Coaching at Home

A Coaching Approach with Children

Children are natural experimenters. From the moment that a baby first picks up a toy and puts it in their mouth, they are experimenting with the world.

Sometimes these experiments can be, or seem or be, downright dangerous, and sometimes they’re just inconveniently messy for parents. Experimenting at an early age is a fundamental way in which babies and children learn about the world.

As a parent, if you can overcome your concern about the mess, and give your children the freedom to try things out, you are well on the way to adopting a coaching approach to parenting.

WARNING!

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Obviously, some things are intrinsically dangerous.

For example, there’s no way that any of us would allow young children to experiment with playing in the road, or with electricity, without supervision. But with supervision, most things are possible.

For example, do your children want to know what damage a car can do? Put a cardboard box out, and let them push toy trucks and cars over it, then ask them what they think a ‘grown-up’ car might do instead, and might do to other things.

Feel the fizz of a battery on a wet finger and discuss how much more power there is in the light socket.

Lessons learned this way are quickly and efficiently absorbed, much faster than just saying ‘No, don’t play with that, it’s dangerous’.

The important thing for you as a parent to remember is to think ‘Well, OK, why not?’, rather than ‘Oh no, it will be so messy’.

Clothes and children can be washed and floors can be cleaned. And once you’re involved, the issue is ‘Ask, don’t tell’. By all means suggest an activity, or what to look out for, but your role is chiefly to ask the questions that will guide their thinking, not to tell them the answers.

Good coaching questions include:

• “What happens when you do x?”
• “How does it feel when you try y?”
• “What do you think will happen if you do z? Try it and see”.

And it’s not just physical experimentation, either. Young children are also exploring the world of emotions, albeit not always smoothly. A coaching approach can help them to think through how others felt about something that they did or said:

• “How would you have felt if he/she had done that to you?”
• “How do you think he/she feels?”

Self-Coaching

Being able to take a coaching approach with yourself can be important for your personal development and help to boost your confidence.

Probably the most important part of self-coaching is giving yourself the option to fail.

It is easy to fall into the trap of not trying something new, or different, because you are worried you will fail. Try to be open-minded and prepared to try things out, treating them as positive learning opportunities even if they don’t work out in quite the way that you expected or wanted.

To make sure that you do this, you might find it useful to remember these ‘top tips’:

• Be curious – keep wondering where you want to go, and what you want to achieve.
• Set goals for yourself, and make them specific and positive. For more on this, have a look at our pages on Strategic Thinking and Action Planning.
• Listen to yourself. See how you talk about where you are, or what you want to achieve, and challenge your language. Do you think in terms of ‘I would have liked to, but…’, or are you more positive? Decide if your language is helping you to achieve or not and, if not, change it.
• Set yourself challenges and see what happens. Treat them as learning opportunities and chances to get some feedback.
• Give yourself time for reflection. See our page on Reflective Practice for more.
• Put yourself in the position of others and see the world from a different perspective. Ask yourself ‘How might they feel about this?’ See our page: What is Empathy?
• Seek and accept support from others. Sometimes it’s hard to reach out and ask for help, but look at our page on Transactional Analysis for more about adult-adult interactions that offer support in a ‘grown-up’, reciprocal way.
• Believe in yourself. See our page on Self-Motivation for more.
• Remember that you're in control. Nobody else controls you. Give yourself permission to take charge of your own life.

Think of yourself as CEO of your own life.

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Ask yourself how much power you have given your shareholders (which might include children, partner, boss, and others) compared with the power that you have yourself.

Consider whether that is the right balance, or whether you want to take some of the power back.

As the CEO, you have the ability to do that if you want.

Resource: skillsyouneed.com

Coaching Skills

Internal vs External Coaching

There are two main types of coaching relationship. The first is with an external coach who is not part of the organisation or line management structure in any way. The second is an internal coaching relationship, where a manager or leader acts as a coach for their team. The two require different ways of working as coach, although they share some similarities.

• In an external relationship, the coach has no subject expertise and no vested interest in the outcome of any decisions, except insofar as the person being coached is pleased with the outcome of the coaching. They also have no preconceived ideas about the person being coached: they probably don’t know them in a work context and have no idea of the quality of their work performance.
• In an internal relationship, however, the coach may well have a strong vested interest in the quality of the decision-making, as well as knowing a lot about the subject. They may well know the person being coached very well: they may have been managing them for some time and have some preconceived ideas of the likely outcomes of coaching, which may not necessarily be positive.

