Coaching technical experts who also manage a business
June 5, 2018 § Leave a comment
I’ve coached a number of people over the years who have both been expert practitioners in their field (entrepreneurs, artists, technical specialists…), and who have also been responsible for the running of their business (directors, partners or equivalents).
Whilst their coaching has at times focussed on the development of their craft or expertise, most often the work has come under the heading of being an effective contributor to running the business. How to be a shaper and leader of strategy, for example, or how to manage relationships with colleagues, or how to take charge of their own future within the enterprise.
The refining of their technical expertise, their craft, whatever made them create or join the business in the first place, has often happened intuitively, outside the coaching and instead through their daily practice, almost without them noticing. And there’s no surprise here, as of course this craft is what lights their fire! It’s where they have chosen to put their heart and soul, and where they find meaning in work. So they already have effective strategies for developing this part of themselves; and these strategies are the reason they became experts.
But few go into business solely in order to go into business. Few gladly choose the path of people management. Few have set themselves the primary lifetime goal of effective delegation or increased productivity, or minimising the effects of stress.
So these latter topics are the ones which sometimes turn up in coaching, because for these experts they are not the arena of intuitive skills. They instead can be experienced for some people as arenas of uncertainty, of no right answers, or of inexperience, where a false step might lead to further complications.
In short, they are arenas where conscious attention has to be paid to ensure the experiences are unpacked and the learning converted into more effective future action. And that is why there are so relevant agenda items for coaching, in support of the growth of the whole person as an effective practitioner.
This is a copy of an article which also appears within my LinkedIn pages.
The 13th Fairy – a stakeholder analysis fairytale for our times
December 5, 2017 § Leave a comment
The news that Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party have (perhaps temporarily) delayed the Brexit negotiations is the latest version of a story right out of Grimm’s fairy tales.
Some versions of the Grimms’ story begin with an invitation sent to 12 fairies to each give a blessing to a new-born princess. A thirteenth – and uninvited – fairy, hearing what the others are up to, turns up in a rage and delivers a curse rather than a blessing.
This 13th fairy is sometimes depicted as an evil fairy; but according to Peter Hawkins of CSTD, from whom I’m proudly borrowing the idea for this blog, this fairy isn’t evil. They’re just mad at being forgotten.
The result: they turn up late, and make trouble – because they were forgotten in the first place.
So when I heard the news this morning, my fanciful mind wondered if the DUP might be feeling like a thirteenth fairy.
And the link to coaching?
When we’re working with teams, or unpicking complex ideas, or making decisions which affect a range of stakeholders, it’s not always easy to identify all those who need to be involved.
So what might be the implications for coaches, supervisors and for those involved in strategic planning processes?
- When supervising a coach who is coaching a team: invite them to map the team on a flipchart, and as a coach be interested in who turns up ‘late’ in the story; and ask, Who else isn’t on the flipchart yet? How are they connected to the other people on the flipchart? What message are they bringing?
- When providing conflict coaching: asking who else is there in the conflict – perhaps someone on the sidelines?, or who might appear less visible, who could offer another perspective or who might have skills or resources to help bring about resolution.
- When doing a stakeholder analysis with colleagues, asking again and again: Who else have we forgotten? Who else has an interest in what we’re deciding? If we were to look back to today, who might we realise needed to be inside the tent with us?
- When coaching someone who is facing a dilemma or a difficult decision: which opinions haven’t they paid attention to yet? Is there any voice inside them which hasn’t yet been heard? (this might be the voice of the outcome or some deep yearning which they haven’t yet dared to admit to themselves). What other options are available, in addition to the possibilities they’ve already thought of?
Why might your organisation’s culture eat your strategy for breakfast?
October 26, 2017 § Leave a comment
Dear Anne,
I mentioned the phrase Culture will eat your strategy for breakfast in our coaching session last week, and you asked for more details.
I hope the following is helpful?
“Culture eats your strategy for breakfast” is attributed by Peter Hawkins to Peter Drucker – even though apparently neither of them can find the original quotation!
On the surface, the phrase simply suggests that it’s irrelevant how much time and care an organisation pours into creating a strategy: it will be powerless against the prevailing internal culture, which will have far more impact on future behaviour.
