‘Tis the Season – Reflecting on What You Learned

Welcome to December, friends!

How exciting that we have made it to the last month of 2017! What a ride it has been.

We’re not sure if you’ve ever dabbled in project or program management, and either way we’ve got a best practice from some of Coaching Right Now’s PM’ing team this week!

At the end of each project or program we love to capture our “lessons learned”. What are those things that either worked amazingly well that we’d LOVE to make sure we do again? Or, what are those things that did not work so well that we hope to never experience again?!

So for all of us, as we are closing up 2017 and moving into 2018, what if we were to take some time to think about our personal lessons learned?

Need some questions to get you started? Try these!

• What are three things you are most proud of this year?
  • What made you proud of those things?
• What is one thing that if you could do differently you would?
  • What is it about it that you’d want to change?
• What are two things that surprised you about yourself, and would you want to do those things again?
• What are two things that gave you a lot of energy this year?
• What are two things that took away a lot of your energy this year?
• What is something I wish I could have spent more time on this year?

Hopefully these will give you a starting place!

“The future depends on what we do in the present.” – Mahatma Gandhi

‘Tis the season for reflecting on what you learned!

How to Be a Great Manager if You Tend to See the Glass Half Empty but Want to Inspire Your Team

Thank goodness it is FRIDAY!

Everything that could have gone wrong this week – did!

But, let’s face it, right now – this feels like every week. Things keep going wrong. Deadlines keep getting missed. And your team, OH YOUR TEAM.

You know they’re trying – and that they need some inspiration but… when you keep seeing everything that is going wrong it is a challenge to give your team what they need!

This week we have Coach Keith Edmunds with us to share how to inspire your team when you are seeing the glass half empty.

Take it away, Keith!

“There are many approaches to inspiring a team when your leadership tendency is to see the glass half empty. Often, inspiration will come with:

 

1. action
2. transparency and sharing the challenge together
3. fun!

One of the best ways to make this real is in the form of an activity. Try to facilitate the meeting (not lead it!), where your team self-identifies the “half empties” and the “half fulls”. There, you can openly discuss the attributes, challenges, and possible outcomes of each style.

This is a great place to inspire your team not only to understand, but also to experience transparency through sharing the challenge together!

How do you add the fun in? Maybe expand the exercise by coming up with fun ways to “call it out” when negative or “half full” statements come out from anyone in the team, not just you. Practice this throughout the day, week, and month to continue the awareness journey.

Another approach is to notice the language you use. As you deliver the “glass half empty” messages, try to substitute words that are more inspirational – for example: “our poor performance “ with our “challenge” or “opportunities.”

Thank you, Keith!

Let us know what works for you or some of your best tips!

Your Team is Great… How Do You Let Them Know?

Pressure. Deadlines. Meetings. More meetings. New ideas. Client calls. The list goes on.

Your team works so hard, pushes through all of it with a smile (well, most of the time!), and continues to perform fabulously.

In the craziness of the business, it’s hard to find the time to tell your team more than “great work!”. We have Coach Kathryn Haber with us this week, giving some tips on how to show your team you appreciate them.

Here what Kathryn has to say:

I show appreciation for my team by getting to know each person on my team as people. I know their styles – perhaps their Myers Briggs (tag site) and their Top 5 Strengths from the StrengthFinder (tag site) – and leverage this information in working with them.  

 

I know how they prefer to communicate and try to adjust my style accordingly. I celebrate our [my team’s] successes and am understanding of mistakes – we are all human.

 

We will learn from our mistakes and do better next time. 

 

I make sure we have frequent team meetings and 1:1 meetings and set clear expectations. I ask about their aspirations and provide them with opportunities to be successful. I remove roadblocks for them. 

 

We get together quarterly for team building and work session meetings. We get together out of the office quarterly, too. 

 

I give my team members the benefit of the doubt because I know them as people and know their intentions. I advocate for my team in other parts of the organization. 

 

Lastly, I tell them frequently that I appreciate them, individually and as a team.  I give them specific, concrete examples of their success and the impact they have had on the team and the business.  In addition, I ensure that our team members have the opportunity to share feedback with one another.  We all have development plans in place to help us be better professionals and team members.  As a result, we all improve our effectiveness and this ultimately betters the business.

Wow, Kathryn! I feel inspired just by hearing what you do! Don’t you?

We’d suggest you choose one of these things to start with!

So, what are you going to do this week to inspire your team?

Social Media, Switching Jobs, and Your Team?

As your company continues to grow and hire new staff, you recognize a trend: your company is getting younger. More and more of the staff you walk by in the hallways (of course sending a slight smile their way because you don’t want to be that guy) seem to be millennials, and a lot of them are now on your team.

And they give you a run for your money! Calling online conversations being “social”, shopping more online than in stores, feeling like they should always be considered for the next promotion, and if they aren’t moving up the ladder quickly enough – switching jobs to get to the job title/pay they are looking for (all before age 30!).

