We coach, develop and work alongside leaders and teams to shift ideas on leadership and provide the skills and tools needed to grow teams.
A failing employment relationship in a team, is a situation most leaders dread. It can cause huge harm for all involved – often over quite a long period. But as I discovered in my recent conversation with Rachel Burt (employment barrister, Kanuka Chambers)...
Reremoana, can you tell us what you thought as you went through our recruitment process and came to the decision this is something you’d like to do? Job descriptions can often be loaded with buzz words and jargon that distort the reality of a role but I was really...
Toby Cooper is someone we have known and worked with at Updraft for some years – as both a client and collaborator. He has worked all around Wellington, in mostly large organisations and we are delighted to have convinced him to come and join our small team. Now that...
Disagreeing well is an important skills in today’s working environments, where roles are moving from task-based to capability focused; team members are asked for their subject matter expertise and often required to mentor others, and top-down, ‘leader knows best’ structures are giving way to manaakitanga, agile practices, and shared knowledge and expertise.
A lifetime of reflection has led me to understand that I, like most others find some feedback very hard to embrace while other feedback can slip off of me like water off of a duck’s back. I also find some feedback is easier to give than others.
If you manage people you will invariably encounter one of your team members under-performing or behaving not as you would have expected or liked.
An extraordinary set of economic, social and immigration factors seems to have landed us with a perfect storm of retention and recruitment challenges. This means leaders and organisations really need to get proactive about managing their capacity.
The Cynefin Framework is an interesting lens to use when looking at the challenges and responsibilities of a team. Through this framework, you can make assessments about how members of the team should be working when tackling a particular task or challenge.
Many of today’s professionals spend a lot of time working from home, facing feelings of isolation, and dealing with a wide range of new change related stresses and challenges. For example, we have heard many stories of people changing jobs during lockdown periods and not being able to work in the office or meet their team members face to face for months.
“I know, I know; running Meetings is such boring stuff… not sexy at all. But….
I have on numerous occasions taught facilitation skills and there was always real interest in tricks and techniques for handling [difficult] people. “
“Are you struggling to get started Coaching your peers?
What might be the cause of this? Lets look at this from two possible sources.”
“When someone in your team wants to discuss something at a team meeting, do you start the discussion and then eventually try to figure out why you are having this discussion?
I suspect this is a common experience.”
“Have you ever experienced a situation where your manager or team leader is particularly friendly with another member of their team? How does that make you feel?
Or maybe you are someone that has a good friendship with your manager and occasionally socialise with them. What difference does that make?”
Managing Up? What is it and why is it a double-edged sword?
I have occasionally described specific people I have worked with as ‘managing up’ well.
And when I refer to this skill, I’m generally not thinking positive things.
“I’d like to share with you something I discovered by chance when I was teaching Leadership to managers across a range of sectors and businesses.
One day, in a programme I taught repeatedly, I decided to ask a series of questions related to receiving Feedback and see what happened.”