Category: coaching

Review: The Strengths-Focused Guide to Leadership
If you want a practical manual to understanding how to harness strengths, for you and your team, this book is a great place to start, as it:
- introduces the key concepts of strengths
  - provides the research base for more inquisitive readers
  - illustrates with narratives
- prompts you with a range of exercises and action points
- explains how to weave strengths into your practice as a leader.
What really sets this book apart is the emphasis on practicality. Numerous exercises help you engage with the ideas. There are questions, forms and questionnaires for you to use. The book looks at embedding strengths in all your work, including coaching, team meetings, recruitment and appraisals. So even if you know the value of using strengths, this is still a worthwhile read.

A further great feature is the use of dialogues, showing the ideas in action (e.g. a coaching session transcript) or as two alternative ‘scripts’ – one using strengths, the other weakness. These stories keep you grounded in reality.

The whys, whats and hows of using strengths

The authors define strengths as something that:

They show the advantage of working with strengths: that you are doing more of what you are best at. They set out the alignment between using strengths and increased sense of authenticity and purpose, increasing satisfaction and engagement. This naturally leads into a more productive cycle, with faster and better results.

For any readers averse to leaving a weakness-focussed approach, the authors provide both the evidence for focussing on strengths, and also how to address weaknesses with a positive mindset.

The MORE model

My strengths: To identify your own strengths, the authors offer five different methods: strength spotting, weakness spotting, a 5 steps strengths map, 360 degree feedback and online strengths assessments. They provide the exercises, questions and examples to help you through whichever of these methods you prefer to use.

Roarty and Toogood suggest 8 ways to develop your strengths:

They also provide 6 ways to manage your weaknesses. To align your goals and strengths, they suggest usual SMART objectives should rather be SMARTIE – adding Important and Energising.

Others’ strengths: The book suggests approaches to introduce strengths as a concept and to support your team in identifying their strengths.

Regular conversations: To embed strengths into daily practice, the authors provide checklists and questions which embody the three principles that will help you develop a strengths mindset:
- start with an outcome focus
- focus on what’s working
- manage weakness from strength
They advise how to use this mindset in one-to-one conversations, development planning, team meetings and coaching: interventions where a strengths-focus has great rewards.

Employee processes: Roarty and Toogood provide specific advice for a strength-based approach for performance appraisals, development discussions and recruitment. Particularly interesting is their approach for adapting to institutional reality: that while you may be required to use certain forms, competencies or expected approaches, you can still use a strengths mindset and techniques to provide a better outcome.

Leadership and teams

The book ends by providing the advice, evidence and resources to use strengths in two key challenges: creating a high-performing team, and in leading change. While specific examples are given, the advice reflects the key messages delivered previously, as detailed above.

You can buy The Strengths-focused guide to leadership, by Mike Roarty and Kathy Toogood, on Amazon UK or Amazon USA

Eszter Molnar Mills is a strength-based leadership and organisation development specialist.

She helps organisations and individuals reach enhanced performance by reflecting on what works, and by developing skills and strategies for improvement.

If you’d like help or advice on using strengths – such as implementing the MORE model, helping you find or use your strengths, or adopt a coaching approach, then please get in touch.

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15th July 2018
Coaching 101: Myths busted and advice for using a coaching approach
Coaching 101: Myths busted and advice for using a coaching approach

Do you want to help your team members improve their performance? Do your one-to-one meetings often end up with you giving all the answers and telling them what to do? Do you want your team to be more self-sufficient and empowered?

If the answer to any of the above is yes, then I suggest you learn how to coach. Increasingly seen as an essential management tool, coaching supports people to give their very best regardless of their current performance level. Coaching is focussed on helping them find solutions themselves, rather than the manager providing direction or advice. As a coach, and a trainer of coaches, I’m going to share with you some of my key ideas on why all managers and leaders should be coaching.

1. Coaching myths

We’ll cover aspects of how to coach later, but first, let’s look at some of the reasons why managers don’t coach, and debunk these myths.

Myth 1: “It takes too long; it takes less time if I just tell them the answer or what to do.”

You may worry that coaching is too time consuming, but it takes no more time overall than many other management practices. Crucially coaching builds capacity in your team to resolve their own issues – or to come to you with solutions, rather than questions. This saves you time in the medium to long run

Myth 2: “I’m not a professional coach, surely an external person needs to do this work?”

