Tag Archive for: Accountability

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Management: Communication and Accountability In One-On-Ones

Few managers and leaders are conducting useful one-on-ones and when they do, often miss the mark in making them effective and productive. There is value in learning how to facilitate a one-on-one that provides value for all involved.

Two of the most important, yet under-rated skills for managers and leaders are listening and questioning. To be present and focused and know what key question to ask at the right time add value to any relationship and discussion. They are particularly important during one-on-ones with your employees and offer a couple of great examples of development opportunities. Yet, there are many more growth areas that can be learned and practiced as a leader through focused, individual time spent with each team member.

CoachStation: Management, Leadership Coaching and One-on-Ones

One-on-ones are a tool and a process. When conducted well they are an incredibly useful and effective part of leadership and developing effective relationships. The opposite is just as true. When avoided, gaps and misunderstandings often exist as a direct result. Your willingness to learn how to conduct one-on-ones effectively will have a direct impact on your team and your results. Outcomes and benefits include; each team member will be more engaged; trust is increased; the leader an employee earn the right to be heard; influence improves; and you both earn the right to discuss relevant, meaningful topics.

The most effective one-on-ones are action-oriented and holistic in their approach. This means that all aspects of the employee’s performance and mindset are discussed.

If you aren’t having one on ones with your team, you’re missing out on an incredible motivating, problem solving, pressure relieving opportunity to help and grow your team. But even if you’re totally bought into starting them, it can be intimidating to actually get started. Like the first time for many things, when you start, it’s easy to feel unsure what to do. When you start, there can be many questions like:

  • What do I talk about?
  • What do I say to my team?
  • How often should I have them?
  • What if my team doesn’t want to talk to me?
  • When should I schedule them?
  • …and many more. (3)

All good questions that are addressed in this blog. But, first things first.

It is of great interest to me how few managers bother with meeting formally in any capacity on a regular basis with their team members. Taking this one step further, it is a shame how many managers avoid this key part of their role. It is too easy to get caught up in the operational and tactical aspects of management. Being a leader compels contact and connection with your direct reports. Although many fail to make the time for this, it is in fact an obligation of being a leader. To feel the many benefits and rewards requires a conscious plan to engage and persist whilst practicing the skill-sets that make it work.

To see time dedicated to each team member as somehow negotiable misses the point regarding being a leader.

Worldwide, the percentage of adults who work full-time for an employer and are engaged at work — they are highly involved in and enthusiastic about their work and workplace — is just 15%. That low percentage of engaged employees is a barrier to creating high-performing cultures. It implies a stunning amount of wasted potential, given that business units in the top quartile of our global employee engagement database are 17% more productive and 21% more profitable than those in the bottom quartile.

Businesses that orient performance management systems around basic human needs for psychological engagement — such as positive workplace relationships, frequent recognition, ongoing performance conversations and opportunities for personal development — get the most out of their employees. (1) If spending time with your team members is not your key priority you are missing one of the most valuable aspects of your role as a leader.

Communication, clarity, context, expectation setting, checking for understanding and similar key requirements form part of this discussion.

Consolidation and reinforcement occurs in between formal sessions, during ad-hoc catch-ups. They are extremely valuable and important. However, there needs to be a formal, established rhythm where real and honest discussion can take place. This should be done in a private setting where both the leader and employee can feel comfortable to raise any relevant points. These discussions form the basis for most performance reviews and development opportunities. The chance to reduce or remove assumptions is also of great benefit.

An effective one-on-one is a discussion with purpose. It has two-way communication and feedback; invites self-assessment; invests in the relationship; and has actions and outcomes.

10 Ways Leaders Aren’t Making Time for their Team Members (Infographic): Blanchard LeaderChat

There is something to be said, however, about occasionally changing the setting. Some of the best one on one discussions I have had occurred during a walk around the block or at a cafe’.

As with all relationships, it is important to know your team members well enough to know what their preferences are.

Clearly,  going for a walk with an employee with health issues might be challenging and potentially do more harm than good, for example.

