BusinessEastMonthly - Bright Field Consulting

BusinessEastMonthly - Bright Field Consulting

14
BusinessEast Monthly
East Anglian Daily Times Tuesday, March 15, 2016
www.eadt.co.uk
The personality guru
Ian Wigston is a business coach who has worked extensively in the corporate and
education sectors. Ross Bentley met him to find out how personality profiling can
help people have meaningful and effective discussions about a whole host of
workplace and personal issues.
I
meet Ian Wigston of Bright Field
Consulting at his Sudbury offices
after having completed an online
psychometric questionnaire
several days earlier. The test
required me to grade different sets of
adjectives in terms of how well I felt
they described me.
He presents me with a slim
document that gives me a summary
of my personality profile based on
my answers. I’m blown away. The
description is frighteningly accurate
– a mostly positive picture that also
contains insights into how my
approach may cause problems when
interacting with others and how I
can best work with people who
portray opposite traits.
I’m also given pointers as to my
potential strengths and weaknesses
and tips on effective communication.
Carl Jung
Ian tells me that after one client was
presented with her profile, she said:
“You’ve taken my soul and put it into
a report.” I know how she feels.
The profile, which is helpfully
colour-coded so I can see my
personality make-up, was generated
by powerful software built around
the model of personality first
identified by Swiss psychologist Carl
Jung and is based on tests measuring
extroversion, introversion, thinking
and feeling. In total, there are 72
personality types - or the record, I
come out as a Helpful Inspirer.
Maybe it’s because the profile was
so accurate, that I put it to Ian that I
felt slightly uncomfortable being
Some people find this
confrontation with
themselves quite
challenging, most
find it liberating
pigeon-holed in such a way.
He explained: “We are labelling
you for a purpose - to explain this
complex human being in a way that
enables us to model behaviour and to
enable learning.
“Putting someone in a box is done
so we can help them learn and
develop – it’s not consigning them
there forever.
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“We are saying these are some of
the issues that might help you
become a stronger and better person
by recognising why someone in a
different box might be different from
you - and even have some problems
with you or you might have some
problems with them.”
He added: “Without this
framework that the model gives us it
could potentially be a messy
conversation. Some people find this
confrontation with themselves quite
challenging, most find it liberating
because the language we use is
positive.”
Problem-solving
Ian and his fellow associates at
Bright Field use tests like these as a
though-provoking starting point for
conversations with clients in the
corporate world, such as Boeing and
Barclays, and, increasingly, the
educational sector where the
company has developed a niche.
These conversations might take the
form of one-to-one coaching sessions,
small conflict resolution workshops
or seminars involving many people.
“I inspire other people and find
ways of bringing out their hidden
potential. I motivate others to set
high aspirations for themselves,”
said Ian, who first got involved in
coaching 25 years ago when he was
working for Barclays Bank in
London.
“I went on a course run by BP on
creative problem-solving and
innovation, and it changed my life
because I saw BP doing things that
the bank was a million miles from,”
he continued.
“I was attracted to the techniques
for problem-solving and I set myself
the challenge of learning about that
stuff. I did seven years of private
study before I had the courage to ask
my then boss if I could set up a unit
inside the bank that turned out to be
the first of its kind in Europe.
“That was in the early 1990s and
the unit, which was called Resource
Development, was like an internal
consultancy that did work with in
the bank but also with third parties
like Shell, Marie Curie and ICI.”
Ian added: “The other thread was
that I worked with and was inspired
by a man called David Whitaker, who
was the coach of the GB Hockey team
that won a gold medal at the 1988
Seoul Olympics. He’d come in help us
when we wanted someone to do some
coaching.”
Conflict resolution
Hands on strategic and financial support for businesses
I ask Ian for examples of the issues
he finds himself facing and he tells
me about some conflict resolution
work he is doing with two
shareholders of an organisation who
both own 50%.
He continued: “They have quite
different ways of operating as
individuals, so I’m helping them to
find where the challenges are. So we
are exploring a model of conflict,
which basically says there a five
different ways of responding to
conflict – that is competing,
collaborating, accommodating,
compromising and avoiding.
“Depending on how they see each
other they will currently be engaging
in one of these behaviours. But with
a colour model we can say; here are
your strengths in managing conflict
and here are your challenges. One of
the people is quite fiery red and is
not afraid of confrontation, and has
no nonsense approach to getting to
the root of the problem.
But that might look like that
person is competing for power or
supremacy rather than collaborating
– because there is an-over
assertiveness and not much
co-operation going on.”
