um, and then we cover off things like, um, you know, how do you motivate people? Um, how do you develop people based on their preferences? 

You know, those difficult conversations, and I actually take out the word difficult because I want people to see it, it's just a conversation, and have that confidence in yourself that you're just having a conversation with someone, but you might be dealing with some tricky topics.  

So, it's about, you know, if you're a line manager, how do you inspire others? How do you, um, make sure that you pick up on performance very quickly and deal with it?  

And again, we look at the kind of individual preferences of the best way to deal with those poor performers and turn them around. Um, so we go into a lot of detail around how to manage people and some of the challenges that you're going to have managing people. 

And then, um, basically like a toolkit, and different ways that you can, you know, you can tackle some of those challenges and certainly looking at all the PI tools that will help you do that, if you're using PI. 

Michael Jones: You talked about some of the challenges that managers have in terms of becoming managers, because, you know, sometimes we appoint people to the position and magically assume they'll know what they need to do. 

Um, so where do you do see the distinction between management training and leadership training or do you not?  

Terri Bailey: Um, no, I do. I think, you know, one of the, um, activities we do in the programme is the difference between leadership and management.  

Um, leaders need to be future-focused, so their focus should very much be strategically looking to the future, where the business is going, what are the future plans? 

Uh, so the leaders will really have that external view of what's going on or where they want to take the company, whereas managers will be focused on implementing the strategy day to day. And making sure they bring their teams along to hit all of those targets, uh, whatever they might be, KPIs or OKRs. Um, so we talk about the difference. 

And quite often, you know, there's an overlap, you know, of a number of different activities that a manager and a leader might do.  

Michael Jones: We've talked about this before, but recently, The Predictive Index published a document that suggested one of the big challenges organisations have, uh, is in looking after the middle management population. 

The document suggests perhaps that organisations are putting big emphasis on recruitment and retaining people and onboarding them properly and huge emphasis to on leadership development. The suggestion is, is that perhaps not the same level of investment goes to that very influential middle management population. 

So my question is, do you find that's the case in your practice? Do you see that emphasis is perhaps not where it needs to be?  

Terri Bailey: Yes, absolutely in a nutshell. Um, and I think this is something that certainly, you know, when I was in corporate life, this is something that, um, as a team, we really focused on.  

So, we made sure that our middle managers… You know, we had a programme, um, that was focused on people management skills at the time, that was focused on giving managers the tools that they needed to help them.  

Um, but a lot of the clients that I work with they don't have that emphasis. So, I do work with them quite a bit around ‘look actually, these are the really really important people. You know, as we said, they’re team leaders, they're looking after people, they could say one sentence and demotivate a whole team, you know, or motivate them, you know, and that's the key. 

They have the biggest impact day-to-day because staff don't see the leaders every single day, but they see their managers every day. So, we've got to give them the tools to make sure that they continually motivate, engage, deal with poor performance issues, you know, pick up on when things aren't going right. 

It's a big job for a line manager in that middle management level, but they are absolutely key. They really are. So, um, yes, I see it a lot in organisations, and it's conversations that I've been having for years and will continue to have, um, and talk about that level that are so important to an organization achieving what it needs to achieve. 

You know, people, people are complex, we know that, you know, there's, there's, um, there's lots of challenges, you know, you're trying to balance your working life with your home life. You're trying, you know, there are so many things going on for, for people and that manager really has to kind of be all over that and make sure that they're, you know, looking after their teams and Um dealing with sort of issues day-to-day. 

And for some people it is very stressful to do that. And that's why I do think organisations have a responsibility to look after this level and make sure that they've got the tools and the techniques to really be able to cope with the challenges of modern day sort of, you know, people management. 

Fiona Brookwell: Terri, thanks for sharing all those experiences. I'd just like to take you back to your last big corporate role and just ask you, can you share with us a real success story that's very personal to you from your last big corporate role where you used PI to identify some untapped potential, for example.  

Terri Bailey: So yes, let me share one particular example with you. 

Within the people team, we had a number of apprentices over quite a few year period, and we introduced reverse mentoring. So, I was very lucky for a couple of the apprentices, they were doing reverse mentoring with me, which I found absolutely brilliant.  

But one particular individual, we've done their PI, we realised that this person was very driven. They had a really good level of self-confidence. They were very determined, and they really impressed me. Considering they were only 16 years old at the time, they were very, very impressive. Um, and part of this reverse mentoring, um, they asked if they could be in charge of something or take control of something, um, which based on their PI was no surprise. 

And at the time, bearing in mind, it was quite a few years ago at the time, we'd just published our wellbeing strategy, which was, was sort of, you know, was all the talk at the time around wellbeing. And this particular individual asked if they could produce the wellbeing newsletter that we were doing. And it was, you know, it was kind of, oh, okay, that's, it's quite a big piece of work to do, but they were really keen to do it. 

They had lots of ideas, started sharing the ideas straight away. So, I said, ‘look, this sounds like a great opportunity. Uh, absolutely.’ You know, ‘you go ahead, you do the newsletter, just run it past the head of HR, just to make sure everything's okay before it goes out.’  

And they just put so much effort into it. And it was fabulous. Absolutely brilliant. We had fantastic feedback. And for me, you know, for that individual being so young, I thought this person really is kind of, you know, going to go far and they have, you know. I've, I've kept in touch and watched their career. And they've had this amazing career that, you know, and they're continuing. And, uh, for me, that was a real success.  

One other one I mentioned earlier on about the emerging leaders programme and that was identifying our talent pool. Individuals that could go on and be future leaders. I think it was something like 95 percent of them over the following years were then promoted into quite senior roles. 

So, giving them all of that development around becoming a leader for the future, it really set them up. You know, a lot of them stayed with the company. A few of them had moved on, but they had good careers with the company at quite a senior level. So, um, couple of examples there, where using the PI tools really helped us to get some good success stories. 

Fiona Brookwell: Super. Thanks so much for sharing that with us, Terri. Thank you.  

Michael Jones: Should point out here, Terri, that, um, your enthusiasm for PI is very welcome and lovely to hear, but your consultancy doesn't just work with PI. So, you are very happy to work with any organisation that sees a need for management development and you're happy to provide that and you'd prefer to be working with PI but it's not necessary. 

Terri Bailey: Absolutely, I have all different clients. 

Neale James: Realising Potential with Fiona Brookwell and Michael Jones.  For more information about our services and organisation visit www.rpx2.com