I often hear statements from managers like, “my door is always open”. The assumption that this style creates opportunity for meaningful discussion is flawed.

Not all of your team members will approach you proactively to raise all of their issues and successes. Quite often the key few will ‘pop into your office’ to vent or raise concerns.

Regularly the same employees will chat about the same challenges and points, visit after visit. Reactive conversations based on specific issues become the norm.

Of course, not all of your team will approach you just because you ‘offered’, One-on-ones provide the alternative options. Personal and professional points are discussed.

You need to give these meetings a fair amount of time to make sure you really dig into issues that are bothering them, fully explore ideas with them, and have a good opportunity to coach them when needed.

You’ll also build their confidence and trust in you that when they come to you with a problem you will not only listen, but help them do something about it. (3)

One-on-ones are proactive in nature, identifying and addressing things before they escalate.

The ‘door is open approach’ is reactive and covers the select few issues that your team members choose to raise – it assumes too much and is quite a lazy approach. It is often an approach based on the manager – their fears, self-doubts and lack of confidence to manage the conversations. The one-on-one should be mostly about the employee. Conversely, relationship-based one-on-ones are proactive as they delve and discover opportunities that may not have been identified without facilitating and questioning.

The discussion is meaningful in that it maintains flow and momentum in actions, progress and meeting goals.

The ironic part of this mindset is that a focus away from your team rarely ends well. The most relevant and impactful way to be able to influence outcomes and results is via the effectiveness, capability, competence and confidence of each team member. This takes focus and development. To assume that this growth will occur without your guidance and assistance as their immediate manager/leader reflects inexperience or avoidance. Related to this, emphasis on results and outcomes without understanding the inputs and contributors drives managers towards the wrong focus. This could appear as an unsupported challenge or even worse, a threat or coercion.

I have already touched on a few key benefits of one-on-ones. However, the most important element references the risks if you don’t formalise these discussions.

What causes some people to fully commit to the team and give their max effort while others don’t? It’s trust. In research conducted by The Ken Blanchard Companies and Training Magazine, over 60% of respondents say the most important factor influencing the effort they give to a team is how much they trust their fellow teammates.

Having high trust in your teammates frees you up to focus on your own contributions without worrying about others following through on their commitments. Trusting your team gives you freedom to take risks, knowing your teammates have your back and will support you. Team trust allows you to have open and honest dialogue and healthy debate that leads to better decision-making, and conflict gets resolved productively instead of people sandbagging issues or sabotaging the efforts of others. But developing trust in your teammates doesn’t happen by accident; it takes an intentional effort to proactively build trust. (2) It is a very similar factor when considering the relationship between a leader and direct report…but, more impactful in most cases.

Trust cannot be built from afar or in spite of the effort to develop effective relationships. Regular one-on-ones provide that opportunity.

When you have scheduled the sessions, commit to them. Cancelling or constantly moving the one-on-ones sends a very clear message about your priorities. Remember, most leaders have around 160+ hours / month to accomplish their work. Focusing on the single greatest impact on the success of that work (hint: your team members) for 10-20 hours / month seems like a pretty solid investment! Let your team know you want to have one on ones to help them. If they’ve never had them before, they may not know what to expect, so it helps to give them a little background before the first one. (3) Over time, you can shift the accountability of scheduling and agenda-setting to your employee.

Regular conversations that contain actions and outcomes create a baseline for development. The CoachStation REOWM Leadership Accountability model provides a solid framework to assist in your one-on-ones. Access a copy of the REOWM model and explanations for each of the 5 steps here.

It is important to spend a few minutes preparing for each one-on-one.

Leadership expert, Kevin Eikenberry correctly states that: the best meetings have agendas, and while your one-on-one meetings likely won’t have a formal agenda (although they could), for them to be most effective and productive, both parties need to be clear on the expectations, goals, and outcomes for these meetings. Since you are likely having these meetings already without this clarity, make this a topic of conversation the next time you meet.