For me there are also some deeper truths within the phrase, with implications for other realities of organisational life.
First to say, perhaps, is that we can’t expect a strategy-shaping process on its own to change the culture. An organisation’s culture is a product of history, attitudes, beliefs and behaviours. It is a long-enduring reality. Culture is what is surprising or confusing to us when we’re a new-starter – and, infamously, culture is what we then are blind to after three months in the job.
Culture begins to shape itself the moment the organisation begins. If you’ve ever been involved at the start of an organisation or group, you may have witnessed this process happening around you.
(For more information, Edgar Schein wrote some of the most influential and enduring ideas on understanding organisational culture.)
The ‘joke’ is that it takes seven years to change significantly a culture. I don’t think that’s necessarily true in every case, but there’s no doubt that an organisational culture can endure even if the majority of staff leave and are replaced by new-comers.
Second, your strategy is enacted by, or mediated through, the culture. Culture is day-to-day, and every day. It regulates default behaviours and decisions. So if the strategy document imagines radically different behaviours, instead what will happen is more of the past. People will say ‘yes’ and act ‘no’.
This is why a good culture is such a prized organisational goal.
The reality, however, is the culture is what the leadership collectively behave (another Peter Hawkins quote). So changing a culture often requires an appreciative or solutions-focussed approach: identifying which behaviours do we want more of, or which of the staff are holding the attitudes or values we want everyone to have; and then naming and affirming those and giving opportunities to copy them. That’s why story-telling can work well in culture-change. And woe betide the leadership team when they fall back into the old ways without accountability or explanation: contradictions between espoused values and actual behaviour are never more obvious (and damaging) than in organisational life.
Lastly on culture, a quote from the business world: your competitors can copy everything except your culture. Companies – and not-for-profits – which can flourish in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambivalent world, have the characteristics for survival. Your culture collectively dictates your resilience, your flexibility, and your ability to innovate.
And whilst survival isn’t everything, it does at least offer more choices.
With best wishes,
John
Leadership as hosting
October 18, 2017 § Leave a comment
Have you ever thought of leadership, or leaderful behaviour, as a hosting activity?
If you’re hosting a meeting, you might find yourself:
- Providing conditions and group process for people to work together
- Ensuring the resource of time (the scarcest commodity of all)
- Keeping bureaucracy at bay
- Reflecting back how people are doing, and insisting that everyone – and the system itself – creates space for reflection and learning
- Co-designing relevant measures of progress
And from a wider perspective, I’m finding that more and more people are fulfilling their leadership roles in organisations by acting in similar ways. They’re giving up trying to manage away instability, and instead to create an organisation which can survive and thrive within its unstable world.
If this sounds relevant to you, you may be interested in Meg’s article “Leadership in the age of complexity: from hero to host”. It is full of really practical, hands-on advice for those who bear responsibility for supporting people or organisations through times of complexity and difficulty.
“From hero to host”?
It can be tempting in these times to yearn for an old-fashioned hero to steer us through. You know, the hero in the movies who rides up on a horse just at the moment of crisis. They have the guns on their hips and all the answers in their saddlebag. They’re great at issuing orders and saying they’re keeping control of everything (despite what everyone else knows).
Well, Meg offers some advice here.
“It is time for all the heroes to go home, as the poet William Stafford wrote. It is time for us to give up these hopes and expectations that only bleed dependency and passivity, and that do not give us solutions to the challenges we face. … It is time to face the truth of our situation – that we’re all in this together, that we all have a voice – and figure out how to mobilize the hearts and minds of everyone in our workplaces and communities.”
And so what is better, other than more command and control? To build buy-in through collaboration; to reward people’s yearning for meaning and possibility in their lives and work; to be a holding vessel, hosting conditions for working and learning together.
And if we’re working with people who have given up, or who are feeling discounted, ignored or invisible: let’s use our deep sincerity, and our convening skills, to open up invitations to re-engagement.
(More practical details for leadership as hosting are in the article; and http://www.artofhosting.org/what-is-aoh/methods/ has some relevant processes too.)
And what if we think we’re heroes too? Our good intentions, and our dreams for community and planet, drive us to work and work; and somehow if we just worker harder and smarter, we’ll breakthrough and everything will be sorted.
