Monthly Archives: February 2017

Do This to Become a Better Leader and Coach for your Employees

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Becoming a better leader and coach for your employees will make managing easier, less stressful and more profitable. This means asking employees what they can do to help and contribute rather than telling them what to do. This might be a transformation in your leadership style.

 

In my recent interview with Valerio Pascotto we discussed what holds leaders back from taking a coaching style of leadership approach. Below is the interview video with Valerio and here is link to the article we discussed. He mentioned that what holds leaders back from becoming a coach rather than a director is habit. To change a habit, you need to focus on a new behaviour and do that repeatedly for 30 days.

 

 

Valerio mentioned that if you find yourself procrastinating on the action that will create the new habit, you need to break that action down even further. And if you still are not acting you might need to question how much value you place on the outcome.

 

become a better leaderAfter my interview with Valerio I had a coaching session with the client. During our discussion, I asked what his main concern was right now in his area of responsibility. He told me what it was and I suggested that he meet with each of his managers and share his concern. I suggested he ask them what they can do to help him with his problem. This can turn into a goal that he could use to conduct regular follow-up coaching sessions.

Share a Problem or Concern

become a better leaderRallying people around a key concern or project could really boost teamwork, increase engagement and empowerment, and have people feel that they are making a difference.

 

I suggest you do the same with one of your direct reports with whom you already have a comfortable relationship. Think of a major project or concern that you need help with. Meet with the employee and share the project or problem you are working on and why it is important, how resolving it or improving the situation will affect the company and you personally.

 

This is the fourth principle from the book Zapp! the Lightning of Empowerment, which I have referred to in previous videos and articles. The principal is “Ask for Help and Encourage Involvement”.

 

You may find it difficult to do this especially if you have been used to telling people what you want them to do. How do you shift so suddenly to a coaching style and asked people questions and ideas to help you with the concern or problem?

 

Valerio suggest that you take an easy step by simulating a coaching conversation with a colleague or a coach to practice the approach. This will help ease your nerves and eliminate the fear taking the wrong approach. Once you improve your comfort level, you can then have the coaching session with the employee.

 

Try this out and give me feedback in the comments section. Good luck with becoming a better coach leader.

 

Interview with Valerio Pascotto on Coaching Employees to Build Trust & Better Performance

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This interview with Valario Pascotto by Stephen Goldberg covers the approach to leadership best used to engage and empower employees. Valario explains the coaching style of leadership and what stops leaders and managers from adapting this style. He provides insight as to how to change and lift the barrier to becoming a coach leader rather than a more autocratic type of leader. Here is the link to the article mentioned in the video “Redefining Accountability: Creating A Workplace Consonant With Human Values” by Valario Pascotto, Jules Goddard and Tim Gallwey.

Link to Valerio’s websites: http://www.igeos.net/, http://illustra.tv/

 

 

The Importance of Planning for a Manager

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The importance of planning for a manager goes without saying. Managers need to strike a balance between job skills and people skills. Planning is a job skill that is essential for managers to both master and devote adequate time.

 

Planning includes staying abreast of trends, analyzing market conditions, reviewing statistics and various key performance indicators amongst other things.

 

Personally, when I became a manager I didn’t really know how to plan. I had been a salesman and although planning is an important part of a sales role, I tended to be more action oriented and thus spent my time chasing business. I could’ve been more effective as a salesperson if I would’ve planned better. As a manager, I continued the same way until I realized that it wasn’t okay working and I needed to learn better planning skills.

importance of planning for a manager

Approach to Planning

There are different ways a manager can approach planning. He can do most of it himself and communicate his plans to his team members so they can be aware of what is expected of them relative to the plan. This is a top-down approach where the manager makes most of the decisions and the employees act according.

 

Another way is to seek the input of team members and then combine that with the information the manager may have collected to formulate his plans. He then would communicate his plan to the employees.

Employee Participation

For managers who want to stimulate teamwork, engage and empower employees, a participative approach is best. This style of leadership has employees highly involved in the planning process including researching, analyzing, problem solving and discussions.

 

The challenge of this approach for managers is time, training and resources. Employees would need the time away from their basic tasks to do whatever research is required and attend meetings for discussion. Essentially this approach means delegating some of the management responsibilities to team members. Training people on some of these responsibilities is required and does take time. But in the long run this approach would be highly effective in terms of building autonomous teams, employee engagement and performance.

Take Stock

It’s important to assess your situation to determine how you can improve your planning skills. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses of planning for a manager is essential. Do you find yourself lacking time to plan because you are addressing day-to-day problems? This is a common situation and often hard to resolve because the cause stems back to planning itself and not having taken the time to prevent the day-to-day problems that keep arising.

 

How aware are you of different styles of leadership and how they affect teamwork, employee engagement and performance? What is your current style of leadership? What can you do to have employees participate more in the planning process?

 

These are just some questions that you can answer and develop a plan to improve your planning skills and involve employees in the process. Thus, you will improve your planning skills and engagement and performance of employees at the same time. It’s worth the effort!