Tag: team

“Being a leader is not about you.” How leaders can achieve performance success

You’re a leader with a great organisational business strategy, operational plan and team objectives. So now the big question is – how do you get your team to perform and deliver success?

One approach I encounter is focused on command and control. Some industries, companies, leaders and team members seem to favour a directive model of leadership. While a preference for instruction over facilitation may be appropriate in some circumstances, there is a risk it leads to a vicious cycle of micro-management and disempowered staff.

But there is another way.

“Being a leader is not about you. It’s about the people that are on your team and how you can help them to be successful.”

Susan Vobejda

Everything we know about performance shows that the greatest success is achieved by those people who are empowered and trusted, who are given both the tools and the autonomy.

For me the key element in Susan Vobejda’s excellent advice is “how you can help” – the leader’s role is not to provide ‘one size fits all’ support. The challenge is to find out what each person needs to deliver the performance the leader needs.

How can leaders do this? When I’m working with leaders and managers I recommend they develop individualised support for their team members by asking the following questions:

1. What are your motivations and aspirations?

Purpose prompts performance. Where leaders select or align tasks with people’s aspirations, this energises and encourages people to deliver.

2. What do you need from me to meet your targets?

The model of Servant Leadership emphasises the value in the leader helping employees to develop and deliver. By asking them what they want, the leader avoids top-down assumptions and empowers team members to identify their own support needs.

3. What are your unique strengths and how can you use them best?

Performance is enhanced by identifying strengths and generating opportunities to leverage them through alignment, selection or re-framing. A strengths focus means doing more of what you are best at and which energises you.

Providing leaders listen and enable, they can achieve business success by helping their team members be successful.

Photo credit: Fauxels on Pexels

22nd November 2022
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
Doing good, doing business

Social enterprise is a dynamic and also motivating way to do business, it’s an interesting and fast growing sector, a movement not only in the UK but around the globe.

Social enterprises are businesses trading to address social problems, improve communities, people’s quality of life or the environment. It seems the same as charity work but it is different. These organisations make and do things to make profits like every other business, but they are reinvesting their profits to make even more good. They do this in various ways: reinvesting in community projects, providing services for people who otherwise might not get them, or creating jobs for people who would otherwise be left out from work. That’s what Unseen Tours did, does and will do.

Unseen Tours is a prize-winning, not-for-profit social enterprise in London. Presently, they offer 6 alternative sightseeing tours through the capital’s most vibrant and exciting neighbourhoods- Brick Lane, Brixton, Camden, Covent Garden, London Bridge and Shoreditch-, led by homeless and previously homeless guides.

“We never wanted to be a charity, we wanted to make profit and reinvest that money, that’s why we are a social enterprise.”– says Faye Shields, the director.
Everything started in 2010 as a project by Sock Mob Events, an informal volunteer network– so called simply because through regular weekly walks these people offered socks, food and friendship for men and women living on the streets of London.

Their guides earn a living through the tours. They directly get 60% of the ticket sales. And what about the other 40%? It’s also reinvested, out of that 40% the guides also receive their travel and mobile top-ups every month and the remainder is used for essential operational costs. Any profit Unseen Tours makes is directly reinvested into the enterprise to engage more guides and widen the scope of the tours.

People are needed to run an organisation. The team that works behind the scenes of the successful social enterprise is formed of volunteers. They fit volunteering around their full-time job responsibilities to help making Unseen Tour a success.

The enterprise works like a real organisation; they have a director, the different tours have coordinators, they even have a person to manage their social media.
Unseen Tours offers a one-of-a-kind experience of London and unique insight into the capital’s life whilst giving visibility and voice to people who often feel unseen and unheard.

Unseen Tours is a social enterprise with great purpose– to change perceptions of the homeless and to provide an income to individuals who might otherwise be excluded from work. They are doing good but also business. With their business strategy, so far they have helped 20 homeless or formerly homeless people back on their feet.

To find out more about Unseen Tours and to book a tour visit their website here. Take part and win prizes in their newest campaign, share your unseen story with #MyUnseenStory on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.

1st June 2016
How to build a strong team

10 leadership actions to help your team flourish

1. Develop a team that is made up of people with different experiences and strengths. Successful teams are diverse, with a wide range of complementary strengths; each person performing in the role that plays to their strengths and in which they can thrive. This approach makes the most of the combined talents available to you, allows most individual weaknesses to become irrelevant, as they are compensated by the strengths of others. Diversity of perspectives is crucial for innovation.

2. Involve your team in co-creating an aspirational vision, so members have a clear stake in the organisation’s success. Seeking your people’s views generates immediate engagement and a stronger connection between activity and outcome.

3. Talk about “why” as well as “what”. Foster the team’s shared aim by describing the impact of their work so that members understand the link to a greater purpose. There is a stakeholder, a customer, or even society at large that benefits as an end result of the work they’re doing.

4. As part of planning and managing challenges, identify and communicate a clear outcome. Review past similar successes and identify the factors of that success. You can then use these to shape your response to issues.

5. Specify and agree clear metrics and targets and agree shared performance outcomes. This establishes each person as responsible for their own performance, seeing growth opportunities, owning mistakes, and setting and reporting against their own SMART objectives. This investment of time benefits the leader by allowing you to spend less of your time spent on ongoing monitoring.

6. Discuss performance at all levels, all the time. This means the organisation’s performance, the team’s performance, customer responses, and individual contributions and actions. All of these elements contribute to the outcome, satisfaction, and experience.

7. Take the role of facilitator, rather than team manager. Ensure that you give thinking time and space to staff members when discussing projects or challenges. They may need time to think issues through, explore options, or identify likely obstacles.

8. Create successful team conversations by encouraging positive communication. The ratio of positivity to negativity is a fundamental driver of good relationships as well as productivity. A successful team looks to have between three and six positive statements for every negative statement, expressing more agreement, and engaging with others’ viewpoints. Successful teams also listen more than argue – they spend more time seeking to understand rather than asserting their own point.

9. Use “Yes AND…” rather than “Yes BUT…” in discussions and meetings. This indicates that you’ve heard the other person’s point, and allows you to build on the previous statement. It is a small language tweak, which generates collaboration, rather than argument.

10. Expect accountability and at the same time practice visible forgiveness to defuse blame when things do go wrong. This will allow you to move on to resolve issues and safeguards the team’s willingness to try new things, take risks, make mistakes and learn. Apologising and showing forgiveness are some of the most important ways of building trust, and encouraging open communication.

If we can support the development of your team, look at our organisation development offer or contact us.

6th 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