The countdown to the Pf Awards 2012 has officially begun. The most exciting awards ceremony for UK medical sales professionals has now launched and is open for entries for what promises to be yet another competitive and compelling occasion.

The Pf Awards are unique. Not only are they supported by the ABPI, but all candidates entered into the process are nominated by their company and not the customer. This ensures that only the industry’s top performers get to take part – guaranteeing competition of the highest possible standard.

The awards are now in their 12th year and continue to recognise high achievers within the industry. They have evolved and been developed over this period using feedback from the industry, judges and an independent advisory board.

As always, our purpose and vision is to deliver a cross-industry awards programme which rewards excellence in pharmaceutical sales in a variety of categories. With this in mind, three new categories have been added to the selection of accolades to be presented in 2012; Sales Team, Joint Working and Customer Recognition Awards.

In the coming months we will be taking a look at each of the categories and outlining key criteria for potential candidates. We begin by examining the Joint Working, Medical Representative and Account Team Awards.

Joint Working Award

The new Joint Working Award has been introduced to recognise where a working relationship with a customer has made a meaningful difference to patients, or patients’ services. There is no set length of service required to be nominated for this category, although compliance with the ABPI Code should be demonstrated. To be considered, there must be positive feedback or endorsement from a customer and both parties must have a vested interest in the joint working initiative. Candidates can be in either a field-based or office-based role. During the assessment, candidates are required to give a short presentation outlining their joint working venture.

Medical Representative Award

The New Medical Representative Award, which has been a longstanding category at the Pf Awards, has been renamed as the Medical Representative Award. Candidates should have up to five years experience in a primary care role within the industry at the point of entry. An ABPI examination pass is also required. Candidates will be asked to participate in a company product sales call, complete a written case study and also present a pre-prepared presentation.

The Pf Awards 2011 winner of the New Medical Representative Award was Claire Carr (pictured) of Astellas. The award was Claire’s first as a medical sales professional and although she found the process to be demanding, it was also something she relished and embraced. “The experience was a challenging one from the initial nomination all the way through to the application process and then assessment day and presentation,” she said. “It was a tough, but very enjoyable day.”

Account Team Award

Key Account Management is currently playing an important role in the sales and marketing strategies of most UK pharmaceutical companies. Consequently, the Account Team Award is arguably one of the most relevant categories. Candidates need to demonstrate working to a clearly defined account plan. Teams also need to have a clearly defined account management structure in place and must work across multiple disciplines within the account. They also need to implement a degree of autonomy to select practice accounts and stakeholders.

The Assessment Day will be held on Wednesday 14th March 2012 at the King Power Stadium, Leicester – formerly known as the Walkers Stadium. The Pf Awards Dinner takes place on Thursday 22nd March 2012 at the Lancaster London Hotel.

How can I enter?

If you or a colleague would like to know more about the Pf Awards, the categories, criteria, and how to enter, please visit www.pfawards.co.uk.

Keeping hold of key members of staff has always been an issue for successful organisations. To avoid head-hunters, Anton Franckeiss explains valuable measures to increase employee retention and satisfaction.

Although the pharmaceutical industry is one that consumers tend to depend on to provide instant cures or magical remedies to our all too human frailties, it actually operates to a longer timeframe. Any new treatment for our remedies may take only seconds to swallow, but will have been in development for many years, and possibly even decades. But despite its foundation in long-term projects, the industry also experiences higher than average staff turnover rates – a circumstance that the industry shares with IT and financial services. While the requirement for specialist knowledge and professional skills is a common factor across all three of these sectors that should not be ignored, human resource (HR) professionals within the industry should resist the temptation to believe that there is a single cure that can be prescribed and administered.

Although the analogy may be a simplistic one, especially in the industry context, adopting a holistic view that sees retention rates as one of the vital signs of the ‘patient’ (ie the workforce of each pharmaceutical company) may be helpful. Recent surveys, both by Pharmaceutical Field and by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, have shown a slowing of staff turnover rates in the industry. Yet the reasons may be at least partly a reflection of the broader labour market and economy.