As a leader, don’t just assume others know what you want from these meetings – talk to them and share your needs and goals for your one-on-ones.

As a team member ask for what you need.  If you are hoping for/need something from these meetings (like more direction, for example), ask for it. (4)

I have found that a consistent agenda containing 3 key elements works well in establishing a standard, expectations and agreed outcomes:

Agenda:

What’s on your mind?

What would you like to discuss?

Progress:

How have you gone since we last met?

Did your actions work?

What did you learn as a result?

How do you know they worked?

Actions:

What do you need to do to reinforce and consolidate recent learning and actions?

What have you taken away from today’s one-on-one?

Are there any new potential actions?

There is value if your team member takes control of the meeting. It may take a couple of one-on-ones for them to get comfortable and understand your expectations and how best to apply them, but it is their time, so your employee should own it. Support them into this though, being fair and clear about how this looks and what they should do.

Too often the one-on-one meeting becomes tactical and just about day to day issues and tasks.

 

Access additional great examples of coaching questions you can use in any discussion – 50 Power Questions

Self-assessment and reflection is generally more useful than solely providing feedback. You will find that through asking the right questions and listening well, there is much to learn about each person. You can then provide your own thoughts and feedback throughout the discussion, in response to your employee. It may seem subtle but is actually a significant shift in accountability and ownership. It also makes the session easier for the leader as they quickly learn that they don’t have to have all the answers. These details are important, but if you want to have more effective and valuable one-on-one meetings, think bigger picture.

As a leader, be observant, and make coaching and feedback a part of the list of things you routinely talk about in these meetings. Consider asking for feedback on your performance too.

As a team member, if you want more feedback in general, or specific guidance on a situation, ask for it. The one-on-one meeting is a time you will have your leader’s attention, so use it to get the feedback you need. (4) Regular follow-up and development of accountability provides momentum and progression.

Monthly meetings are ok, however fortnightly is best in my experience. It is generally better to conduct fortnightly one-on-ones of 45 minutes in length compared to monthly sessions of an hour or longer.

This does depend on the number of direct reports, employee tenure and competence, amongst other judgements you must make. Finally, a good rule-of -thumb to follow is to make sure that each one-on-one covers 3 key categories. Assuming a 60 minute session is scheduled, break the session into thirds or 20-minute segments:

    • 20 minutes: Tasks = Focus on results, tasks and operational work i.e. the things that your employee does.
    • 20 minutes: Self = Self-reflection and discussion regarding the employee themselves – how do they feel? What is going well? What isn’t?
    • 20 minutes: Others = Feedback and self-assessment regarding their relationships – with you as their leader; with their peers; with their direct reports; other relationships e.g stakeholders.

The timing of 20 minutes for each segment is indicative and obviously can be altered, depending on the conversation and flow. The critical aspect is that all 3 elements are covered during each session.

Without a doubt the biggest challenge for most managers is to conduct a one-on-one at all.

Feedback I receive is that most managers don’t conduct one-on-ones and if they do, they are not that useful because they focus solely on segment 1 – results, KPI’s and tasks. Greater improvement and objectivity is gained when the leader focuses on how the results are achieved. You cannot influence a number or historical result. This information is important to identify insights and trends, leading to potential actions. But, in itself, it offers little direction or future action. Identifying why the results are what they are has purpose and potential for goal establishment.

One-on-ones are a critical aspect of leadership. This time together provides opportunities that do not present themselves to the same depth through casual, ad-hoc discussions. If you are a leader and have read this far, I encourage you to reflect on the progress and effectiveness of your one-on-ones and your team.

It’s a problem to be unaware of this aspect of your role. However, it is negligent to gain awareness and continue to miss the opportunity. As always, it is your call, but your team members will ultimately thank you for meeting your responsibilities and assisting them via facilitating useful, engaging and purposeful one-on-ones.

