Tag: Coaching

Try it on for size

Once you’ve got the hang of gracefully accepting the gift of feedback, then consider a next step of trying it on for size. In the corporate world, we get a lot of “constructive” feedback, which is code for something the feedback giver thinks you aren’t doing particularly well.

The first reaction is the defensive denial, which we’re moving beyond thanks to the practice of graceful acceptance.

The next stage is the long form denial and rationalisation. That’s where we find some other reasons to discard the feedback provided. It’s wrong, misguided or doesn’t match my style. Very rarely that’s 100% true. What’s more likely is that it’s not fully wrong, nor truly correct. It’s filtered through the knowledge and bias of the feedback giver, so it’s right for them, but not quite right for you.

Speaking from personal experience, telling them where they are wrong doesn’t work! It’s a second order failure of the graceful acceptance model, it’s just delayed a bit from the initial sharing of the feeedback.

So, instead of discarding it or telling people they are wrong, what can you do?

Just try it out.

Find some low risk scenarios to trial it. Maybe you’ve been told that your questioning style feels aggressive, but you think you are just direct. Hold off questioning in a big forum like an all hands for a while, and instead try out some softer techniques in a team meeting or other small group.

Go heavier than you feel comfortable with. You are trying this idea on for size, and you know it’s not something you 100% agree with, so it’ll be tough. If you dial up to 11, then you’ve got a fair shake of hitting a 7 or 8.

Think about how it felt, see if you can get any specific comments about it, compare the inside and outside views to find the truth that’s somewhere in the middle. You blend this fresh feedback with your own values and styles, and find the right change for you.

The power move is to then take this change and show it in-front of the person who’s given the constructive feedback. You’ve wrapped it in your own authentic style, so are happy. They see a change, so they are happy the feedback was taken on board.

Finally, if trying it out really doesn’t do anything for you, then you are still able to “return the gift to the shop”, fully aware you gave it a fair shot.

Tags Coaching, feedback

Coaching Leadership

Who is “They”?

An insidious tactic of someone who’s trying to disrupt your priority list is an appeal to “they”. It’s always an anonymous and shadowy group, and all that you can be sure is that “they” are important, and “they” want something.

The only way to defend against this is with a spirit of coaching, and to start following interest. Make sure to stay positive, and start out by discovering who “they” are. Is this group of people important to you and your team? Are they people that you want or need to keep happy, or are they just fishing for resources? Where do they sit in your stakeholder map?

Next up, get into the why. Why are these people coming to you? What’s stopping them going through normal channels or using their own resources to get this thing done.

Consider offering to take up the discussion directly with “they”. It’s exciting to see how often the request is actively coming from the group, versus their name used in vain to add weight to another agenda. Sometimes just asking this is enough to make the request go away entirely!

Once you give in to requests from “they”, then you’ll find your time is ever more devoted to the whims of others. With some gently probing questions, you take back the power to prioritise effectively and deliver more value sooner. Don’t let “them” win.

Tags Coaching, Leadership, They

Coaching Leadership

Ignore It?

It’s a busy world, there’s lots of noise and it’s only getting busier and noisier. If you are getting overwhelmed by notifications, distractions and requests for “a couple of minutes” then you could try out a new technique.

What happens if you just ignore it?

This gives you an opportunity to think about if the information matters, if there’s an action for you to take or if it’s pure noise with no signal attached.

It’s a method to sort items into the Eliminate quadrant of the matrix, the things that you just aren’t going to do.

Once you’ve decided if ignoring something won’t have any major impact, the next step is to figure out the minimum amount of effort to get it off your plate for good. Repeatedly ignoring things is probably not the best strategy in a business context!

If it’s a common but low value question, then write up a document and point people towards that rather than repeatedly crafting responses. If there’s a notification that you’ll never act on, then get rid of it and drop the interruptions.

Pointless meeting? Cancel it. Weekly update that’s never read? Drop it.

As with any new approach, you’ll make some mistakes at first. Start with the slam dunks, then trial it on a few less certain things. If you go a bit far eliminating things, don’t worry too much, and bring them back (improved if possible!).

So, what happens if you just ignore it?

Tags Coaching, Ignore, Leadership, Prioritisation

Coaching Leadership

Storytelling

Getting better at presenting is a common theme for the people I’ve worked with. Running a great session that inspires people, drives an important decision or shares vital information can be a weekly challenge in the corporate setting.

Improving your storytelling is a great technique to take your presentation skills to the next level. Think about the type of presentation you’ll be giving, who the audience is and the one key message that you want them to take away from the session.

You can then craft your presentation around this setup, and structure the story to have the impact that you are aiming for. We’re used to telling stories, and we all understand the structure of a range of different types.

Before diving into the detail, throw together a quick storyboard. You can’t go far wrong with a three-act structure, consider something like:

Layout the problem – Why should the audience care?
Give some options for the solution – What path might we take?
Pick the best one – Resolve the situation.