Well, there’s some final advice for you from Meg: it’s time for the heroes to go home!
And, to notice that actually we’re not alone, we’re surrounded by those who want to help and who aren’t anyway looking for heroes.
They might, instead, welcome a good host.
Meg’s extensive collection of articles are free for download at http://margaretwheatley.com/library/
Leadership in these times:
A day 20 years in the making…
September 15, 2017 § Leave a comment
“Good leaders find it increasingly difficult to use the processes and practices that worked well in the past to evoke people’s inherent motivation, commitment, and creativity. Yet if we notice who we’ve become, we can recommit to who we choose to be as a leader for this time.” Meg Wheatley
Lots of exciting outcomes for the Meg Wheatley event in November
September 13, 2017 § Leave a comment
www.megwheatleyinlondon2017.eventbrite.co.uk
With my coaching colleague Penny Kay, I am co-hosting a rare one day event with Margaret Wheatley on 9th November 2017 in London.
Some of you have been asking about outcomes for the day. You will be leaving the seminar with so many thoughts and feelings and aspirations I am sure, but here is what Meg has said recently about what to expect:
This is a time of profound disruption, when the best laid plans of leaders can be swept away by both man-made and natural disasters. Added to this uncertainty are the increasing levels of distraction, time compression, anxiety and stress that have distorted people’s lives and attitudes. Good leaders find it increasingly difficult to use the processes and practices that worked well in the past to evoke people’s inherent motivation, commitment, and creativity. Yet if we notice who we’ve become, we can recommit to who we choose to be as a leader for this time. Contemplation, learning from experience, and thinking are the keys to assist us in reclaiming leadership that re-engages people and creates possibility even amidst disruption.
Outcomes from the day:
1. To develop increased awareness of who you’ve become as a leader, given the pressures and stresses of this time
2. To commit to leadership that best serves people at this time, i.e. trustworthy, ethical, discerning
3. To experience the power of contemplation and time to think
4. To commit to instituting time to think, both personally and for your team or organization.
Please contact me for more information; to book your place click this link: www.megwheatleyinlondon2017.eventbrite.co.uk
International participation at the upcoming leadership workshop with Meg Wheatley, 9 November 2017
August 16, 2017 § Leave a comment
As befits someone with such a global reputation, we’re delighted to see the widening international participation at Meg Wheatley’s Leadership in these times workshop in London on 9 November.
We’ve welcomed recent bookings from continental Europe, expanding both the insights available and the potential outcomes for this day-long inquiry into leadership: how has our own leadership has changed in the past two decades; and what form of leadership are we called to?
For more information, please contact me or visit https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/leadership-in-these-times-with-meg-wheatley-tickets-35507976313
Accredited coaching news
December 6, 2016 § Leave a comment
During 2016 I took the Academy of Executive Coaching’s Practitioner Diploma, and on successfully completing the programme I am now an Accredited Associate Executive Coach.
The AoEC is recognised as a coach training institution by the International Coach Federation, the European Mentoring and Coaching Council, and the Association for Coaching.
Leadership and followership in a Quaker context
December 1, 2016 § Leave a comment
This is a guest post of mine on Craig Barnett’s TransitionQuaker blog.
Though it’s written for a Quaker audience I’m hoping it may offer general thoughts about the challenges of good leadership – and of supporting those in leadership roles. For some Quakers, the idea of leadership is challenging; and as for needing at times to be good followers and being disciplined as part of a group together – well, that can be a challenging idea too!
The full text is below; many thanks to Craig for hosting me. Click here for a longer, referenced article from which the text below is drawn.
Two taboos? – leadership and followership
This is a guest post by John Gray.
I am wondering if we can become more conscious and celebratory of the many expressions of leadership we see around us – and can find within each of us. I like to think about Quakers being good followers (where appropriate) as well as being open to offering good leadership. Those in leadership roles, and those who are not in formal roles but who are otherwise taking initiative amongst local Friends, certainly need support for themselves and in how we respond to them.
For some, the phrase ‘leaderful behaviour’ might sit more comfortably than any claim to leadership; and who would not welcome a resurgence of leaderful behaviour amongst Friends. I hope that contemporary Friends are open to seeing the need for celebrating and nurturing leadership amongst us; leadership grounded in our tradition, our service and in our contemporary witness, and imbued with a strong dash of 21st century savviness and realism.