In an era of slow economic growth after a sharp recession, employees are seeing redundancies elsewhere – or even closer to home – and may have drawn the conclusion that the metaphorical frying pan might be a happier place to be for the medium-term than the unknown quantity of the metaphorical fire. There is, however, no room for complacency here. If the factors at play are limiting turnover rather than actively encouraging retention, the ‘condition’ could flare up again at short notice depending on movements in the broader economy: a chronic condition, after all, requires monitoring and management to ensure that any chances of it becoming acute are minimised.

Road to recovery

The analogy of a chronic condition, however, should be challenged. A continuing situation of poor retention does not imply that this either must simply be lived with or will inevitably get worse. There is no reason that the prognosis should be gloomy, although a combination therapy approach will be required and the regime will need to be maintained for some time before improvements in the underlying condition are secured. The key to success lies in the depth of understanding that the doctor – in this case the HR functions of companies in the industries – can acquire about their patient.

Without research, dialogue and communication, companies can too easily assume that they understand the retention factor priorities of their workforce, while the employees actually see the outlook rather differently. A 2006 survey by Talent Drain, for example, showed that employees rank ‘cooperation’ as the second most important factor, while employers listed this in ninth place.

Employers also typically overstate the impact of pay and financial rewards, while underestimating the importance to employees of opportunities for personal growth. What appears as a mission critical role contribution through one end of the telescope looks more like one component of an on-going personal biography from the other. In an industry that embraces great diversity of roles – from sales to scientific specialists – there is likely to be a similar diversity of outlook – the intelligent response is to seek understanding rather than to assume that a single remedy can be applied in all cases. Feedback to HR from line management in different operational areas could be helpful here, so keep lines of dialogue open.

The right prescription

Employee motivation and engagement requires similar treatment; although recent surveys say suggest turnover is reduced, they also suggest what an earlier Pharmaceutical Field article, called The Fear Factor, highlighted. Pro-actively seeking to increase engagement will enhance the chances of turning a cure into a preventative approach. The highly engaged will be less easily tempted away when external economic factors change. Again, an appreciation of potential complexity will be helpful. Scientific staff may be balancing a need to supervise and manage others and commercial encouragement from the organisation to develop their leadership skills with their personal commitment to their professional discipline. Acknowledging such a potential conflict of factors will be a far more productive way of identifying motivational approaches than failing to address it.

There are also industry-specific challenges to address, one of which was highlighted in an interview between the BBC’s Evan Davis and GSK Chief Executive Andrew Witty in the former’s recent book, Made in Britain: “One of the things we say to our scientists is that you have to be comfortable with failure. [There are] great scientists in this company who will never succeed in their entire career … Of 10,000 new molecules that we might synthesise, so that we might create 10,000 possible new drugs, probably one will be a drug.”

Strategies that promote innovation – the use of multi-disciplinary project teams where each can make their own distinct contribution and gain inspiration from other – can help here in other ways. But also allow staff with specialist skills to receive peer, as well as line management, feedback on the value of their contribution. It was a point by Alistair Flaister in a People Management article, Organisational learning: The social network, when he made the important point that: “The real engine of creativity and organisational success is to be found in internal networks of friendship and collaboration.”

Line managers have other contributions to make, not least in listening acutely and in building a supportive and encouraging team culture. It’s a point underlined in the 2010 Work Foundation report, Exceeding Expectations: the principles of outstanding leadership, which identified two elements common to the approaches of outstanding leaders in creating a working environment:

The first is the need to develop an open and supportive atmosphere to create the conditions for trust and respect, and the second is to ensure the workplace enabled success and satisfaction.

