Training & Development
Speak Up for Supervisory Success!
Pitchcare Trainer and Motivational Speaker Frank Newberry considers one of the key attributes good supervisors need to have - confident speaking. If we cannot get our message across confidently to our people, then performance and morale will almost certainly suffer. In this one-off article, Frank shares experiences and ideas, and challenges us to audit ourselves and our voices
I once asked an audience of sixty or so golf club managers if they felt it was part of their job to get off their backsides and ‘energise’ their workforce. They all raised their hands to indicate that they did this on a regular basis.
Next, I asked if they had to encourage and motivate the turfcare managers and professionals who worked at their clubs - again the response came that the need to energise others extended to turfcare people.
I then asked if anyone ever sought them out (the club managers) to energise them. You have probably guessed the answer - NO ONE performed that function and - as someone said at the time - they had all “better be self motivated”.
To read about self-motivation check part of my 2005 article for Pitchcare titled ‘Top Tips for Motivating People’.
Hundreds of turfcare people
Every year, BIGGA and Pitchcare kindly invite me to train new turfcare supervisors. Many golf clubs and sports clubs have also used my services for this purpose locally - on their premises. This has resulted in me having been blessed to train hundreds of turfcare people, mainly supervisors, but also people who aspire to be supervisors. It is always a joy for me to see that some of the aspirant Head Groundsmen and Head Greenkeepers of twenty years ago are now at the top of their profession.
If I am lucky enough to be selected by BIGGA and Pitchcare to train more supervisors in future, I know the one thing that most aspiring turfcare supervisors will need to do if they are to be successful. They will need to be more ‘vocal’, they will need to ‘speak up’, more particularly when they are performing supervisory functions.
On workshops year after year, I put teams of turfcare people through various tasks, leadership exercises and simulated situations requiring confident communication to colleagues.
Best performers are those who keep talking
Year after year, the best performers are those who keep talking, keep encouraging and keep updating the team on progress - even during a short fifteen minute exercise.
148 I PC AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2014
Year after year, the peer feedback to the brave souls who ‘have a go’ at being leaders on these workshops is the same; “speak up more”; “be more verbal”; “put some energy into your voice”.
Remember, these are not my words, these are the words of their colleagues on the team for the exercise. This peer feedback is powerful stuff and helps build confidence more than anything that I can ever do or say to them.
In the King James Version of the Bible, Paul could not have put it any better when he said; “For if the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who shall prepare himself to the battle?” (See 1st Corinthians 14 verse 8).
It’s time now to audit your abilities
It’s time now to audit your abilities - your vocal abilities. Do not worry, I will not be asking you to sing - just to think about your voice and maybe record it for thirty seconds and play it back so that you can hear how you sound to other people. Perhaps on your smartphone, if you have one, or another recording device.
One word of warning; almost certainly you will not like what you hear. Because the sound of our voices comes to us through our skull, it will sound different when it is recorded.
Also, unless you are in a recording studio, the recording device you use will not catch the highest and lowest notes that other people can hear. The recording will give you an idea of how you sound and you should be able to hear the energy or lack of it in your voice. So, good luck with your recording!
After you have played back your voice, you might like to audit or judge your voice against the following three criteria:
Tone - what does the tone of your voice sound like? Does it reflect confidence, strength, maturity? Or does your tone reflect fear, boredom or immaturity?
Do you need to work on your tone? Can you get feedback from a loved one or close colleague? Why not play the recording to them and explain any concerns you have?
Variety - how much variety or inflection is there in your voice? Is your voice somewhat monotone, i.e. all on one note?
Do you need to get more variety in your voice so that you do not sound boring or bored?
Again, can you get feedback from a loved one or close colleague? Will they give you honest feedback and will you then experiment, perhaps by reading aloud into a recorder with more expression in your voice?
Energy - how much energy is in your voice? Is it high energy or low energy? Do you sound enthusiastic and positive or do sound tired or fed up?
Do you need to work on your voice’s energy? Can you get feedback, and can you train your voice so that it will always energise colleagues and staff when they need energising?
Perhaps there is a course you can attend
Many of the workshops that I and others run include feedback on how people sound to others and how people can improve the way they sound.
Perhaps there is a course you can attend or a person who needs this training that you can send?
Relevant Pitchcare workshops in the pipeline this winter are:
- Dealing with Difficult People and Situations - Supervisory Essentials - Taking Charge
- Supervisory Essentials - Getting Better Results
- Supervisory Essentials - Enhanced Communication Skills
- Supervisory Essentials - Problem Solving & Decision Making
So, good luck with your recording, playback and vocal training. May you always have a voice that people at work will respond to positively!
If you need help right now to decide which training and development activity is best for you, your colleagues or your team a good place to start could be to contact Chris Johnson, Pitchcare’s Training Coordinator at
chris@pitchcare.com. She can tell you which training programmes will help you.
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