Another recent project saw Ian
presenting to some head teachers
about how groups of students have
been responding in class.
Through the personality tests Ian
found is that this particular cohort
had a lot of sunshine yellow energy,
which meant they were quite upbeat
and ‘lippy’ in class but he also
discovered that they weren’t being
taught in a way that suited their
demeanours.
He said: “The pedagogy in the
BusinessEast Monthly
East Anglian Daily Times Tuesday, March 15, 2016
www.eadt.co.uk
Ian Wigston is
the founder of
Bright Field
Consulting
Picture: su
anderson
15
KPMG
Budget hopes
for SMEs
Head of enterprise for
KPMG in East Anglia, Mark
Prince, looks at what
SMEs will be hoping for
from tomorrow’s Budget
classroom was anything but
sunshine yellow, which meant that
the young people became further
disengaged rather that the teacher
bringing them into a more positive
frame of mind.”
I’ve certainly found my time with
Ian thought-provoking. The
personality profile has got me
thinking about how I interact with
others both in the workplace and
outside it. I put it to Ian that this
new-found self-awareness is powerful
stuff.
He added: “There’s an increasing
recognition that having a different
lens through which to look at
somebody or to look at a team can be
a helpful thing. But you need to be
clear about what you are wanting to
do with it.”
Coaching in the education sector
Bright Field Consulting carry out a lot of
projects in the educational sector and work
with school leaders, governing bodies and
young people. Most of the schools it goes
into are in the state sector with local
schools including Southend High School for
Boys and King Edward Grammar School in
Colchester.
Ian says he was attracted to work in
education because historically the sector
had made little use of personality testing
and coaching
“As a consequence the quality of what was
being provided was quite poor relative to
the corporate sector,” he said.
Also, relative to the corporate sector,
schools have less budget and much less
time. So while a teacher or even a head
may only have three training days a year,
the equivalent in the corporate sector may
be ten , even 15 days a year training.
So we were positive and confident enough
about what we had to say ‘education
deserves better than this’.
“But because you have far less time to
work with, you have to be clear about what
you want achieve and not just have some
woolly notion of ‘let’s have an away day
because it will be good for us.’”
“It’s what happens after the consultant
leaves that is important and we make sure
there is a carry-through.”
What a difference a year makes. When
the Chancellor stood up to deliver his
Budget this time last year, businesses
were feeling more confident about the
economy and BREXIT was not at the
forefront of business leaders’ minds.
Fast forward and the Chancellor finds
himself walking a narrow line having to
balance the continuing need for austerity
against demands from the SME
community for a Budget, which will
incentivise business, promote capital
investment and reduce their tax
compliance burden.
Small and medium sized businesses are
facing a series of challenges, which could
ultimately drive up costs and increase
administrative duties.
Research by KPMG Small Business
Accounting found that over a third of
small businesses owners spend more
than one day every week tackling financial
administration, so the introduction of the
National Living Wage next month, pension
auto-enrolment and a business rates
system which many believe is in need of
reform combined with the prospect of
compulsory quarterly digital tax reporting,
will do little to reduce the time taken to
complete the volumes of administration
that goes hand in hand with running your
own business.
Having recently received ‘Boosting
enterprise in more deprived communities’,
a review by Baroness Mone OBE, which
looks at how the Government can help
start-ups in the most disadvantaged
communities across Great Britain, it
would not be surprising to see the
Chancellor make some announcements
designed to improve access to start-up
loans and strengthen the quality of New
Enterprise Allowance (NEA) support to
achieve stronger and more viable
businesses.
Other key announcements that SMEs
will be looking to the Chancellor to
address will include some relaxation of
the rules around digital reporting, which
should be looked at in parallel with tax
simplification, measures to help more
businesses easily access faster digital
networks, more investment in road
networks and importantly much needed
changes to an outdated business rates
system.
The Chancellor has a perfect
opportunity to use the Budget to reassure
small firms and boost their confidence so
that they invest, create jobs and drive
economic growth.
KPMG
is a professional
firm which
Mark Prince
is Head ofservices
Enterprise
for
recognises
challenges
by businesses
of
KPMG inthe
East
Anglia,faced
helping
privately
all
sizes and
works withachieve
dynamic their
organisations
owned
businesses
across a wide range of industries and markets,
growth ambitions
helping them to reach their full potential.
Contact:
Contact
: Mark
Prince
Steve
Muncey,
Office
Senior Partner,
[email protected]
6
Lower Brook Street, Ipswich, IP4 1AP
Tel: 01473 233 499
Fax: 01473 204 486