Part of the latter element may require support from HR in terms of fresh thinking. Depending on the severity of the case, HR might also ponder the benefits of making a referral to a specialist consultant. Helping specialist staff to make the transition to a leadership role is not simply a progression or promotion through a series of levels of leadership. It requires them to make a fundamental transition from development of a professional discipline to that of a broader organisational and commercial role. It also requires the transfer and application of new behaviours that challenge and enhance their performance and contribution. Two other factors that The Work Foundation found as common to outstanding leaders is a willingness to be flexible in their approach to process, and a willingness to adapt roles to give individuals the maximum opportunity to achieve personal growth and job satisfaction. An organisational willingness to be similarly flexible in role definition and organisational design can support good leaders within the company to deploy this approach successfully.

Never say no

Think of a talented individual that the company should seek to retain, and then imagine how they might feel if they heard the words “I’d love to be more flexible, but I’ve spoken to HR and they said …” It’s also helpful to remain mindful that disengagement is unlikely to be a proactive personal choice – employees are more likely to become disengaged as a reaction.

Ultimately, employee retention is not so much a condition as a symptom. An indicator that employee engagement is low, that opportunities to satisfy personal motivations are too limited, that opportunities for progression are overly limited or unclear, or that employees are not receiving positive feedback on their performance and/or contribution when praise is due. The answer is not to treat the isolated symptom, but to investigate the underlying condition and develop a comprehensive talent management strategy that will systematically improve organisational health. Even in an industry where specialist skills are a key requirement in many roles, an employee value proposition and a recruitment strategy that identifies employees with a strong cultural fit are still important requirements. Any industry dependent on innovation and intellectual property should appreciate that human resources are its critical input. And most employees – who will, after all, have chosen to make an application to join the organisation and done so in good faith – are ultimately looking for something relatively straightforward: regular reminders of several good reasons to stay. That, of course, is easy to say, but there’s something positive to be said for making it easy to do.

Anton Franckeiss is the Managing Director of ASK Europe.

For decades analysts have been trying to find the perfect formula for workplace satisfaction. Dr R K Powar explains how organisational behaviour can bring together essential cogs in the workplace to improve levels of productivity.

All businesses from the smallest enterprise to the largest of corporations consist of people designed to fulfil human objectives, and organisational behaviour seeks to understand how best to do this. Therefore, organisational behaviour can be described as the study of how individuals, groups and structure affect and are affected by behaviour within organisations, for the purpose of applying such knowledge towards improving an organisation’s effectiveness.

Management as a discipline, along with other disciplines, has been around for centuries. However, serious interest in the study of management did not emerge until the turn of the twentieth century, making organisational behaviour a relatively new subject. Also, the initial players interested in studying organisations were economists, who generally looked at management practices as efficient and effective, focusing on economic policies and industrial structures, rather than the internal structure of organisations.

A brief history

The Scientific Management Approach: this was developed by F W Taylor, who worked on the assumption that human beings are largely motivated by money. Taylor advised that managers pay monetary incentives to efficient workers, making employees work harder and faster, reducing them to machines. As this approach did not take account of the human facet of labour, it was heavily criticised and today is considered inadequate.

The Bureaucratic Approach: while the scientific approach worked on the interaction between workers and the task, this theory focused on devising the best organisational structure for workers and managers. Max Weber, the theory’s most prominent advocate, proposed a ‘bureaucratic form’ of structure which he thought would work for all organisations.

The Hawthorne Studies: The above two approaches were heavily criticised as they failed to take into consideration that the human aspect was important in the workplace. Whilst the Hawthorne Studies have had their share of criticism, they had a dramatic input in the field of organisational behaviour, highlighting that workers are influenced by social factors and the behaviour of the individual is influenced by the group.

Over the years, the study and practice of behaviour in the workplace has developed from initial human resource theory to the system approach and on to organisational behaviour, which has grown through creating alliances with disciplines such as leadership and anthropology. Today organisational behaviour is highly influential in the business world with practitioners like Peter Drucker and Peter Senge, who turned academic research into business principles – please refer to the article on the concept of the Learning Organisation in the April 2010 edition of Pharmaceutical Field.

The importance to pharma

Organisational behaviour is important to help us learn about ourselves and how to deal with others. It needs to be noted that people are complex and, whilst they have a need to acquire, individuals are multi-faceted and work for several reasons, such as the need to grow and develop and bond with others.