The internal coach, therefore, has to work on several issues that the external coach does not encounter:

• Putting aside any preconceived ideas about the person and their effectiveness. Try to focus on the coaching process, and what you learn about the individual through that.
• Parking your own subject expertise, and helping the individual to develop their own solutions. One good way is to make an effort never to offer a comment, but only ever to ask open questions (so not ‘Have you thought about doing x?).
• Not leaping to solutions but, instead, allowing the person being coached time to explore the problem in their own way. Again, continuing to ask questions about the nature of the problem, or what might be a possible solution, is a good way to do this.
• Being aware of assumptions made, whether about the person, the process or the subject. See our page: The Ladder of Inference to help you recognise and avoid some of the pitfalls.

Intention and Meaning

We mentioned the danger of making assumptions, but one particularly key area of communication, especially for coaching, is the way that you say something. This often determines whether the immediate response is hostile or receptive.

However, the meaning, or intention, behind your words is also important.

Consider some examples:

What was said	What was meant
You won’t mind if I leave early, will you?	I’m going to leave early even if it’s inconvenient to you
Would you mind if I left a bit early?	I’d really like to leave early, but I won’t if it’s inconvenient
Shall I drive?	I’d like to drive
Do you want to drive or shall I?	I am entirely open to suggestion on who is going to drive
Will you drive?	I don’t really want to drive

It’s not just your intended meaning, either, but also what someone hears as your intended meaning.

For example, if you say “I’d like to leave a bit early today, is that OK with you?”, you may be genuinely concerned that it might not be convenient for your colleague.

However, your colleague may hear “I’m going to leave whether that’s OK with you or not, and you’ll just have to stay here until late if necessary”.

It might, therefore, have been better to have said “I’d really like to leave early today, but I won’t if you need to leave too. If you’re OK with me going early, can I repay the favour another day and you can have an early evening then?”

Why is this difference important in coaching?

Coaching is all about a supportive, permissive relationship. The coach does not tell, but seeks permission to make suggestions and ask questions, respecting the person being coached.

There is a world of difference between saying:

I’ve found that a coaching session often works best if we’re off-site, so would you be OK with going to a café?

and

We’re going to meet off-site, because that always works better.

The first gives the person being coached an option to say no.

The second says “I know what’s best, so just do it”. It does not show respect to the opinion of the person being coached and is unlikely to lead to a productive coaching relationship.

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Other Key Coaching Skills and Attributes

Great coaches tend to have a number of key skills and attributes.

• Coaches generally have high emotional intelligence: they’re good at understanding and relating to people, and they’re interested in people. You have to genuinely want to help others develop to become a really good coach. It’s no good just paying lip service to the idea.
• Coaches need to be able to show empathy and be good at building relationships, including building rapport.
• Good coaches also have strong communication skills. For more about developing communication skills in general, see our pages: Communication Skills, and Developing Effective Communication Skills.
• Coaches are good at gathering information and then clarifying it for the person being coached. They generally have strong listening skills, including active listening.
• They don’t jump in straight away with the answer but rather make sure that they’ve fully understood the issue by reflecting and clarifying.
• Similarly, coaches have usually taken time to develop strong questioning skills. It’s been said that coaches should never offer opinions, but instead only ask questions to guide the person being coached through the issue. This is similar to the role of a counsellor.
• Coaches and coaching leaders give space and time for people to try things out. They don’t get over-excited or angry about mistakes, instead they concentrate on how to recover the situation calmly and with the involvement of the person who made the mistake. They are skilled at providing feedback and using tact and diplomacy.
• Coaches may also use various models of learning and thinking, such as Myers-Briggs Type Indicators, and have training and expertise in various tools and techniques, for example, psychometric testing or neuro-linguistic programming (NLP).

Resource: skillsyouneed.com

What is Coaching?

The Differences Between Teaching, Coaching, Mentoring and Counselling

Although teaching, coaching, mentoring and counselling all share some key characteristics and skills, they are nonetheless quite different and it’s important to be aware of the differences.

Teaching and Training

Teaching and training involve an expert teacher who imparts knowledge to their students.

Although the best teachers will use participative and interactive techniques, like coaching, there is very definitely an imbalance of knowledge, with the teacher as expert knowing the ‘right answer’.

See our page: Teaching Skills for more information

Coaching

Coaching involves the belief that the individual has the answers to their own problems within them.

The coach is not a subject expert, but rather is focused on helping the individual to unlock their own potential. The focus is very much on the individual and what is inside their head. A coach is not necessarily a designated individual: anyone can take a coaching approach with others, whether peers, subordinates or superiors.

‘Coaching’ is one of the essential leadership styles identified by Daniel Goleman (see our page on Leadership Styles for more and take our 'What Sort of Leader are You?' self-assessment to find out how well-developed your coaching leadership style is).

The key skill of coaching is asking the right questions to help the individual work through their own issues.

For more on questioning, see our pages on Questioning Skills.

Mentoring

Mentoring is similar to coaching. There is general agreement that a mentor is a guide who helps someone to learn or develop faster than they might do alone.