A historical note of how early Quakers understood leadership
Stuart Masters at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre has commented that church leadership as understood by early Friends was at the same time both charismatic and provisional. Charismatic in the sense that any call to leadership should be understood as coming from God and not via human agency or organisation. And provisional in the sense that the calling might be revoked, or ‘be time-limited and/or focused very specifically on a particular issue or task’. Hence, as Stuart Masters identifies, Friends’ emphasis on discernment of rightful calling and authentic authority; and that acting faithfully was held as more important than achieving specific outcomes.
We can see the enduring success of these early leadership initiatives in the fact of the survival of Quakers through the centuries, with some organisational structures and processes created 350 years ago still serving useful purposes; and that a reliance on waiting in – and acting from – the light within remains a central description of current Quaker practice.
Leadership in contemporary British Quaker experience
“I suppose leadership at one time meant muscles; but today it means getting along with people.” (Mahatma Gandhi)
Quaker leadership in modern times is under implicit and sometimes even explicit criticism. The reasons for this may be debated, but may in part have to do with the rise of individualism in society at large, or an imbalanced reliance by contemporary British Quakers on the primacy of individual discernment above the submission to discipline and testing by the worshipping group (for more on this, see Craig’s post in 2014). Sometimes Friends seem driven automatically to kick against even authentic expressions of leadership or leaderful behaviour – the so-called ‘tall poppy’ syndrome.
We are called to speak truth to power, but I may erroneously assume that I have all the truth and ‘the other’ has all the power. If the other is another local Friend, that criticism can be a devastating experience. Our over-busy lives do not help; and there are many roles which need to be filled. At local and area meeting level in Britain Yearly Meeting, is it going too far to describe contemporary Quaker leadership at times as being leadership by the available – or, by the least unwilling?
But we have many resources to draw on for leadership, even if we do not remember them. Amongst other characteristics for leadership, George Lakey identifies the non-distinction between holy and secular ground; that as a priesthood of all believers we are all expected to make a contribution; we have a history of inspiring action; and that mentoring and community lie at the heart of supporting each other (Powerful beyond measure: Trusting the call to leadership. 2011 William Penn Lecture. http://vimeo.com/22094824, at 13:35 – 33:35 minutes).
In a beautiful phrase, Lakey describes leadership as ‘taking initiative in relationship’, implying both the quality of relationships we need to foster; and that we are called to initiate, not just coast along. And enthusiasm for servant leadership by some Friends is welcome – so long as the actual practice of servant leadership is not passive-aggressive manipulation, nor a mock-humble and unassertive denial of the responsibility to initiate and guide! If modern Quakers are ambivalent about the exercise of leadership within our worshipping communities, how much more unpalatable might be the proposition that at times we need to be good followers!
Yet the theories of followership have much to offer us. We can be usefully interested in the characteristics and behaviours of individuals acting in relation to leaders, recognising that the terms ‘follower’ and ‘leader’ refer to roles not people (and note here the echo of early Quakers’ understanding of leadership). Followers and leaders can switch between roles when tackling different issues or over time. They can share a common purpose. Their roles are relational and dynamic in nature. Leaders and followers interact to co-construct leadership, followership and outcomes.
How different the experience of leadership if followers are active not passive, and if they bring independent, critical and yet supportive thinking. Well might Ira Chaleff praise the leader’s courage to be less dominant and a follower’s courage to be more dominant (though we might prefer the term ‘influential’ rather than dominant; Chaleff, The courageous follower: standing up to & for our leaders. 2009). The courageous follower needs to be willing to assume responsibility, to serve, to participate in transformation and change processes when needed, to challenge the leader, and even to take a different stand in answer to their own moral values.
Supporting those in leadership roles
If we regard Friends in leadership roles, or demonstrating leaderful behaviour, as acting in the ministry, then at the very least we have our Quaker processes of upholding each other in worship and in practical ways. Threshing meetings, meetings for clearness, and nominated support groups, may prove useful mechanisms for some of those in leadership roles. Oversight, coaching and mentoring are available too; as are peer processes such as collaborative inquiry approaches, action learning sets, and self-and-peer review.