The pharmaceutical industry, like all industries, is in a constant state of flux faced with business competiveness and the need for increased networking and globalisation – where there is a greater need for individuals to work with people from diverse backgrounds and cultural values. Consequently, the pharmaceutical industry needs to be increasingly concerned with organisational behaviour, as it needs all employees to perform well to sustain success and in a nutshell become more productive.

At a practical level, these are some of the advantages offered by organisational behaviour:

Having more self-insight and perceptual skills to bring about the desired outcomes: The various facets of organisational behaviour can be used by all of us to understand our own feelings and behaviours. Starting from the premise of understanding ourselves is important in helping us understand others. The concepts of organisational behaviour can be used to bring about the desired outcome behaviour in others by sometimes modifying our feelings and behaviours towards others.

The ability to do this would be beneficial in all walks of life, and especially in the pharmaceutical industry. For example:

• Manager to employee: Having a greater awareness/understanding and appreciation will help bosses modify their management style to lead their staff appropriately to attain goals and hence become more productive.
• Motivate self and others: Organisations that perform well have a culture that promotes ongoing growth, learning and development. At the core of organisational behaviour paradigms rests the notion of how to bring out the best in others, so developing a good understanding of the principles of organisational behaviour and putting them into practice can help with motivation.
• Managers and employees’ interaction with external customers and stakeholders: Having a good understanding of organisational behaviour can help managers develop a better understanding of processes. This in turn can help managers interact with the various individuals outside the organisation, such as suppliers, competitors and customers. Managers can gain a better understanding of the environment in which they are working by using organisational behaviour to help them appreciate how and why things happen, giving them the advantage of being ahead in today’s competitive environment.

The ability to analyse situations correctly: A good understanding of the concepts of organisational behaviour can help staff and managers analyse situations correctly. All too often misunderstandings arise when situations haven’t been correctly understood. This can prove useful in the following ways:

• Avoid/manage conflict: A small amount of conflict can prove useful sometimes. However, where possible, if it’s likely to be destructive it needs to be avoided in the first instance, or be managed appropriately. With the sheer size of most pharmaceutical companies, the number of employees and the numerous relationships with the various stakeholders the probability of conflict arising can be quite high. Therefore, being able to curb this is of significant importance for the human relations and media departments.
• Better observational skills: This can be extremely useful for sales teams that need to be able to pick up on the buying signals, deal with obstructions and work with the complex set of interrelationships and dynamics that exist within the NHS.
• Recruitment and retention of skilled staff: A great deal of time and expenditure is involved in recruiting the right staff and the majority of the techniques and methods to do this employ organisational behaviour concepts in the form of questionnaires, psychological profiling and role-playing exercises at interviews. People work for several reasons and a better grasp of organisational behaviour concepts could be applied to retain staff, instead of developing them and then allowing them to leave and take the skills and knowledge they have gained elsewhere.

Limitations of organisational behaviour

• Having an understanding of organisational behaviour can help in situations of conflict but not eradicate them completely.
• Organisational behaviour is resistant to change due to human cognitive processes and defensive routines which can lead to ‘behavioural biases’, where the focus is on satisfying employees but overlooking the objectives of an organisation.
• The law of diminishing returns also applies to organisational behaviour: as this needs to be practised to an optimum point, when that point is exceeded there is a decline in returns. This highlights that organisational effectiveness is achieved when all variables work together.
• In some cases the knowledge and techniques of organisational behaviour could be used in a manipulative manner.

The future of organisational behaviour

Organisational behaviour has evolved over the years: initially from the need to create productive organisations, followed by a philosophical desire by many people to create more humanistic workplaces. Although organisational behaviour has certain limitations, hopefully by building a better working climate for people there are many advantages which should have longterm effects, not only in the quality of an individual’s life, but in improved harmony among people and among organisations.

The future success of organisational behaviour revolves around the related processes of theory development, research and managerial practice in areas such as communication between and among foreign business operations, cultural differences and motivation techniques in different countries, career development in the global economy, and the differences in leadership and decisionmaking practices in various countries.