Flex the structure for your own particular situation and the style of presentation.

Once you’ve got it roughed out, run through it with broad brushstrokes. Think about how it feels. Refine it if you need to.

Now you can go into the details. Grab some relevant numbers and the data that you need. Humanise the story with specific individuals. Showing how an option will impact an entire population may not be as effective a story as showing how it will impact a specific person or group.

Next up, get into the editing phase. You tell a tighter story by cutting out pieces that don’t contribute to the narrative. Similarly you make your presentation stronger by cutting sections that don’t build towards that key takeaway.

Finally, practice the flow until you are comfortable. You tell good stories when you know the points you are hitting well. A well polished presentation will also give you confidence going into the delivery, and that’s a slam dunk boost to a better final outcome.

Tags Coaching, Leadership, Presentations

Coaching Leadership

Selling Yourself

It’s very important to be comfortable selling your achievements. When you have the confidence to talk about what you’ve done and the impact that you’ve had then you are able to put yourself at the front of the queue for future opportunities.

I’ve encountered a lot of people in tech who believe that their achievements should be obvious to others and that recognition should obviously follow. The work should speak for itself.

In an ideal world that may well be true, but in the cut and thrust of modern organisations, this can put you at a significant disadvantage.

This approach will put the responsibility for your advocacy fully into the hands of your manager, which is a risky proposition. The very best managers will work hard to tease out your successes, to formulate them correctly to show the organisational impact and to convert that into fair recognition for your work.

Less good managers, those who are inexperienced, time poor or focused on one of the many urgent fires they need to put out will not do this for you. They might not understand your impact, which is especially likely if they don’t have a similar background. They may have other direct reports they want to spend the time on, or they may just not be great at selling achievements themselves.

So, it’s on you to learn how to effectively sell your achievements in the context of the organisation, to make sure you get the recognition you deserve. As with all skills, it may not come easily to start with, but it’ll get easier with time.

Practice writing and thinking about your specific contribution. Most significant efforts are team based, but if you catch yourself in “we” mode, then refocus to your work. Rather than “We launched product X”, write about what you did. Did you lead the user research, develop a core part of the solution or setup the working environment for the team? How did that contribute to the overall success.
Tie it back to the metrics that are important. Launching products is great, but what needle did it move? Think about the “So what?” and get ahead of that question with the impact.
Make it punchy. If you are selling yourself, then statements around “just doing the bare minimum” are not where you want to be. Pick out highlights.
Cover the right timeline. Achievements from the last week are probably too small, major efforts from before your last promotion are too far back, they’ll have already been taken into account.

Get ideas on paper, then refine them. The right number of achievements and the scope of them will depend on the organisation, but starting with more and cutting down is a good approach. If you aren’t confident at this point, then spend some time with a trusted colleague and get them to review the list. They’ll probably find some improvements, and also some great suggestions you’ve not already covered!

Now is a great time to discuss the list with your manager. Get their context, add their organisational understanding and have them confirm that they agree with your framing of these achievements. With a starting point, it’s a lot easier to discuss and shape, so this is going to work with any decent line manager. Be prepared to take on feedback and further refine your statements at this point.

Now that you’ve got an agreed and up-to-date list of powerful achievements, these become the basis for selling yourself. You can use them in performance reviews, promotion panels and even your CV. It’s a ready made list for your manager, so it’s going to make their job a lot easier when they are asked to highlight high performers or successful people in their area.

By taking responsibility for highlighting your own successes, you make it much more likely they’ll get the recognition they deserve and you’ll jump up in the list of people who’ll be considered for the next big opportunity.

Tags Coaching, Leadership, Selling

Coaching

Go go go!

You’ll see that a lot of the advice that I share is encouraging you to take a first step, to start something off or to build momentum. Why does this keep coming up as a consistent theme, and what are times it’s not a great plan of action?

The majority of the time, it’s easier not to start. You can build and refine plans making them better each time you consider them again. You can find ways to fail and think about all the things that could go wrong. You can convince yourself that now is not the right time, that the situation needs to be perfect before doing something.

This analysis-paralysis can be common in high achievers. If you want to project an image of perfection or excellence, then you might tend towards not moving until you are certain of a perfect outcome.

In practice, you’ll miss out on a lot of opportunities, or spend massive amounts of time gilding lilies that will never be seen by anyone else. By finding a first step, you can start learning. Your ideas collide with the real world, you find out what’s important and you find out what’s chaff.

You might need to get more comfortable hearing “no”, or “not like that”, but that’s actually great feedback on your small investment of time, and it’s building buy-in to the future direction. People are more invested in something that they’ve had input into, so that is priceless value for the cost of taking on a bit of feedback.

Going early gets things done, so when do you not want to do that?

