Task or Team orientated ? Try asking HYF…..

By Kevin Fish CCM

Our Tribe often tell me that one of the great benefits of attending CMAE courses is the safe environment provided, in which to better understand the type of person and the type of manager that you are today. We build this self awareness culminating in the Lumina Spark and Lumina Leader sessions.

These “personality” portraits should be viewed not as a box in which you are being locked forever, but simply a helpful indication of the traits you display in certain circumstances, and at this stage of your career. Many tribe members ask me what Lumina has done for me and I am happy to share my biggest break through for which I have Lumina to thank.

Early in my career I was aware that I have a strong preference for “task over team”, or put another way, it was more important for me to get results than agonise over the feelings of the team in achieving those results. What I have learned from Lumina is that one without the other does not generate sustainable results, for anyone.

When my Lumina Portrait made me much more aware of this trait, I made a conscious decision to address this imbalance, and have been surprised and rewarded by the results that this gradual change in emphasis has generated. This evolution started when I was encouraged to use a simple but effective phrase, which over time I have shortened to just 3 letters – HYF. Let me explain.

If you ask someone “how they are doing”, they will tell you just that. They will say “fine”, or “ok” or something equally mundane. However, if you change the question slightly and ask them “how are you feeling” (HYF), they will generally tell you something far more meaningful, about how they are actually feeling. Try it at home with a loved one tonight, and you will see what I mean.

Having established the power of this question, I decided to use it as the first item of every monthly team meeting agenda, to ensure that I was always reminded of the importance of balancing an outcome focus with a people focus. Our team meetings would therefore always start like this –

  1. HYF – (How You Feeling ?)
  2. HWS – (How are we Scoring?)
  3. Remainder of monthly team meeting agenda items…

In clubs, the people attending team meetings often do not sit next to each other ever day so this opening agenda item allows everyone to contribute as much as they wish about how they are feeling. Generally speaking the contributions are work related items but not always, and that is a good thing. The extroverts in the room generally contribute something that might be called their story of the month from dealing with your customers, and regardless of that topic, everyone can share the self reflection this generates as a team.


I found that the more introvert members of the team took a little longer to show their hand more freely as their confidence grew in the genuine support available around the room. Whenever it was my turn to contribute to HYF, I took the opportunity to reflect on something that the team has done to make me feel incredibly proud, or alternatively express some element of uncertainty about something in my working, or occasionally home life. By demonstrating a willingness to show vulnerability, this gives others “permission” to do the same, & strong team bonds & ethos emerge.

I would never have dedicated the time to this softer side of the work environment without Lumina revealing my heavy bias towards the outcome, rather than the people who generate the outcome

The second standing item on our team meeting agenda was always HWS. This topic takes a task orientated person like me in to the more familiar territory of How We Scoring ? Every team should be well drilled in why they exist and fully embrace what they will judge their performance against, and this second agenda item kept that at the front of everyones mind. It is perhaps no surprise that the subjects raised in HYF are often a key driver in How We are Scoring, and by openly combining these two equally important subjects so closely together, the team recognized that one is simply not possible without the other. More importantly, this manager benefited from fully embracing that one is simply not possible without the other. Lesson learned – for life, & thank you to Lumina for drawing that of me.

If you have a colleague or a loved one who may benefit from completing the Lumina Spark Portrait, this can now be facilitated remotely through distance support from Kevin for £295.
Further details are available at www.ccl.services ,from [email protected] or on 07398 155908.

The following are quotes from Kevin’s ground breaking team at Scottish Golf.

I’ll be honest when I arrived at my first meeting to be told we start with a “how you feeling” I thought I may have stepped into the wrong room. I was expecting to launch straight into the nitty gritty of club development, especially with Kevin at the helm, but actually HYF allowed us to share feelings and emotions in confidence with a small team of colleagues with whom we shared common ties. Once we were settled and relaxed, we definitely tackled the “big” issues easier.

It allowed us all to get out whatever was bothering or exciting us and this acted like a human WD40 in loosening everyone up, relaxing us & reminding us we were a tribe, which always made for better meetings and togetherness.

A willingness to include ongoing life challenges at work was an indication of how close this team had become. It’s only by being vulnerable that we know each other & help each other, in the same way we knew and helped our customers at clubs. This strength left us far less fearful of raising anything, including occasional failures, which were just became known as flops and fumbles from which we could all learn.

HYF let us share our challenges, celebrate our successes or just plain have a rant at the right time. That’s something that doesn’t always come naturally to everyone, and encouraging us to be more human really helped us achieve our targets, together. It works.


Kevin Fish CCM, is the Director of Contemporary Club Leadership, his own training and consultancy firm which supports Club Managers to do the right things, right.

He is known to our Tribe as the Chairman of the CMAE Education Policy Board responsible for bringing MDP education to Europe, and is our approved Practitioner in the hugely popular Lumina Sessions