The challenge faced by the pharmaceutical industry is to employ organisational behaviour to bring the various stakeholders and actors involved with different values together to create processes by which it can be efficient and effective in exceeding goals and objectives.

Dr R K Powar is the founder of R11OSY CONSULTANTS.

Finding the best employer is like playing the dating game. No-one wants to be married to their job, but tying the knot with an employer is an important commitment. The strongest relationships can last a lifetime, while playing the field may not look quite so good on your CV. So what is it that attracts us to our employers? Do we marry for money, or is long-term fulfillment enough? And is a good sense of humour essential? Pf’s Emma Campbell-Kelly outlines some of the key criteria in identifying ‘The One’.

The summer months, particularly the holiday season, are often the time when most of us pause and reflect on where we are in life. That two-week break in the Maldives, or even just the back garden, can invariably provide the catalyst for some killer questions: Am I in the right job? Does my employer appreciate me? Do I appreciate my employer? Is it time for me to move on? For many, this period of reflection provides little more than confirmation that they are happy where they are. In the current climate, where job security is king and fear of moving jobs has bred a ‘better the devil you know’ approach, many workers are staying put rather than risking change. But for some, a ‘grass is always greener’ philosophy drives them towards the pursuit of new employment. But what do you look for in a new employer? What defines the perfect job and, indeed, an employer of choice? Where do you begin in the pursuit of professional happiness?

Searching for a new job can be a daunting endeavour. Whether it’s your decision to enter the vacancy abyss or not, the task can be arduous and time-consuming. Slim pickings are expected in such a precarious economic climate, but there’s still a world of decisions to make: location, role, salary and even whether you are looking in the right industry are all key considerations.

The experience is similar to becoming newly single, in the market for a new partner. Job sites and recruitment companies could be metaphors for dating agencies in this case, or a friend who’s trying to set you up, or a speed dating session.

And you must select employers from this pool of availability in a similar way to how you would approach someone to ask them out. Like a relationship, a job is an investment, and will define you for the period you choose to stay committed to it. You want the whole package: ‘The One’. It will stay on your record, your personal history, or rather your CV. No pressure then.

What do you look for? Materialistic features (financial details) are number one priority for most. Your interest in a job or person is sparked by judging at face value. It’s not necessarily shallow, because what else can you base your judgement on in the first instance? Being objective with your search is key to obtaining a job that will tick all the boxes for you.

So once you’ve landed your first ‘date’ with the desired employer, aka job interview, first impressions are too important to disregard. You dress to impress, revise your CV, and prepare answers to every question under the sun. Both parties want to impress, without coming across as too keen. But at the end of the day, you want this job, you wouldn’t have applied otherwise. And the employer wants the best they can get (which is you, obviously). After all, as Ray Kroc, founder of McDonald’s, said: “You’re only as good as the people you hire.” So it’s potentially a win-win situation, as long as you both get what you want.

Job satisfaction has always come top of surveys questioning motivation at work. Until now. It seems that such an insecure and volatile economy is making us tighten our belts (as if they weren’t tight enough already). Living costs are continuing to rise, a unanimous, desperate ‘Yes please’ is given in response to money. The prospect of a double-dip recession has hit us while we’re down, just as we were getting our hopes up.

With this in mind, it’s no surprise when perusing the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s (CIPD) recent quarterly Employee Outlook survey. The review showed that increased salary and benefit packages have overtaken job satisfaction as the number one reason why employees are looking to change jobs.

Out of 2,000 questioned employees, 54% rated higher salary and benefits as their top reason for wanting to change jobs, while 42% said that job satisfaction drove their career move choices. This is a sharp reversal compared to last year’s 61% voting job satisfaction over 48% monetary reasons to look for alternative employment. A shocking revelation from the survey showed that almost a fifth (18%) of employees completely run out of money before they’re paid, either always or most of the time. So the financial pressure is on, it seems.