While there is real value in independent coaching, anyone can add a coaching approach to their management toolkit. I’ve trained hundreds in coaching skills, and you’d be surprised how quickly people can take it on board. David Rock defines coaching as ‘the art and science of facilitating positive change’ – and if you think about it, that’s what good managers are all about. The aim of coaching, and the skills you need, are aligned with being a positive and supportive manager: meeting people where they are, then helping them build on their skills, strengths and experiences, addressing shortcomings, finding solutions and identifying strategies to meet agreed targets.

Myth 3: “I’m the manager, I have the right answers, I should always share them.”

You should if there is only one right answer. But allowing your colleagues to maintain ownership, think issues through and work out their own solutions helps to get the best from your people. If you focus on goals and outcomes, your team can be more creative. Sir John Whitmore argues that coaching encourages acceptance of responsibility, which results in a commitment, in turn optimising employees’ performance.

A coaching approach helps establish boundaries around their responsibility for delivering outcomes and resolving issues. Your role is to work with people not for them – helping them work towards solutions rather than micro-managing. It helps when people own their goals.

Telling people the right answers isn’t always effective. Think about training sessions: a significant U.S. study found that the application of learning following a training course was around 22%. The majority simply didn’t put anything into practice. But when training was combined with coaching or some sort of a follow-up, it really helped people put their learning into practise. Suddenly, application went up to 90% – so with an approach of coaching rather than telling you could generate a much better return on your time investment.

2. When to use a coaching approach

PWC’s Global Coaching Study for the International Coach Federation found that coaching creates improvements in areas such as self-confidence, relationships, communication skills, work-life balance, work performance, business management and team effectiveness.

So, is there any occasion when you would not want your team to have those benefits? I’d encourage you to make coaching part of your daily management skills – but especially when there are high stakes pieces of work, big projects, or issues where you’re carrying an awful lot of responsibility.

Coaching can be delivered just in time; you can talk about a project just as it arises. Coaching is targeted, it can be specific to your organisation and the type of work or individual that you are talking to. It can build on their experience, knowledge, and skills while addressing their specific challenges.

By adding a coaching approach to your practice you can look forward to reaping its many personal and organisational benefits.

3. What a coaching approach looks like

Now we’re going to consider how you would start coaching. You can coach anytime, anywhere. Your coaching conversations don’t need to be formal or take more than a few minutes. It is however distinguished from other management activity by two key points:
- it is solution-focussed
- it leaves ownership and accountability with the staff member or coachee.
To achieve this, coaching involves asking insightful questions and providing reflection without giving advice or direction.

3.1 Start with the outcome

Start conversations with ‘what do we want to achieve?’, ‘what do you need?’. Encourage your staff member to articulate where they are aspiring to be or what an ideal outcome would look like.

Then you look at the current situation: ‘This is our goal, and this is where we are at the moment. Let’s talk about how we bridge that gap.’

Next, encourage the coachee to come up with potential solutions or options. Rather than providing advice, ask questions to help them work issues out for themselves: ‘What options do you have?’ ‘What do we need to do to make this project a success?’ ‘How are you going to marshal your skills, experience, and resources to achieve it?’ and the magic coaching question: ‘What else?’ Aim for as many options as they can gather – I often find that the really innovative solutions only emerge once I’ve exhausted all the obvious ideas.

Ensure that there is a specific set of outcomes or actions from the coaching conversation. The coachee needs to choose and commit to their own next step to draw real benefit from this approach.

This basic process I’ve described has been worked up into a number of coaching models. There’s not much difference between them beyond which acronym you prefer.

3.2 It is not about you – ownership and accountability belong with the coachee

In coaching the question is always, ‘what are you going to do’, and then ‘what support might you need to succeed’? Accountability and ownership rests with the coachee or individual whose job or project you are discussing.

Your role is to facilitate their thinking, not to solve the team member’s issues, or do their job for them. Understanding this distinction is remarkably freeing and allows for better quality conversations. It will be tough at first, but try hard not to be directive.

Listen to the other person, rather than your thoughts about how you might respond. What is really important to them? What are their challenges? What opportunities are they seeing? What next steps do they want to take?

When encouraged to come up with our own solutions, we maintain ownership and accountability, and feel much more motivated to follow through than when we are told what to do.

3.3 Provide support and challenge

Provide support and help where it is needed. Ask your team member to articulate what they see as the main challenge in a particular project and how you can support them in overcoming it.

Encourage them to identify the resources available to them; or similar situations or tasks where they have previously been successful.

Praise people for difficulties they’ve chosen to tackle, for taking ownership and accountability or for doing a great job of resolving their own issues.