 

Resources:

(1) State of the Global Workplace 2017: Gallup Global Report

(2) The 1 Factor That Determines How Hard Your Team Works: Blanchard LeadershipChat

(3) Manager’s Guide: How To Start One On One’s With Your Team: Lighthouse

(4) 5 Ways To improve Your One-On_one Meetings: Kevin Eikenberry, Leadership Digital

 

 

 

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Avoid a Common Leadership Mistake: Empower Your Team

Effective leaders make shared goals clear. They also clarify the role we each play in achieving them.

Leaders empower their team members and hold them accountable for delivering agreed results.

However, to inspire and empower you must have a connection with your team members…a relationship.

CoachStation: Steve Riddle, Empower, Leadership and Coaching

The words and concept in the heading above could not be clearer. The message and need to establish accountability cannot be understated. Making this real in practice is the challenge.

How many of us truly provide the context and create the environment where trust and accountability are encouraged? Do you empower or dis-empower?

A few weeks ago I facilitated a ‘Lunch and Learn’ session with one of my clients. The session formed part of a week-long focus on leadership. Other speakers included representatives from Blanchard International and BTS Australasia. I was provided with guidance on the session topic, which had to relate to coaching and leadership. We were fortunate to have Max from Sketchvideos recording the key points from each session, as highlighted in the image above.

Many of us have the opportunity to influence, lead and manage people either directly or indirectly every day. Like most leadership and people-related skills, this requires practice and effort. It is important to understand the key points and areas to focus on and practice whilst developing yourself and those around you. In the lunch and learn sessions, I discussed the core traits and skills that the most effective leaders possess and apply every day.

To empower is to provide opportunity for buy-in and success for individual employees and your team overall.

One of the most important, yet often missed elements is to establish agreed expectations and standards. Clarity of expectations provides a greater chance that your team members will complete tasks and actions in an efficient and timely way. It is virtually impossible for an employee to feel empowered if there is disagreement or misunderstanding in what they are expected to do each day. Most critically, clarity allows each person to engage in their roles and hold themselves accountable.

Most managers are more comfortable discussing and holding team members accountable for the objective aspects of their role for example KPI’s; KRA’s; results etc. They are often less comfortable influencing the ‘seemingly subjective’ aspects of the role. As highlighted in the associated graphic, we often do more talking and telling than asking and listening. This is particularly prevalent when managing people, during 1:1’s and appraisal-type discussions.

By telling and informing, the leader is assuming a lot and making it more about themselves. Who’s 1:1 is it anyway?

Too often managers are fearful about how to establish expectations and hold these conversations. Particularly when the goals and standards are seemingly subjective and are less quantifiable. With the right skills and practice, accountability is possible to apply, no matter the details of the performance expectation or requirement.

Once agreed, the commitment to meet the expectation is implicit, whether objective or subjective in nature.

It is worth considering whether this point applies to you? Take a moment to reflect on how often you deliberately focus on agreed expectations. Check in with your team…you may be surprised at the response. Additionally, there are other skills and traits that employees look for in their leaders. The graphic below highlights a recent survey that asked which leadership traits and skills were most important.

Leadership Skills Survey Results_HBR

Whereas, most of them are reasonably obvious, we can all think of manager’s who fail more than succeed in demonstrating the skills through action. The skills can be developed. What is one of the best ways to influence most, if not all, of the leadership skills listed above? Coaching! Being coached and developing others through coaching has tangible and measurable benefits. Many of these outcomes are the skills that our employees are looking for. How do we know this? Because feedback and survey after survey tells us so.

A leader only has to become moderately proficient in most of the skills above to be an effective and productive leader. Perfection across all skills is not required. In fact, it is not possible. However, taking the time and putting conscious effort into growth and development provides many benefits…to yourself and your team. Although, it is worth remembering that knowing and doing are not the same thing! Oddly, they are the same traits and attributes you are looking from from your leaders. Yet, we often see what we provide and what we get in different contexts and degrees of self-expectation.

Genuine progress is made through taking action, developing skills and closing any gaps.

