Leadership Coaching | Self-Management | Capacity Development
Organisational progress, success and resilience are more likely when work in the business (doing the work) is sufficiently balanced with work on the business (improving how we work). But in reality, that balance is rare. This discussion describes common signs of that imbalance, its common causes, and what might be addressed to resolve them. Work in the business focuses on the Primary Task - the matters necessary for the organisation to stay in business. Work on the … [Read more...]
When the Operations Manager, my mentoring client Julia, met two of her team to address a complex performance incident, I was present in an observer role. She'd estimated the meeting would take 15 to 20 minutes. Ben and Allen (no actual names used here) responded well enough to Julia's genuine curiosity, her clarifying questions and occasional paraphrasing to test and demonstrate her understanding. 10 out of 10 for that: she'd been working with me to improve those practices and was doing … [Read more...]
“Yes, of course . . “, is the usually anticipated and almost automatic response when someone comes by with a query, a problem or a story introduced by that question. And why not? A refusal might be seen as inconsiderate, or result in missing some vital or titillating information. Why not? Because to do so is often a small sign of bigger problems. Reacting to this kind of everyday stimulus automatically, either from FOMO (fear of missing out ) or anxiety about how others might view us, is an … [Read more...]
Three sharply-dressed passengers sitting nearby on an early morning flight were sufficiently loud, articulate and interesting for me to overhear their conversation. Mid-level managers in a high-tech industry, I figured. Over the next 50 minutes they repeatedly agreed they'd be more effective and happier if their staff, colleagues, senior executives and clients would behave better, just get out of their way, or be different people. Definitely a co-ruminating group: regurgitating and re-heating … [Read more...]
Ideally we'd agree with all parties on answers to this question at the start of any significant relationship, before the first inevitable important disagreement. Attempting this while arguing is like trying to fix an aircraft while flying it. Without that agreement, these nine strategies can help limit the risk of damage when we're up to our armpits in challenging conflict. They are for most people easier to grasp than apply, because acquiring and entrenching our current behaviours has taken … [Read more...]
Conversations are the barometers of organisational health but personal objectivity about the quality of our contributions to them can be like asking a fish to describe water. Mostly they're a constant, unnoticed system in which we conduct interpersonal relationships. And it's never just us involved: we inherited many of our practices uncritically from our families-of-origin as our parents inherited similarly from theirs. Because they may be based on redundant or unhealthy patterns, the topic's … [Read more...]
When I asked how she tended to give feedback to staff, the CEO told me, “Oh, I’m very direct. They always know where they stand with me. I tell them straight.” In her mind there was no contradiction with what I’d witnessed at her meeting less than an hour earlier. She’d told the 40 staff attending, “Some of you were late for this meeting, though you’ve known about it for weeks. It’s disappointing and disrespectful behaviour. You need to do better.” At this there was much eye-rolling and … [Read more...]
To what extent is boredom and dissatisfaction behind picking fights? If this writer is correct or if what she suggests is right sometimes, we ought be able to make very useful shifts in our responses to much of others' "difficult" behaviours: annoyance, antagonism, hostility, nastiness, unkindness, spite, meanness, malice, malevolence, plain old bad-temper and other forms of poking sticks at people. I believe she is right and that the insight, coupled with another simple shift in … [Read more...]
A merger-in-progress of two large service organisations is struggling to achieve its intentions. What’s happening has important lessons for everyday leadership and self-management practices. The distinctly different organisational cultures are not a natural mix; each has a long history of operating idiosyncratically in separate areas, serving distinctly different demographics with strong local loyalties and attachments, and of growing their own unique responses to local problems over many … [Read more...]