So where is all this leading?
Firstly, for sure, I yearn for a reclaiming and celebration of leadership as an essential element of Quakerism practice today. Leadership is not a dirty word, and need not be automatically equated with abuse of power or a trammelling of others’ freedoms.
Secondly, we should embrace the concept of good followership, as a gift that Friends can offer each other and their worshipping groups.
And thirdly, we need those who are willing to offer leadership or to learn its ways, and to prayerfully discern the opportunities for leadership to which we are called. I am particularly interested in the engagement of young Friends: in these uncertain times, passion and fervour are as much our allies as grey hairs and wise souls. In reality, of course, our ageing demographic means much is also required of those who are no longer young. Equipping for Ministry, and the Young Adult Leadership Programme, are exciting initiatives which over time will help change the Society’s attitudes to leadership; similar programmes are also running elsewhere in the Quaker world. In essence, we will do well to create routes into leadership roles for members of our community, and educate them in the soft and harder skills of leadership, collaboration, conflict resolution, globally responsible practice and values-in-action.
John D Gray
If this blog piece has caught your attention, you may be interested in some reflective questions:
· Where do you prefer to place yourself on the spectrum of leader – follower?
· Does the phrase ‘leaderful behaviour’ carry meaning for you (in comparison to ‘leader’)?
· What further thoughts or actions might this piece encourage for you?
Leadership – self and peer development
September 12, 2016 § Leave a comment
Imagine you’re with your work colleagues, during a day-long annual looking-back-looking-forward review and planning session together.
In turn, each of you takes a few minutes to speak, reflecting on your professional performance over the last year or so, referring to your values, the nature of your commitment to the work, your achievements and challenges, and your hopes for the period ahead.
You’re listened to carefully by your colleagues, after which each of them takes time to affirm what they’ve seen of your participation in the team over the year, and to validate the claim you’ve just made about yourself – including pointing out where they think you’ve undersold or oversold yourself!
The spoken contributions come from places of inquiry and curiosity, not blame or condemnation.
The atmosphere of the session is calm, reflective, honest – and safe enough for everyone to feel they can challenge themselves and each other. The outcomes: deeper trust, greater self-awareness, and a greater sense of accountability to and reliance on each other.
Sounds implausible? Could any team trust each other so much to run such a process, let alone being interested enough in each other to do so?
Well, recently I had the privilege of supporting a senior leadership team to take themselves through this process. And they were in the public sector, amidst all the pressures of delivering a service in a highly-regulated environment.
For the past two years I’d watched them work out for themselves, and for the teams they managed, what they believed was needed in terms of greater leadership and leaderful behaviour within the service. They had communicated this to their teams, and endeavoured to live out this new form of leadership, which prioritised accountability, greater autonomy, stronger accountability to self and to others, and a much fiercer loyalty to the overall vision and values of the services.
The leadership development interventions I devised with them, and my coaching, were aimed at supporting them fulfil the resulting commitments they had made to each other and to the staff. The Head of Service, fully part of the process, had inspired them and supported them over the previous few years, to reach a place where they now knew for themselves the importance and the genuineness of the work in hand.
This form of self review which they were now engaged in, with feedback from colleagues or peers, is a powerful alternative or addition to formal appraisal and 360 feedback processes. It requires a good measure of individual skill and confidence to participate in, and enough levels of trust (though there are introductory processes for less-resilient teams as a way of helping to build deeper trust over time).
The specific opportunities of the process are four-fold:
- Participants are encouraged, within the scope granted by the organisational context, to set their own standards and aspirations – knowing that these will be heard and tested by their peers
- Participants lead the processes of assessment, again knowing that gaps between aspiration and achievement explored from the perspective of how things could be better in the future
- Participants learn from this self-awareness how to identify, choose and practice new behaviours and set new, more stretching, standards
- Accountability is inherent throughout the processes – aspirations for the future will be remembered, and each can hold themselves responsible for upholding (not destroying) their colleagues over the coming months, on the basis that best performance is what’s needed to enable the team as a whole to succeed.
If any of the above has stirred your interest, do be in touch to share your experience.
John Gray 