But are finances what get us out of bed in the morning? We recall how the carrot beat the stick regarding the donkey’s motivation. But what does the carrot mean to you?

Is it salary, benefits, a fancy company car? For some people, especially those who are struggling financially at the moment, the answer would be a giant nod of the head. But what about the 42% who voted job satisfaction as their motivation to work hard?

For this group, an employer’s treatment of its workers and management skills really makes a difference. It’s the little things that contribute to their career happiness. A friend you can confide in, belief in your product, respect for your manager; the buzz of adrenaline when you know you’ve done a good job.

Company culture has always been a vital aspect of work life. Your co-workers are with you for a significant portion of the day, so team dynamics are important. Henry Ford of Ford Motor Company had the right thinking: “Our employees are like extended members of our family.” The company should run like a well-oiled machine at all levels, complementing and developing each other’s roles and responsibilities. Confidence and trust glue the team together and make everyday errands pass by effortlessly.

There’s no doubt about it, your happiness at a company is largely directed by what you do for at least 40 hours a week. And let’s face it – your working life is a long one, so it’s best to do something you enjoy. It’s been proven time after time that you’re more likely to work harder if you’re passionate about your job. Happy people are more energetic, proactive, creative and optimistic, and quicker to learn. In which case it’s in your employer’s interest to make you happy.

This is largely down to how you’re managed. Management and guidance at work largely affect your work ethic and the company’s dynamics. “Management is nothing more than motivating other people,” stated Lee Iacocca, Chairman for Chrysler Motors. Management is a crucial role to play, because your workforce implicitly relies on your motivation to work. Donald Trump once said, “Good people = good management and good management = good people.”

Money can only promise a limited amount of will-power from an individual; pride in their work will give them the edge and a hunger for success. Belief in your product, trust, loyalty and commitment to the employer are also invaluable attributes for an employee to embody, and are recognised by good employers. As Mary Kay Ash, Head of Mary Kay cosmetics, stated: “People are definitely a company’s greatest asset. A company is only as good as the people it keeps.”

So perhaps, most of all, we just need to feel loved. Being treated well, as in a committed relationship, ensures that we’re in it for the long haul.

In July, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) published a report on what makes Brits happy. Not money, as it turns out. Health, family and friends topped the list when around 34,000 people were asked “What is wellbeing?” and “What in life matters to you?”

The survey was commissioned by David Cameron to help him develop future policies, but ironically critics have since complained that the £2 million to conduct the survey was a waste of money as the results are quite obvious. We’re never happy, are we?

But at the end of the day, as much as money is a necessity to live, happiness in yourself and at work increases quality of life, and helps boost your company at the same time. A happy workforce is a productive workforce after all.

From an employer, you want to be pushed to your full potential, appreciated for your effort, made responsible for important decisions, making you believe in your product and employer.

Working life is most enjoyable if you’re lucky enough to be in the position of not worrying about money. To have an enthralling occupation puts a spring in your step.

And as much as looking for a new job can be tiresome and sometimes feels like a dead end, just remember, it’s all in aid of finding ‘The One’, your soulmate that offers the whole package: an invigorating role with great prospects. And if the money’s good at the same time, all the better. So make it a good one with good people.

The difference between success and failure is often determined by mental strength. Apodi’s Tony Swift recalls his own experiences in sport and business to discuss how a confident and positive attitude is the first step towards high performance.

Whilst talent can be a good indicator of future performance, ask any experienced manager of a high performing team and they will tell you that talent in itself is not the only requirement for achieving success.

The world is awash with talented people who never achieve their full potential. In all walks of life there are numerous examples of wasted talent and people who fail to ‘make it’. I believe that the major reasons for talented people failing to make the grade fall into two categories:

1) A lack of mental toughness
2) Inadequate preparation.

A scared rabbit

I remember returning from the England rugby team’s tour to South Africa in 1984. The tour had been unsuccessful and few players had done themselves justice. The then lead rugby correspondent of the Sunday Times, Stephen Jones, wrote an obituary of the tour and described that I had played like a scared rabbit in the headlights. I am sorry to say that the analysis pretty much hit the mark and caused me much introspection over the following
months.

