Developing others through Coaching

As discussed, on the job training and giving feedback are some of the ways to develop others as a leader in a professional setup. Another method of developing others is through Coaching.

what is coaching?

Coaching is helping others to improve performance either by acquiring new skills or a developing new set of behaviors to achieve the desired goal. As a coach, you need to be working with them on their journey till they get their destination.

This coaching requires more of your time and effort compared to other forms of helping. Coaching is more of handholding the person until he/ she learns new skill or behavior.

 For example, if one of your team members is taking up a new role and he /she requires to develop some business skills and you need to be available for guidance till he/she acquires the ability or developing a set of behaviors. Being with them as a guide either physically or emotionally is the essence of coaching.
 
To sum up, as a leader, you can help others to grow by teaching your knowledge, sharing your experience, giving feedback and handholding in the journey until they reach the destination.

 In today’s professional environment, people in every level need some sort of handholding in their journey of growth.

The action is that you need to ask yourselves whether you spend quality time to help others to develop in their profession irrespective of the size of people you are handling. This shift is required for you and your team's growth !!!!

Leading Through Result

Having discussed some insights on personal leadership and leading others, the next step in the leadership development process is “ delivering results.”

Not only in a professional environment, in any transactions, like in customer-seller, employer-employee, sports, politics, what is being watched out for is Impact or result being delivered consistently.

You could be a person with good value systems, self-organized and good at building an interpersonal relationship with others, yet if you lack delivering impact or result, your growth and leadership development stalled.

You might have observed some people with excellent qualification and attitude, but struggles to go up through career ladder due to lack of delivering expected results or impact in their given role.

When we say result or impact, it could be tangible or intangible. However, people are looking for consistent result or impact from you as a leader in a given role or context.

Some of the areas need to be discussed on making an impact as a leaders

1.Making an impact at self-level and others
2.Thought leadership 
3.Managing expectation on Impact or Result
 
Let us discuss those areas in next week.

Have a great week till then!

Leading Others -Improving Communications 2

In continuation of last week discussion about improving communication in the workplace, there is always challenge in dealing with others on two scenarios

1. When you express yourself  to others
2. When you are getting instruction from others

 
When you express yourself to others – you need to apply purposeful communication practices as we discussed last week.

When you receive information from others also, there is a chance for misinterpretation that leads to a problem. Communication experts are suggesting that when the person is giving instruction, he supposed to ask the recipient to repeat what he said and get confirmed. However, in my opinion, it is the choice of the giver, and we cannot expect or influence others. What is possible at your level is that you can rephrase the statement to the giver and get confirmed about your interpretation quality.

For example, when your colleague is asking for some details about the something, say sales data, you can check with him by rephrasing his statement like sales details of the x year and prompt when he wants, the format he wants and so on. Checking back by rephrasing and prompting may likely prevent communication problem at a later stage. Also, this practice will enhance your alertness and proactiveness in the workplace.

Even though ensuring effective communication is two-way responsibility, your extra effort to explain to others in detail and your proactiveness in confirming with others is always under your control, and it will likely improve your communications skill and in turn, your capability to lead others!

Leading others (Improving Communication)

The Fourth factor in strengthening the quality of relationship in a workplace is improving your communication skill.

Improving communication is not about language proficiency, it is all about the clarity of thought and quality of your expression to others to get things done.

Most of the problems in the workplace are due to lack of proper communication between you and others on a two-way basis.
 
Dealing with communication challenges between you and others:

     In the workplace, most of us are struggling to meet the expectation of others or others are not up to our expectation. One of the reasons could be due to our inability to express our requirement very clearly to others. Expressing our requirements is the art of communication and developing this skill is a lifelong effort as we need to deal with different people, with a different situation, and also we are at a different level of maturity.

      One technique that you can use in a professional environment to get the things done is practicing purposeful communication. It is all about communicating with others by explaining your purpose of the requirement rather than merely saying what do you want.

For example, when you ask for any details from your team, you can go one step further by explaining why you need the details, when exactly you need, how this details would be useful. When you use this technique, there is a high probability that you are getting things done, and your relationship with others also improves.

By nature, the human mind looks for reasoning, when you satisfy it, listening improves and in turn commitment also improves. Also when you take a stretch to explain the requirement with details, you are conveying your respect to others, and you will get it in reciprocation.

Just experiment when you are communicating with others to get things done!

Let us discuss some more communication improvement techniques next week!

Leading Others (Connecting with care)

The second factor in strengthening the quality of relationship in the workplace is to connect with care.

Connecting with care means your kindness or how you are showing concern to others when you are dealing with them. The others could be your colleagues, or the people work for you.

For example, when one of your colleagues is undergoing some personal problem, how you are showing your concern or intention to help him is caring or compassion. Most of us display care when others are in trouble. However, what requires in the workplace is during regular time, how we are connecting with our co-employees?

In reality, under normal circumstances, it is not spontaneous for most of us, to connect with others with genuine care. Most of the time, the demonstration of care looks like ritual or artificial. As I read sometime back in LinkedIn survey, 70 % of the people responded that they are not being valued or appreciated by the colleagues.

Why is it sometimes difficult to connect with care?
We may argue that busy or work pressure and so on. From my observation, the reason could be either due to a lack of detailing or not being in the present or more of self-focused.