Also provide constructive challenge. If you hear ‘We can never do that because…’ ask them, ‘Are you sure? Can you tell me what it would take for us to actually be able to do it? Could we do something differently to enable us to achieve this?’ Challenging is often a crucial part of coaching conversations.

4. Coaching is a crucial management skill that you should have

So you can see that coaching has wide-ranging benefits for your team and you – and is a great return on your time invested.

There’s no reason why you can’t go ahead and put into practice the ideas I’ve shown you in your next one-to-one or team meeting. If you’re interested, and would like some support in how to coach effectively, then I’d suggest two options. You could learn by being coached yourself, or you could find some training on coaching skills.

If you want to get the most from your people, if you want to help them develop, then coaching is a great skill to use – as after all, personal growth takes place at the intersection of ownership, accountability, support and challenge – and that is what a good coach provides.

Eszter Molnar Mills is a highly experienced and qualified leadership coach, and has taught coaching skills to hundreds of managers. Eszter and her team at Formium Development provide training and support to managers so they can get the best out of themselves, their teams and their organisations.

How we can help you

Coaching: if you’re looking for someone to help you to find solutions for your goals, we have a number of coaches available for phone/video conference coaching. Click here for more details.

Training: if you want more help on using a coaching approach as part of your management toolkit, then get in touch about our in-house workshops on Coaching Skills for Managers.

Webinar: People who join up to our newsletter get access to a bunch of helpful information and resources. This includes periodic access to our webinar on Coaching.

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11th July 2018
You only win when you’re singing
In Britain, football crowds have songs for every occasion. If your team overturns a losing position, to taunt the opposition fans now sitting in crestfallen silence, you bellow at them: “You only sing when you’re winning” (improbably to the tune of a traditional Cuban song, Guatanamera).

But have the fans got this the wrong way round? Some recent research highlighted on the informative website The Conversation suggests that you only win when you’re singing. Having studied the 2016 European championship, the academics Slater, Haslam and Steffens reckon you can predict the result of an international football match by how passionately the teams sing their national anthem (regardless of how good the team is perceived to be).

So, apart from giving you a fun game to try at home during this World Cup, what impact could this study have for you as a manager or leader?

1. The best results are achieved by the most passionate

This aligns with a key concept of positive psychology, that we do our best work when we are doing something we are really engaged with. We’re not saying you need to come into your office singing everyday, but that you need to find a role or tasks that you believe in, that positively challenge you, that gives you the opportunity to reach a state of ‘flow.’

If this doesn’t sound like you, then you could analyse your strengths (e.g. using the VIA survey) and see if you can more closely align your work with your strengths – a short-cut to working with passion.

2. It has to be real

One of the interesting findings was that there was no benefit when the players were instructed to sing up (as England players were memorably asked in 2014). The passion of the singing is a direct result of the underlying camaraderie and team spirit.

So think about your team development – what could you do to create the conditions in which your team can organically grow?
- Create opportunities for natural social interaction – e.g. a drinks break in a team meeting
- Assign two team members to work on a task together, to build familiarity and trust
- Establish collectively a clear team goal, with everyone understanding their role
- Use an Appreciative Inquiry approach to help each team member understand the input, perspective and value of each other
3. Don’t ignore a bad team spirit

I’ve met many managers who are happy to treat their team as a group of individual performers, not bothering if there is antagonism in the team, providing the work gets done. Slater et al’s study suggests they’re wrong – that how a team interacts really does impact on performance. It may be hard work, but addressing team conflict and proactively encouraging a better team spirit will pay dividends in the long run.

4. Actions speak as loud as words

The study indicated that body language and non-verbal cues were important, not just singing. The challenge for you as a manager is to keep your eyes open – be sensitive to how your team members interact, not just what they say to each other.

Help is at hand

If you want advice or help in building your team, Formium Development can help with guidance, facilitation, executive and team coaching,.

Check out our resources on teams:

10 actions to build a strong team
Checklist for a Positive Team Meeting

Eszter Molnar Mills is a strength-based leadership and organisation development specialist and founder of Formium Development. A qualified executive and team coach, she helps organisations and individuals reach enhanced performance by reflecting on what works, and developing skills and strategies for improvement. Through team coaching and facilitation Eszter also helps organisations and teams work together to develop positive and productive cultures.
19th June 2018
7 questions for impactful leadership

Review of the Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier

Your team sometimes just need a bit of support to shine. You can provide this support through changing your leadership approach to coaching.

Helping people to find their own solutions is more impactful than giving advice, providing rules or direction. You can coach anytime, anywhere, and with the 7 simple questions that Michael Bungay Stanier suggests for supporting your team, your session will be both easy and effective.