Managers can attest to this experience: You ask an employee to carry out a task that has enough flexibility for creative input. Rather than making their own decisions, the employee comes to you with an onslaught of questions, trying to pin down the exact parameters of the task. You become exasperated, wondering why the employee has to ask you permission for every tiny detail.

This isn’t an unusual phenomenon – it can be difficult to break out of the leader-follower mindset at the workplace. In fact, researchers from Penn State, Claremont McKenna College, and Tsinghua University find that only rare, “transformational leaders” are able to prevent employees from being excessively reliant on their bosses, cultivating instead a staff that feels empowered and self-guided.

Trust and business acumen are some of the cornerstones in building this type of work culture.

We can use this wisdom to train informed and decisive teams that we can trust. (1)

To empower is to provide opportunity for involvement and input into the conversation; understand what matters most to each person; and have a say into the work being performed.

In Eyewitness to Power, David Gergen writes, “At the heart of leadership is the leader’s relationship with followers. People will entrust their hopes and dreams to another person only if they think the other is a reliable vessel.”

There was a time when leaders thought their role was to exert power over others. No longer. Today’s best leaders recognise their leadership is most effective when they empower others to step up and lead. That’s exactly what the new generation of Gen X and Millennials expect from their leaders, and they respond with great performance.

With leadership comes responsibility. As Clayton Christensen wrote, “No other occupation offers as many ways to help others learn and grow, take responsibility and be recognised for achievement.”

It’s time to lead authentically. You can do so by focusing on empowering others. 

A team of empowered leaders all rowing in the same direction is hard to beat. (2) It is only when we mature and grow as leaders that we realise most people have at least a general understanding of their own performance, successes and future development opportunities. Gaining more context through asking; developing a stronger connection and trust; and setting up the opportunity for more productive relationships ongoing, are all benefits. But, we don’t provide enough guidance through facilitating a discussion to help our employees draw these conclusions. These behaviours are most commonly a result of:

  • Avoidance and fear of our own capability to assist – “I won’t ask the question as I may not be able to do anything with the answer”
  • Prior poor examples, experiences or situations that have created self-doubt
  • Lack of skill and capability to lead
  • Selfishness – simply not caring enough about members of your team to bother (a strong indicator that this type of manager shouldn’t be leading teams in the first place!!)

The desire to build leadership skill takes time…just like every other skill or capability you have developed.

To coach and lead is to empower. But, we all must develop the capability to do this well. The graphic below provides a set of guidelines about how to hold an effective 1:1 and coach accordingly. You will notice there are more questions that statements. Your opinion and view can be fed into the conversation as it develops. Stop and consider whether a question may be more effective and provide greater understanding than a statement would.

Coaching & Mentoring Empower 5 Stages 1017

Giving up control and empowering your team can be a terrifying experience for many leaders. You might feel compelled to watch their every move and peek over their shoulders. But by monitoring someone’s every move, you’re actually impeding his or her ability to grow.

Give your team some space, trust them, and you might be impressed by what they’re able to achieve.

Breaking out of the traditional leader-follower mindset can help you create stronger staff bonds founded on trust, self-confidence, and achievement. When you create room for independent work and decision-making, your team might discover that they’re able to achieve far more than they originally thought possible. Test drive these leadership techniques, and see what your own team is really capable of. (1)

How do you think you might use this information to empower and assist your team?

Resources:

(1) Forbes.com

(2) Huffington Post

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Expectations, Accountability and Leadership

As a leader, you are required to clearly set expectations and standards for your team and each individual employee.
We continue to see that this is an area within organisations that is not as effectively applied as it should be.

   
In our short video you will learn why setting expectations is more important than ever to ensure that your team members are not only aware of but understand what is required and expected of them in their role. We have observed some organisations and leaders who hold their employees to account unfairly, sometimes for things that have not been established clearly or understood in the first place.