In my opinion, a simple way to show your care and concern to the fellow human being in the workplace in a day to day interactions is as follows.

• Give respect to others by showing your kindness in your approach and words / Tone.  
• Encourage others to express their opinions & feelings
• Listen without interrupting or tempting to give your advice
• Motivate them to go through the workplace experiences, as you had gone through
• Appreciate when they do good 
• Teach them when they do poor

It just requires awareness, effort, interest on others and also it will strengthen your quality of relationship with others, in turn, it will enhance your leadership capability!

Motivate your team with “Why.”

One of the challenges most of the managers/leaders have today is to keep the team motivated towards their work. Many factors are contributing to people motivational level, and there is no single universal solution which caters to all people’s motivation problem. One of the solutions, as a leader/manager, you can inspire the team is through your communication about their work, effort , contribution to result.

For example, the person has to be communicated why his work is important to the organization in terms his contribution to the organization’s wellness. (Instead of merely explaining his job description of what and how part)

Similarly, when you are asking for some information, you can communicate why this information helps you will motivate them to add value in their working rather than just asking for a report.
Likewise, when you are initiating any new changes, tell them why this initiative is important for them and their role on the result.

Personally, it is working well for me when I work mostly on project based environment where just dictating won’t work.
People are relatively inspired if they knew the purpose of their work and inclined to put extra effort when they know their work can add value to the others. 

Be aware your communication process by explaining WHY part and test it yourself with your team. It may initially require patience and ego aversion . Once you practice, whenever you communicate, you tend to explain with WHY part, and it likely improves the motivation level.

Empathy –explained easily

Most of the communication and interpersonal relationship issues in the organization or in family arise when we are not understanding others from their perspective, from their thinking and feeling. This result in arguments, blaming, abusing and finally results in straining the quality of the relationship.

Everyone has their own stories and hardships. If we understand others, their thinking, their feeling, then our way of looking at them would be different as everyone is undergoing different emotions at any point in time and to deal with them, empathy is required.

I came across a below video which explains the empathy in a beautiful way and I understand that this is being used for educating medical professionals to treat others in an empathetic way …
Pl watch it when you have time …thanks to Cleveland clinics on education series

https://goo.gl/YqsP2H

“Beyond Expression”

Most of us frequently describe the professional boss (even spouse at home!) as “angry person”. We complain as they get angry often.Angry is one of the most labeled emotion which is visible to outside.When we start giving different terms of emotions to the “angry”, we may get different insights.

Sometimes, they get angry because they are impatient with our behavior or results
Sometimes they get angry because they get offended by our words or behavior 
Sometimes they get angry because they frustrated with our behavior or actions
Sometimes they get angry because they annoyed with our behavior or actions

The outcome expression may be angry and look like same all the time, but the reason for the outcome may be different every time.

When we understand other’s intention at surface level, there is less chance for improving relationship or change in self-behavior. If we understand other’s intention at a deep level or different perspectives, there may be a chance to improve the relationship or self-improvement.

It just requires awareness and conscious interest to get the perspectives right!

What does prevent us to express timely?

The value of “life aspects” is only when we nourish its value when it is with us. The “life aspects” could be like health, wealth, knowledge, profession, relationship etc. When something is lost, we realize the value of it or associate it with more memories.

In personal life, we use to take the people relationship as granted, especially with people in our close circles. We tend to value people after we lost them or they moved away from us. After losing, either regret about the inability to nurture the relationship or start valuing by way of praising the positive side of the personalities (as nostalgia rituals!!). Even in professional life, we use to appreciate or endorse the qualities of the person during a farewell session as a routine. The person could have enjoyed the association more with us, if he/she had been endorsed or acknowledged or appreciated for his personality when he/ she were with us.

As life is too short and uncertainty, what does prevent us from nurturing the relationship and expressing timely? We may list work pressure, lack of time, ego etc, but more than anything else, it just needs a deep awareness of the fact of life.

As someone quoted, “Sometimes the words we leave unspoken are the most important ones that should have been said” is much more valid for the relationship especially with our close circles.

Managing Expectation part 8

As we had discussed some of the insights and problems in managing the expectation of others, both in professional and personal life, now we discuss the solutions, approach to manage the expectation as it is difficult to fulfill the expectation always. 

Solution approach to manage the expectation:

1. Taking responsibility  to improve the competency
2. Improving  communication skill / feedback, giving and receiving 
3. Deciding  the choice and accepting consequences

Improving communication skill / feedback, giving and receiving:

      In professional life, we are struggling to meet the expectation of others or others are not up to our expectation is probably due to our inability to express our requirement very clearly… Expressing our requirements clearly is the art of communication and developing this skill is a life long effort as we need to deal with different people, with different situation and we are at different level of maturity.

      One technique we can use in a professional environment is PURPOSEFUL COMMUNICATION. when we ask for any details from team, we can go one step further by explaining why we need the data, when exactly we need, how this data would be useful .By explaining this in detail, we respect others as individual  and there is likely  less chance for  misunderstanding the expectation.

      Also developing the skill of giving the right feedback at the right time to others when things are not going as per our expectation helps to correct the situation as well as to improve the relationship. Similarly, we can develop the EGO free attitude for asking feedback from others when we are not clear on the communication or expectation of others.