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| Quote of the Quarter | "The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too high and falling short, but in setting our aim too low, and achieving our mark."
Michelangelo |
| 5 Great Questions |
1. What should I be observing that I am not?
2. What can I say that will open up the conversation?
3. Am I playing a victim or an owner in this matter?
4. Am I more connected to or alienated from my job?
5. What am I rubbing off on others? |
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Hello!
Lisa Haneberg, here. Welcome to this quarter's edition of Lead Well. I welcome feedback, so please drop me a line with your thoughts. And if you think the newsletter offers value, please pass it along. |
| Network Coaching - Coaching Up and Down | |
 In October, our new book called Coaching Up and Down the Generations will be available, along with a companion training program for managers, trainers, HR professionals, and leaders. We are now accepting bookings for classes, so let us know if you would like us to work with you to build network coaching capabilities in your organization. In the mean time, here is a conversation starting article that you can use to discuss multi-directional learning in your workplace.
Network Coaching
With four generations (Traditionalists, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials) working side-by-side in our increasingly global work places, knowledge transfer, team development, and collaboration are a greater challenge. To help organizations build strong coaching and mentoring practices, we need to ensure that employees learn from each other, up, down, and sideways in the organization. We call this network coaching.
Do your leaders seek coaching from new recruits? Do middle managers seek coaching from both their bosses and their employees? How effective is the peer coaching that occurs in your workplace? There are things we can do to enable and catalyze network coaching including:
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Build network coaching into every training class.
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Ask different types of questions during staff meetings.
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Creating a culture that puts diverse individuals into meaty conversations with one another.
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Teaching network coaching and learning skills.
These are just a few examples. Think about network coaching from two perspectives - as a learner and as a coach. How can you ensure that you are learning from a variety of people in the organization? What three habits will best enable your learning? Then, how can you help everyone build good multi-directional learning habits?
One last thought: being open and ready for coaching from all directions requires a mindset thick with coachability and humble confidence. We are all beautifully flawed professionals and can learn something useful from even the most unlikely or annoying sources - if we allow ourselves. |
| Does Your Team Have a Clear Charter? | |
One of our clients asked us for a team charter template. They want to use it to ensure that team meetings are focused on the most important outcomes and that all members are clear about their role on the team. Do you have the same challenges and goals? If so, download our team charter template here.
And even if your team is well established, use this template and take 10 minutes at your next team meeting to ensure clarity. |
| The Connectivity Index | | |
How connected (versus alienated) are your employees? If you don't know, this might be one of the more important places for you to evaluate and measure. Connected employees are more engaged and productive. Their efforts are put to good use and in support of organizational goals. Alienated employees might be no less engaged, but their energies aren't likely in support of the company's efforts. Alienated employees can become leaders of destructive movements or increase team drama and distraction.
Our 35 years of experience helping organizations build and maintain positive employee relations environments has honed our abilities to observe and measure connectivity and alienation. We measure the connectivity index as part of our engagement survey and teach participants skills that improve connectivity in our operations management training programs.
If you do not feel like you know how connected or alienated your employees are, think about the following contributing factors:
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The strength and openness of relationships between employees and management and within teams.
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Perceptions of trust, fairness, favoritism, and consistency.
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Actual levels of consistency and fairness.
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Participation in daily continuous improvement and problem solving.
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Open and generous communications.
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Visibility of and comfort with senior leadership.
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Feelings of optimism, security, and job confidence.
- Ability to grow and be challenged at work.
Some of these elements deal with basic needs and some determine whether employees feel cared for, challenged, and valuable (think Maslow's Hierarchy). It is important to understand both types of influencers because something fundamental, like concerns about favoritism, can nullify your positive efforts to increase employee engagement and intrinsic motivation. We have a client who does MANY things well, but whose organizational culture suffers from low levels of trust and discomfort with candor. Unless they attend to the trust issues, many of their other efforts will not payoff. |
| OD TEAM UPDATES - WHAT'S NEW | | |
Presentations
Lisa Haneberg will be giving keynote presentations at the following public events:
September 29th - October 1st - Virginia State Annual SHRM Conference.
New Programs
We have the following new training programs available:
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| The High Impact Middle Manager | | |
The new versions of our middle management book are out and available. We offer both a private sector version of the book and a new version for public sector managers.
The High-Impact Middle Manager: Powerful Strategies to Thrive in the Middle can be picked up at Amazon.com here.
High-Impact Middle Management Solutions for Today's Busy Public-Sector Managers can be picked up at Amazon.com here. |
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Thanks for reading Lead Well. If you have questions or would like to learn more about our products and services, please contact me at 513-721-6611 or lhaneberg@managementperformance.com.
Sincerely,
Lisa Haneberg
Vice President and OD Practice Lead, MPI Consulting |
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