 

It is never too late to review where this aspect of leadership sits with you and your team. Maybe it is time to revisit your team’s roles and make sure their is clarity, certainty and context…the risk is minor and the potential returns are significant.
One of our recent blogs on this topic struck a nerve with many of my clients and readers and I felt it necessary to follow it up with additional content: Leadership: Setting Standards and Expectations.

Often leaders are wary of providing their own view as it is seen as subjective. Don’t be frightened to seek and provide this detail. Particularly when respect and trust exist, a simple acknowledgement or recognition of progress can be the difference between an engaged and disengaged employee.

The CoachStation REOWM Model of Leadership and Accountability provides additional context and opportunity to embed a structure that supports and encourages input from your team. Feel free to use the model, share it with your team and let me know how you go. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to drop us a line as we are always willing to assist you and your organisation.

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Coaching and Mentoring – The Need For Accountability

To genuinely succeed in business, leaders must know their role, continuously develop their skills and be constantly supported to achieve the best they can as a leader and employee.

Finding your own development pathway takes ownership, effort and clarity. However, it is not something you need to do on your own. Whether it is developing yourself or your team, coaching and mentoring can be a powerful tool to enable change and growth, both personally and professionally. When it comes to leadership development, however, one of the keys to success is to start developing deliberately and early.

It is problematic to concern yourself with focusing on developing leadership skills after they are needed.

Setting up leaders to thrive through a development program both prior to and during their tenure is key to the success of your leadership team and business. Training in itself is one source of development, however this learning must be supported and reinforced in practice based on individual situations, needs, understanding and capability. Ongoing support ‘makes the learning real’ within the work environment, reinforcing the content and context provided during training.

CoachStation: Coaching and Mentoring Pathway

Image by Nick Scheerbart, Unsplash

As referenced on my CoachStation website, there are many reasons why organisations and people seek coaching and mentoring solutions, with a variety of benefits and outcomes accessed depending on individual needs.

Coaching and mentoring are increasingly sought after tools, accessed by business leaders and organisations eager to dedicate development time and resources at an individual level. Organisations are finding that this form of development is both good for business and employees.

 

Benefit and improvement is seen in areas such as: improved work performance; better client and customer service; increased confidence; effective leadership; enhanced relationships; more robust succession planning and increased goal achievement. Additionally, personal development improves self-esteem, self-awareness and other attributes which provides a stronger platform for you to succeed at work and at home.

When I am coaching and mentoring, the coachee and I work together on both a professional and personal level. It is virtually impossible to delineate between the ‘home’ and ‘work’ person, with situations, personalities, values and other traits being a consistent influence on coaching success. The benefits and rewards are often significant, however being coached and mentored takes effort and accountability. I recently read an excellent blog by Joanna Maynard which highlights the importance of ownership and accountability in self-development:

I like Ben Franklin’s idea about not giving others advice: “Wise men don’t need advice. Fools won’t take it.” I think this highlights a cornerstone of coaching. Unlike consulting, where the consultant is an expert who gathers information and then gives advice, the coach is more of a facilitator. A large part of a coach’s role is to draw out wisdom already inside the client so that the client may discover solutions for themselves.

I often hear people talk about what to consider when shopping for a coach. They may want a coach who has worked in their industry, or in a similar role to theirs, or at their level of management. I don’t think these should be the only—or even the top—criteria.

In fact, one of the most important factors in whether a coaching experience is successful centers on a quality that must be present not in the coach but in the client. Some call it coachability: the client’s willingness to discover their own wisdom and, once found, to act on it.

Effective coaches employ strong skills to facilitate client-discovered wisdom. Coaches help clients focus on their most important area of concern, define what they want, and determine what that looks like. Coaches ask questions that aid the client’s own discovery—questions that expand the client’s perspective and inspire them to take risks. To accomplish this, effective coaches create a safe, trusting environment in which their clients can do this important work. But the client also has a major role in creating this environment. They need to be coachable. Here are just a few ways you can enhance your own coach-ability:

  • Be willing to think and act differently in the future, even if your current ways of doing things have resulted in success.
  • Don’t hesitate to break free from old habits.
  • Take the time, and make the effort, to clarify your values and the parts of yourself you would like to develop.

