What We’re Learning from Coaching Teams and Leaders
Dear Colleagues,
Over the last few months, Engage Delaney has been supporting large and small teams with team and executive coaching. This is really exciting and gratifying work for us as we bring together our engagement, facilitation and change management experience in a relatively new service offering. While each team dynamic is unique, there are a lot of similarities in the challenges they face. Here are three observations and our question to you is:
Do any of these show up on your team and how do you navigate the challenge together?
Theme #1: Time Poor // Reactive Attention
Teams have a lot coming at them, particularly when we consider potential layoffs and downsizing in the current economic forecast. This means there could be fewer people doing more work. Our experience has been that people want to do a good job, they want time to focus on the work and not just be reactive, but they don’t feel like they have the time to be focussed and their attention is always being commandeered to the urgent or pseudo-urgent. If this sounds familiar, maybe the following coaching questions can help you figure out a way through to more focussed work.
Coaching questions:
What are the barriers to being more focussed at work? What can you do individually to create more focussed work opportunities? What could you do as a team to help each other with more focussed work? What do you need from management or leadership to support more focussed work?
Theme #2: Lack of Clarity on When is Good Enough is Enough!
We are fortunate to work with some very committed and hard-working teams who take pride in what they produce, but there’s a catch. When you are a committed professional and take pride in your work and your deliverables, you can chase perfection. The issue with perfection is that it generally doesn’t exist; the volume of work required to be completed doesn’t allow for perfection, and perfection can lead to diminished returns on investment. For example, if a report is to your mind “perfect” but it took all week, the question is: “What didn’t get done?” If this feels like it might apply to your team, here are some coaching questions to consider.
Coaching questions:
What deliverables are of the highest priority and need to be at 80% or higher for quality? Is quality objective or subjective? How will we know when something is “good enough”? Who has the responsibility for communicating clarity on the requirements and how is that shared and tracked by team members?
Theme #3: I am paid for 40 hours a week, but I think about my job for 70 hours a week
A recent study found that 62% of Canadian employees are feeling burnt out and it’s getting worse. There are different continuing factors that can lead to burnout; some have to do with work, but some also have to do with parenting, or caring for older parents and close family members. Couple work and life stress with a deep pessimism about the economy and it’s no wonder people are feeling burnt out and that work is taking up real estate in their mind when they are off the clock. The challenge is that constantly thinking about work leads to burnout, disengagement and weaker performance when at work. If this is you or your team, here are some coaching questions that might help to navigate the conversation.
Coaching questions:
What routines, rituals or protocols would help me confidently leave work at work? If I need to bring work home, what boundaries or “rules” will I create for myself to contain work? As a team, how can we support each other in establishing and maintaining healthy boundaries with work time?
Coaching teams and executives is something we are really passionate about because we see the positive shift it can make in not only the individual professional, but in the team and broader organization. There are no quick fixes, but there are some low-hanging fruit that people and teams can usually find to tweak how they work with significant results.
Good luck to you and your team and our wish for each of you over the summer is some time to rest and come back to work refreshed, whether it’s a major vacation or shorter weeks when you can.
Sincerely, Jessica