The fact was that despite my natural talents, in big games in front of huge crowds and millions watching on television, I failed to perform at a level that my skills justified. Many observers were perplexed about this failure to perform and thought there was no obvious reason for it.

However, over a period of time, it became clear to me as to the cause of the under performance. At that stage I simply was not mentally tough enough to cope with ‘big time’ rugby. There were a number of occasions where I tried to hide on the field of play and
felt it was better to do nothing than get involved and risk making mistakes.

A few years later, Stephen Jones had become one of my biggest advocates and wrote a number of effusive articles about me, particularly in the latter years of my rugby career. Although by this time my natural physical attributes were starting to wane, my performance on the field was improving. This was almost solely due to an improvement in
my mental toughness and a willingness to perform.

What is mental strength?

Mental toughness is having the natural or developed psychological edge that enables people to cope with the many demands that are placed on them to perform and, specifically, to be consistent and remain focused, confident, resilient and in control when
put under pressure.

Mentally tough employees will normally display the following key psychological characteristics:

• Self belief – an unshakeable belief in
  their ability to achieve their goals
• Motivation – an insatiable desire and
  motivation to succeed, despite any
  setbacks that they encounter
• Focus – an ability to remain focused
  despite distractions that may arise
• Composure – embracing pressure,
  stepping up to the plate and an
  ability to remain in control despite
  unexpected events.

My experiences in sport heightened my interest in high performance and the impact of mental toughness within a business setting. The questions that particularly interested me were:

• Are some people more naturally
  mentally tough than others?
• What factors are important in
  developing an environment where
  mental toughness flourishes?
• Can mental toughness be coached?

A born attribute

It appears that mental toughness can occur naturally. Some people seem to have a genetic disposition to toughness. I have studied numerous individuals at the start of their sporting or business careers who appear to have the mental toughness to succeed – even when
they are just at the beginning of their career journey. The reason for this could be due to either inherent natural toughness or the environment in which they grew up in – or even both.

Given that mental toughness may be inherent in some people, it makes sense to ensure that this quality is assessed during any recruitment process. After all, it is clearly preferable to recruit candidates who already display the traits of mental toughness, along with a
talent for the task at hand.

An assessment of mental toughness can be made during the interview stage and through the use of specifically designed questionnaires. However, I have to say that within the pharmaceutical sector I have not yet come across any company which systematically assesses mental toughness at the interview stage, or indeed at any other stage during ongoing staff appraisals.

The right environment

I believe that in my sporting career the biggest single factor that transformed my ability to perform was the change in my playing environment when I joined Bath Rugby Club. The set-up and the atmosphere at Bath had a profound effect on my thinking and my mental
strength, and I believe there were a number of key factors that had a significant role in this:

a) Success
When I joined the club the team was already enjoying some success. Working in this environment built my confidence quickly – after all, success breeds confidence.

b) Colleagues
Many of my teammates at the club were ‘mentally tough’ when I joined. The focus and self belief of players, management and coaching staff gradually rubbed off on me and eventually I started to apply their strategies and to display their traits.

c) Management focus
Right from the beginning it became apparent to me that the club was exclusively focused on becoming the most successful club in the land. Players had absolutely no doubt in their minds that they had to be an important cog in this success in order to survive.

d) Preparation
The team prepared superbly to ensure it was in a position to perform when it had to and significantly better than any of its competitors.

Of course, many organisations that want to succeed are not currently successful. To start on the journey of achievement it is critical that organisations recruit people who are mentally tough, prepare and plan superbly, and are driven by a management team with real focus.

Can it be coached?

To my mind mental strength can be coached. It involves considerable focus on improving personal skills in the following areas: technical, physical and mental outlook. As these skills improve, so does an individual’s confidence grow and higher performance will follow. However, in most commercial organisations, there is a disproportionate concentration on the coaching of technical skills and the other two areas are largely ignored.