Trust yourself enough to take action—sometimes bold action—as a result of your newly discovered knowledge. Since being coachable means being willing to be vulnerable, it must be noted that coaching is not the same as therapy. A coach is not going to ask a client to delve deeply into their past personal life. There is a real possibility that this concern stops some people from hiring a coach or using one fully.

Also noteworthy: in coaching, the client not the coach drives the agenda. This means the client doesn’t have to talk about anything they don’t want to talk about. They must, however, be coachable—willing to explore, discover their own wisdom, think differently, and stretch themselves. If they do this, most of the time the reward will far outweigh the effort.

So when interviewing a coach, think less about the coach’s track record and more about whether you want to take this person with you on your journey of growth and discovery.You might be thinking I’m not planning to hire a coach anytime soon—how does this apply to me? Allow me to challenge your question with a few questions of my own:

  1. In terms of your own growth, are you actively creating an effective learning environment?
  2. Are you open to expanding your thinking, clarifying your values, and taking bold action?
  3. If you answered no, what are you going to do about it? (1)

There is a genuine need for the person being coached and mentored to take ownership of their own development. Interestingly, this can sometimes be a bit of a surprise to some coachees. There is no ‘silver bullet’ or fast-tracking, but the benefits can be very worthwhile when accountability and effort become part of the coaching and mentoring process.

There are a few discernible differences between coaching and mentoring, however the core development and outcomes remain consistent. In coaching it is primarily about understanding the coachees situation and then facilitating and guiding to discover potential actions and goals, mostly derived from the coachee. When mentoring, it is often about the mentor providing advice and using their own experiences to help the person being mentored. Slightly different skills and inputs, yet in both cases the focus is on the future aspirations, goals and actions of the person being assisted. In my experience, the most successful coaching and mentoring environments are created when a person:

  • is committed to the program
  • is willing and able to develop trust between the coach/mentor and themselves
  • is committed and works on the content in practice between sessions
  • has a leader who actively supports them in their development
  • recognises that there are no short-cuts
  • understands that coaching and mentoring are just part of the story or journey.

One of the additional paybacks is that as a participant, your own coaching and mentoring skills develop along the way. This improved skillset provides an excellent resource for you to help others in a similar way, whether they are your direct reports, peers or others within or external to the organisation. When applied well, coaching and mentoring can:

  1. Inspire shared learning: Leadership can be lonely. Leaders often feel isolated, unable or unwilling to share information with team members and they feel as though they need to have all the answers, which can be quite stressful.
  2. Encourage people to understand themselves: The CoachStation Coaching model works through the coachees situation, identifying development areas and opportunities for growth and improvement. We use many different tools and resources, all designed as triggers for self-awareness, discussion-points and clarity – targeted and individualised programs focus on the ‘right’ area that will provide the most benefit.
  3. Inspire and enable honesty: In the workplace, employees are often allowed to avoid confrontation. They sidestep challenges, procrastinate and sometimes actively or passively refuse to address things that matter the most – few people like confrontation, but when avoided, problems continue to build.
  4. Support change: During inductions, for newly promoted staff and other business needs, change can be supported through coaching and mentoring – the commitment to develop each persons skills and competencies.
  5. Create opportunity for self-development: Leading to confidence and strength in developing others, a critical step in a leaders development.

When I am coaching the focus of the program is quite often leadership development, however each client has their own unique situation, personality, challenges and other elements to be considered in the process. Experience has shown me that through a structured coaching and mentoring program you will see and feel a difference…and so will those around you.

It is a great time to consider whether you or one of your team would benefit from participation in our coaching and mentoring program. 

I am more than happy to be contacted if you wish to discuss how I can assist you, your organisation or members of your team. In the meantime, reflecting on your own development opportunities and accountability is a great place to start. After all, self-development can only happen because you care enough to take the first (or next) steps.

 

Reference:

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