Millennials are the future of your organization, but sometimes it feels like you’re at a loss on how to connect with them at a base level.

If this is you, listen up! We have Coach Mary Murphy joining us to bring a little more insight into how to connect with (and motivate!) a younger generation.

Take it away Mary!

“One key tip that millennial team members tell me that motivates them is – ‘Ask us what we need to perform at our best and then engage us in making this happen.’  What they say frustrates and de-motivates them is when they are asked for their input by the team leader or their manager and then there is no follow-up!

 From an article in the Globe and Mail (Canada’s national newspaper) entitled “Five Things I Learned from Millennials“, the author Nicole Gallucci shares and expands upon top recommendations:

1. When in doubt, Google it
2. Seize the moment 
3. There’s no excuse for not connecting
4. Call it as you see it
5. Do what you love or don’t complain

I love tip number #1 and often recommend it to the individuals I coach.  For example, when I hear, “I want to increase my executive presence”, I ask the individual what skills they would need to develop in order to achieve this goal.  Often the coachee is unsure of what executive presence really means or looks like for them.  So, we check Google to learn more about the behaviors and skills which help to successfully demonstrate executive presence.”

Thanks for the tip, Mary!

Try out some of these tips for connecting with millennials and let us know how it goes!

PS. We’ve got some millennials too, so we’ll let you know how these tips work for us!  🙂

Connecting with Your Team

Patience is wearing thin in meetings, pod-mates are starting to bicker, and a lot more coffee has been flowing from the office coffeepot than you’d like to acknowledge.

We’ve all had those days/weeks/quarters – you can tell your team is tired.

There have been pressing deadlines and long days and exciting things happening in the business, but you can tell that something more is needed than just thanking your team for all their hard work.

This week we have Coach Bonnie Davis with us to share a tip on how to help motivate a tired team.

Take it away Bonnie!

“One tool that I have found works well to motivate a team that has a high degree of trust with each other and their manager is an exercise called “Hard Truths.”   This can be led by the manager or a neutral facilitator.

 

I would open the exercise by first acknowledging the current work environment, share how it’s been impacting me personally, also share what I see as the positive aspects, and then ask them to share their “hard truths” about why they are tired.  

 

Hard truths are facts that are difficult that we deal with. and though we often can’t control them, we can do our best to lessen their negative impacts. 

 

The goal?

 

To give the team the time and space to explore what is difficult at work so they feel someone is listening and cares, and then they can figure out how to move past it and support each other.   

 

Each person should share something that is difficult in the current environment, such as customer demands, organizational change, new leadership, too many projects, and so on. There are no “wrong answers” — everyone’s perspective is valid. 

 

Then, the group should select 2-3 of these “hard truths” as focus areas that they feel could make the greatest impact once solved. 

 

Finally, they should do a brainstorm on 1-2 solutions for each focus area. 

 

The manager should close the meeting by once again acknowledging everyone’s hard work and where it’s paying off, reiterate his or her support, encourage each team member to follow up directly if they’d like to talk about it some more, and then set a follow up meeting for about thirty days later when the group can hold themselves accountable for the actions and see how they’ve progressed.”

 

Thanks, Bonnie!

What a great suggestion on how to encourage you team to talk about what has been tiring and brainstorm solutions on how to move past it together.

Try this with your team and let us know how it goes!

Whispers, Facebook, and Motivation?

Smack in the middle of your team-building outing you’ve been planning for your team for weeks (and worked your butt off to get funding for from your boss) you see Sally whipping out her cell phone and hitting the ‘FaceBook’ icon.

You look around the room and see Travis yawning, Dan whispering to his pod-mate, and Chris smirking.

OUCH!

One of the worst feelings is when you can tell that someone you are around is bored. And when you can tell your team is bored? Even more painful.

Now what?

This week we have Coach Rich Grenhart, Psy.D. with us to tackle this challenging issue.

Dr. Rich, I have a disengaged team, what is one tip you would give to motivate them?

Diagnose before you act!

Do not assume you understand the root of your team’s disengagement.

Speak individually to each team member to get a clear understanding of what underlies the lack of team motivation.

Use this information to craft a strategic intervention.

Connecting with each team member, individually, will give you extra insight into why each person is dis-engaged and how this is affecting you team as a whole.

Why are you a manager?

Let’s think back for a minute… why did you become a manager?

To…

• Have more responsibility
• Make decisions that affect a Team
• Lead people
• Care about or see someone else succeed

Sometimes, life and responsibility take over and the reason we originally started gets lost in the shuffle.

In the midst of life, it’s hard to refocus and be inspiring to others. And, sometimes it’s hard to even know where to start.

But a great leader can’t be a leader without their team.

For the next couple of weeks we will be hearing from some of our Coaches on their fabulous suggestions on how to motivate different types of teams!

Sometimes, starting out simple is the best way to start. So, this week we suggest to pay close attention to each of your team members and encourage one success that each one accomplishes!