Dr Saul Miller, in his excellent book Why Teams Win, surveyed 100 successful corporate leaders to find out what they believed to be the single, non-business factor that could most limit their personal and team success. Their response was ‘ill health’. Organisations are missing a great opportunity to drive performance if they do not seek advice and other assistance in improving the physical and mental health of employees.

The great managers I have worked for, and with, over the years are those who understand that a person’s mental well-being is a critical factor in their performance at work. These
managers focus on the following with their direct reports:

• Establishing the right attitude and state of mind to build confidence
• Programming the mind to think positively and to expect successful outcomes
• Ensure excellent preparation and develop a routine that prepares people for success
• Learning from failures and quickly refocus on the key issues and opportunities.

The first specialist fitness coach I ever worked with was Tom Hudson at Bath. Tom was superb at not only preparing people physically but also mentally. He always had a quiet chat prior to games and by the time he had finished I felt like I was the world’s best and ready to beat all-comers. It is a great pity that these skills appear to be relatively rare
in the commercial world.

Top coaches understand that each individual is different and have their own set of beliefs, habits and motivations. Coaching interventions need to be customised to the individual
and, if such coaching skills are not available within the organisation, then it would be a prudent investment to source such expertise externally.

Actions for pharma

In the increasingly competitive world of the pharmaceutical industry it is vital for organisations to harness and encourage well-being and mental fortitude in their teams. In order to achieve this there are a number of actions that can be undertaken:

1. Ensure that assessing mental toughness is part of the recruitment process.
2. Assess current employees and develop coaching interventions where necessary. Start with those employees where the requirement for mental toughness is most obvious. For example, sales representatives have to cope with rejection every working day of their lives – they have to be able to cope with this, refocus and get on with the job in hand.
3. To create the appropriate environment managers and ‘leaders’ of the team need to display their own mental toughness. If a team is unsuccessful, it will probably be due to an absence of such qualities in the leadership – the only way to kick start the journey to success is by recruiting these types of team leaders.
4. Preparation is enormously important in driving confidence and ultimately performance.
Companies should benchmark their own preparation compared with competitors and drive to be the best in the industry.

The evidence supporting the importance of mental toughness and preparation in performance is all consuming – the top performers in sport recognise this and focus much of their time on addressing these issues.

I believe that almost anybody can be coached to develop greater mental toughness and ultimately to improve performance. Unfortunately in this respect, many commercial organisations are not yet even at the starting post. They neither recognise its importance
nor know how to develop mental toughness in their people. Those companies that do are the ones on the road to success.

Tony Swift is the Managing Director of Apodi.

Simon North looks at motivation in the workplace to achieve high performance and success.

Motivation is one of those concepts which relate more to outcome and output than it does to input.

In other words, it is the consequence of a sequence of situations, contexts and events which allows somebody to feel that their motivation is OK.

Where performance and motivation are similar is that performance also is about output. But both issues do require a sensible and sensitive approach to the way that people work. Giving colleagues a sense of the direction of travel that they and the team overall are taking, plus consistent and regular communications about what needs doing, as well as how they are doing in terms of their feedback, are fundamentals to keeping motivation and performance high.

The sensitivity issue comes into play in terms of listening and tuning in to every individual on a regular basis. This does not have to be formalised and structured as part of the standard appraisal process. This is much more about day to day management and supervision.

In a workplace where the war for talent is making it tough to find good workers and where key skills are likely to be getting scarcer, the need to treat people well increases every day. Avoid over-measuring --whilst it is important to measure outputs and performance, over-measurement can be a real irritant to high-performing individuals and may reduce their level of motivation for what it is that they do.

It is far better to have regular input sessions on being clear about the future and the team’s expected performance, followed up by frequent shorter feedback conversations both one on one and in small groups to check that the individual and the team are going in the right direction.

If it sounds simple that’s because it is. One of the biggest mistakes that we can make is to over complicate what is really a simple, humanistic process based upon personal relationships.

Simon North co-founded Position Ignition for Organisations, to provide innovative solutions to help organisations manage their senior and most valuable workers more effectively.