The Coaching Habit is a lean, inspiring and practical book. In the first few chapters you can learn about habit building and change in order to make the move from the directive habit of a lifetime. The book then outlines the benefits of coaching before you get the tools, the questions and ways of putting them into practice.

The following seven chapters are about the seven essential question you should ask in order to help your colleague to identify and solve their own difficulties. Bungay Stanier added exercises between the questions to help leaders master asking them effectively.

Michael Bungay Stanier’s book is a practical, engaging read encouraging immediate application. It is packed with useful resources and exercises, and should have a place on every leaders’ bookshelf.

We had the privilege of interviewing Michael on the coaching habit, so you can also hear him talk about the habit changing process and how to do more great work.

The Coaching Habit is available on amazon.co.uk and amazon.com.

7th September 2016
Ensure that people know what is expected of them

When I talk to managers and leaders, the theme of high performance is a frequent topic of conversation. We can all agree that being an excellent organisation and delivering exceptional products or services are very important, but does everyone we work with know what we actually mean by excellence in the day-to-day?

6 methods to set obvious expectations for high performance
Too often, managers seem to lead through mental telepathy. Without clearly communicated expectations– in terms of standards or the milestones against which we analyze our progress – team members may not know what to do and how to do it. This can result in uncertainty, undermining effective teamwork, initiative and productivity.
Properly setting expectations for employees or team members is a critical dimension in quality workplaces, according to a large research of managers undertaken in the 1990s by The Gallup Organization. Underneath are a few ideas on setting clear expectations that will set standards for excellence and outcomes.
1. Begin with creating a compelling goal. Describe and explain what you want the end result to look like. Not just what you want done, but the purpose and the results you want to achieve when the project is finished and the responsibility of everyone in its achievement. People want to know that their job, whether large or small, makes a difference.
2. Talk about what you mean by “excellent performance”. This step is needed to make the vision ‘actionable’ and translate it into tangible performance measures. Set metrics where possible, paint a complete picture of the requirements you are expecting. Refer to your performance review form or competency framework for behavioural standards.
3. Concentrate on the required outcomes, instead of on the exact steps you want your people to take. Think of this as coaching rather than controlling. Encouraging your people to design their own way of delivering positive outcomes allows each team member to use their strengths to their fullest potential.
4. Provide regular feedback. The yearly appraisal or performance review is insufficient and often too late to let staff members know how and whether they are meeting your expectations. Give feedback along the road: define the context, refer to the vision and give your reasons for the feedback. Next plan for a way forward, ask for more or less of what you observed. Take a coaching, rather than disciplinarian approach. The more two-way communication, the greater the clarity around the expectations.
5. Give positive encouragement. Until you are particularly experienced at giving feedback, don’t use the ‘sandwich’ of positive– constructive– positive comments. As Ken Blanchard suggest in One Minute Manager, catch employees doing things right and you’ll get even more of it.
6. Give people the flexibility to perform well. As soon as the expectations are clear get out of the way and let people to meet them. Having set clear standards, milestones or due dates, every member of your team will have the ability to track their own progress, check whether they are meeting the milestones and behavioural standards. This approach also allow individuals be accountable for delivering their own work, so that they can course correct where needed or stay on track to make their full contribution.

To find out more about Positive Leadership view our webinar.

26th April 2016
3 ways to create a high performance culture
Does culture matter? Recent research carried out by James Heskett at Harvard Business School suggests that 20%-30% of corporate performance can be attributed to a positive, strong performance culture. As Edgar Schein, probably the most prolific and oft-quoted researcher and author in the area of culture, suggested: “The only thing of real importance that leaders do is to create and manage culture. If you do not manage culture, it manages you and you may not even be aware of the extent to which this is happening.”

High performance cultures embrace innovation and empower people to contribute to that innovation. They espouse values on taking calculated risks, being innovative, being supportive, and being a learning organisation. Amanda Whittaker Brown of IDeA identified four specific signs of a performance culture and a culture where high performance is an integral part of how the organisation works:
- People feel comfortable talking openly about performance.
- Individuals know how what they are doing makes a difference.
- People share a commitment to achieving shared objectives.
- When there are problems, people work together to resolve them.
There are three specific actions leaders can take to create a high performance culture in their organisation:

1. Co-create the desired culture
Involve others in designing and shaping the team or organisational culture. In order for you to be able to identify and articulate what a desired culture would be, you need to understand and be able to communicate the vision for the organisation, its purpose and how individuals and teams can contribute. Your team need to be able to understand the difference that they are making.

