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 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.
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.”
We know that for teams to maximise the potential of their diversity, they need to regularly use techniques like perspective getting, encouraging contribution, group brainstorming and collaborative problem solving. But none of those practices works particularly well without high levels of psychological safety.
If you dread these words… ‘Can I give you some Feedback?’ you are perfectly normal not super sensitive. Most of us are at least somewhat fearful of getting Feedback.
OK, I’m going to start this off by saying ‘I do!’
I like positive feedback. I like to know that my work or my relationships add value to others. That doesn’t mean I only want positive feedback, but it really helps to know that (and why) I am appreciated.
And I think all people find that genuine appreciation motivating, (even if at times little embarrasing).
I am a leadership coach.
As part of setting up a new coaching relationship, I often have a set-up meeting with the coachee and their manager. During this ‘three-way’ meeting I ask the manager to outline what they would like their direct report to use the coaching to focus on.
Answer: It depends how often you engage, what you talk about, and how much directing you do with your people.
Precaution: I have never met a person that agreed they were a micromanager, that didn’t also rationalise what they were doing as being a good thing for several, or many reasons. Most micromanagers do what they do with the best of intentions.
Like many others, and particularly US ex-pats, I’ve been watching the events unfold from the US election. A bit of background: My father was a career US diplomat
If we thought we were living in a VUCA world (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) before, what are we experiencing now?
People can do crazy stuff when they are threatened enough and start looking out for themselves at the expense of others…
I am an experienced and competent facilitator, but I’ve realised that I need to be teaching teams how to fish, how to cook and serve for themselves.
And, herein lies the difference between a strong facilitator and a strong coach.
Accountability is a word that is often bandied about in the workplace by leaders and teams. It seems everyone wants someone to be accountable. Particularly when things have gone wrong. It appears having accountability is very much like wearing a sign that says: Blame me!
Who would want that?
And then the change day cometh. ‘D-Day’. It’s what everyone has been doing all that planning for. And now the key decision-makers and the planners responsible for change can take a bit of a back seat, as their hard work is mostly complete and the change implementation is now in the hands of the people; the leaders of new teams and the teams themselves.