There’s no goal – It’s no good going if you don’t know where you are aiming to get to first
It’s too early into detail – There’s a classic saying in tech circles “We spent twelve weeks coding to save a week on design”. Great action focus and feeling of progress, but too soon to the detail!
It’ll take you the wrong direction – It’s expected that you’ll make your first steps imperfectly, but don’t actively go in the wrong direction.

Once you’ve confirmed you aren’t making these mistakes, then it’s go go go!

Tags Coaching, Leadership

Coaching Leadership

Who are you helping?

It’s easy to get caught up in the day-to-day, chasing the next product launch, acing the next planning cycle or prepping an awesome presentation.

That’s often what some of your goals might look like, get better at doing these things, do them faster or at a higher level.

If you forget the why, then it’s a lot less fulfilling as a journey. It’s also going to be a lot more of a slog. You’ll also find it harder to bring people along with you if you are just focused on the next step.

One great way to reconnnect to the why is to stop and think about who you are are helping. What impact are you having on the world? Are you making life better for people outside your organisation? Are you empowering people you work with to multiply their own impact? Is your work helping someone to achieve their own goals along with your own.

When you bring it back to who you are helping, then it’ll energise your efforts, and those of the people you’re working with.

Tags Coaching, Help, Leadership

Coaching

The Right Tools

When you start being coached, you sign up to beginning a process of lasting and transformative change. You are able to outline your true goals, put aside limiting beliefs and define the steps necessary to achieve great outcomes.

Believing that change is possible, and that you have potential to succeed is just the start of your journey. You need to identify the tools that you already have to hand, and the ones that you’ll need to acquire to bring that success to life.

Positive thinking must be back up with concrete actions to be effective, pairing the two is what brings positive change.

As an example, say you want to become a better leader. It’s a very common desire in people I work with, which might be manifested as a desire to seek a promotion or an expanded role, or they may wish to be recognised as being more effective in the role they are currently in.

Once you’ve reached the goal, reflect and consider what it means in more detail. Do you communicate well with your team but struggle with stakeholders? Is your tactical leadership strong but strategic vision weak? Understand your current reality and you can build your action plan for change.

Once you’ve done this, what tools do you need to support your change? For these types of changes, tools will often be improved skills rather than physical items. You might need to improve how you present information, manage conflict better or improve your negotiation.

All of these can be improved with training and practice. They won’t get better with purely positive thinking, but they’ll certainly improve much faster when you apply a positive mindset to the change.

Bring the right tools to bear and you’ll get the change you want.

Tags change, Coaching, Tools

Coaching

Bust the Jargon

When you are firming up goals and dropping the vague, you also massively benefit from busting the jargon.

The world is overwhelmed by synergy, thought-leadership and efficiencies. There’s still far too many rock-stars and even the occasional ninja in software development.

Most people who’ve been in business for a while will be accustomed to speaking the jargon. It’s easy to throw in a few more words and lose the meaning.

Try stripping it back and saying what you really mean. Take a statement that’s jargon heavy, and restate it into terms that people outside of your direct context could connect to and uderstand.

I’ve done it myself recently, and it can really take a few repetitions to get to something that’s really meaningful. Watch out for loops. It’s easy to replace a bit of jargon with something equally meaningless to someone outside of the bubble.

Imagine explaining your goal to a friend or family member. Would they understand what you want to do, or what achievement you are chasing?

Creating this clarity also lets you see how well the goal aligns to your values. Jargon can hide this, so strip it away and make sure you are doing what really matters to you.

Tags Coaching, goals, Jargon

Coaching Leadership

Accepting Feedback

A really great way to get a better view on the impact your actions have is to practice the art of accepting feedback.

If you are in the habit of blaming the messenger, then pretty quickly you’ll find that no more messages are sent. You’ll lose access to a valuable source of information and be making decisions on much shakier ground.

Of course, this is rarely a problem if the news is good! It’s very much a skill to practice when hearing something difficult, when the impact of your actions is at odds with your intent or when the messages don’t align with your view of who you are.

So, what’s the benefit?

If you accept feedback with poise and grace, then it’s likely that whoever if giving it to you will continue to do so. It builds trust that you can handle difficult conversations and that it’s worth continuing to have them.

Practice this skill as it can be difficult to master. If you’ve struggled in the past, then reflect on the reasons why. Do you leap to your own defence? Are you quick to point to your intent? Do you try to flip the conversation to your own hurt feelings?

To start with, try this. Thank them for the feedback. Then stop, and don’t attempt to address it immediately. If you need to, say that you’ll need some time to reflect on the thoughts they’ve shared.

Feedback is a gift, it gives you more information than you had before, about an area that may be hard for you to see on your own.

In the same way that a pair of socks for your birthday may not be the most looked for gift, so might any specific piece of feedback. You might plan to send those on to the charity shop the next day, but you’ll still thank the giver in the moment.

It’s about building the long term relationship. Remember that and you’ll be learning more about yourself and supercharging your journey of positive change.

Tags Coaching, feedback, Leadership