Once the vision for the organisation or the team is clear, consider whether the current culture, norms, and behaviours serve it, or whether you need to make some changes. Talk to your team, customers, senior management or board about how they see those objectives and aims being delivered, what your core values are and what type of underlying culture is need.

Invite your colleagues and stakeholders to co-create the desired culture through conversation. Identify what works well and where changes are needed to enhance individual and organisational performance. Teams and staff can take part in this conversation and feel ownership and accountability, which in turns underpins a performance culture.

Once you have identified the desired culture, make sure that you are modelling, not just communicating new values and behaviours. If you’re asking other people to change, you need to remember that that will require quite a significant change on your part as well. Agree and describe what high performance looks like, agree how people will work and behave as part of the culture.

2. Replace a culture of blame with empowerment and accountability
Develop a culture of empowerment instead of blame, which stifles innovation and creativity. Enable people to take responsibility, to make decisions, to take action. At an organisational level, empowerment is supported by management commitment and relatively few layers of hierarchy. It’s important that people are supported with the right skills so they can take advantage of empowerment. Provide development on teamwork, communication skills, decision making, and risk management or other appropriate areas.

Ensure that your team has clarity of objectives and corporate priorities and that they are rewarded for doing the right things. Accept mistakes and ensure that people learn from their mistakes.

Accountability is equally important. It’s not quite enough, from a cultural perspective, for people to be accountable to you because you’re their boss. They actually need to be accountable to each other, so they can say, “We each understand what everyone else’s role is and we each commit to delivering our individual role for the benefit of the team.”

3. Set high expectations and enable people to meet those expectations
Maurizio Freda, Estee Lauder CEO said: “You need super talented people who know they need to do fantastically well. When your leadership team takes the same attitude, you create a culture where each one can give his or her best. In particular, you have to find the strengths of each individual in the organisation and then you can create magic.”

Choose people with lots of potential who have some of the strengths that you’re looking for, and allow them to play to their strengths.

Provide a combination of high support and high challenge. Set the expectation that people have to do well in this organisation, that you are aiming for excellence and that you trust that people can meet these expectation as they are supported and set up for success. People can meet those high expectations because they get to play to their strengths, they get the development that they need, and if they make mistakes these are looked at as learning opportunities.

These three leadership activities help you embody Schein’s statement that “Leaders are the main designers and builders of an organisation’s culture.”

Eszter Molnar Mills is a strength-based leadership and organisation development specialist and founder of Formium Development. A qualified executive and team coach, she helps organisations and individuals reach enhanced performance by reflecting on what works, and developing skills and strategies for improvement. Through team coaching and facilitation Eszter also helps organisations and teams work together to develop positive and productive cultures.
9th March 2016
The magic of freedom?

British training company Happy Ltd has been rated best for customer service and work/life balance among many other awards. Henry Stewart, Chief Executive, has written a book about the story of Happy and its achievements. The book has a clear tone, comes with real-life examples, provides evidence where required and poses thought-provoking questions – overall an enjoyable read. From the title you can guess you will find a public declaration of the methods, views and motives of the author.

Stewart’s Happy Manifesto is based on ten points:

Most of the points are about giving freedom to your people and trusting them. With his book Stewart aims to help the reader put in place the structure that makes freedom and trust possible in his/her organisation.

The Happy Manifesto shows an aspirational alternative, it can help some managers and organisations but it is still not a panacea which will “Make Your Organisation a Great Place to Work – Now!” Don’t get me wrong, it is a great book, the idea has potential but I can’t see how it could be applied in every case. I find it hard to believe that all employees can work without rules, and in my experience not every manager has the freedom to influence the structure, choose their people and put together a dream-team. If managers don’t have the freedom to choose people for their team, or if they inherit an existing team with set preferences and habits, further work will be needed before they can provide the level of freedom suggested.

It is apparent throughout the book that Stewart believes in guidelines rather than rules. He says managers don’t give enough freedom to their staff and it could be much more effective if your people made most decisions themselves. Stewart describes the hierarchy of management needs, based on Maslow’s well-known pyramid, which highlights workplace safety, comfort, reward and communication as necessary but insufficient for motivation.

Stewart proceeds to expand on organisational approaches to develop challenge, support, trust and freedom as the management behaviours leading to high performance.

Book details:
Henry Stewart: The Happy Manifesto: Make Your Organization a Great Workplace;
Kogan Page; 1 edition (3 Jan. 2013)

24th February 2016