In the workplace mentors are often formally designated as such by mutual agreement, and outside of an individual’s line management chain. They usually have considerable experience and expertise in the individual’s line of business.

A mentoring relationship usually focuses on the future, career development, and broadening an individual’s horizons, unlike coaching which tends to focus more on the here and now and solving immediate problems or issues.

See our further pages: What is Mentoring? and Mentoring Skills for more information.

Counselling

Counselling is closer to a therapeutic intervention. It focuses on the past, helping the individual to overcome barriers and issues from their past and move on. Here, the focus may be either internal or external.

For more about the role of the counsellor, see our pages: What is Counselling? and Approaches to Counselling.

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The differences between these various 'learning methods' can be summarised as:

Learning Method:	Coaching	Mentoring	Counselling
The Question:	How?	What?	Why?
The Focus:	The present	The future	The past
Aim:	Improving skills	Developing and committing to learning goals	Overcoming psychological barriers
Objective:	Raising competence	Opening horizons	Building self-understanding

Based on the work of: Clutterbuck, D. & Schneider, S. (1998)

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Conclusion

The term ‘coaching’ means many different things to different people, but is generally about helping individuals to solve their own problems and improve their own performance.

Resource: skillsyouneed.com

Conducting a Meeting

The Role of the Chairperson

In a more formal meeting, the chairperson will outline the purpose of the meeting and remind members why they are there. 

In such a meeting there is little need to refer to this procedure as this is implicit in the established etiquette, namely:

• The chair controls the meeting.
• All remarks are addressed through the chair.
• Members do not interrupt each other.
• Members aim to reach a consensus.
• A vote is taken if consensus is not reached.
• The majority wins the vote.
• All members accept the majority decision.

This is one model but alternative models may be adopted.

When discussion is underway, it is the chairperson's responsibility to ensure that it continues to flow smoothly by involving all members present and by not permitting one or two people to dominate the meeting.  Summarising by the chairperson during meetings can:

• Indicate progress, or lack of.
• Refocus discussion that has wandered off the point.
• Conclude one point and lead into the next.
• Highlight important points.
• Assist the secretary if necessary.
• Clarify any misunderstanding.

The chairperson should pace the meeting, ensuring it runs to time.  If the planning has been properly executed, this should not prove to be a problem. 

At the end of a meeting, the chairperson should remind members what they have achieved and thank them for their contributions.  Finally, the time and date of the next meeting should be arranged.  Again this is one common model for effective meetings, successful outcomes can be achieved in different ways with different strategies for different purposes, so adapt as appropriate to specific situations.

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The Role of the Members

While it is the role of the chairperson to run the meeting, the participation of all members is also fundamental to the success of the meeting. 

To ensure an effective meeting, all participants should:

• Undertake any necessary preparation prior to the meeting.
• Arrive on time.
• Keep an open mind.
• Listen to the opinions of others.
• Participate.
• Avoid dominating the proceedings.
• Avoid conflict situations.
• Avoid side conversations which distract others.
• Ask questions to clarify understanding.
• Note down any action agreed upon. (See: Note-Taking)
• After the meeting, undertake any agreed action and brief others as appropriate.

See also: The Role of the Secretary and How to Write Minutes.

Why Meetings May be Ineffective

There are many reasons why meetings are not effective, some of these include:

• The meeting is unnecessary and revolves around discussion of trivial issues, thus wasting members’ valuable time.
• The meeting lacks a clarity of purpose, i.e., the aims and objectives are not clearly defined.
• Inappropriate style of leadership, i.e., the chairperson dominates and closes down or disregards other contributions. See our page: Leadership Styles.
• The chairperson exercises little control and allows one or two members to dominate the proceedings.
• The meeting is too large thereby limiting the flow of discussion and preventing all members being able to contribute.
• Decisions emerge that are not truly representative.
• Problems are talked about rather than being talked through.
• Decisions are delayed or not acted upon.
• No clear-cut decisions are made.
• Minutes are inaccurate or seen as being manipulated by the chairperson or secretary for his/her own purposes.
• The wrong people are present, thus preventing the meeting proceeding effectively, e.g., those present have to refer back to another person and are therefore unable to comment effectively.

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Summary

There are many types of meetings and many reasons why meetings may be ineffective. 

For meetings to be effective, participation is required from all those present.  The key skills of interpersonal communication and listening are important.

To ensure the success of a meeting, good preparation is essential and the role of the chairperson is paramount.  If these conditions are met, then all participants should leave the meeting feeling a sense of accomplishment, not as if their time has been wasted.

Resource: skillsyouneed.com

Transactional Analysis

Understanding Transactions and Creating Win-Win Situations

When interacting with other people, one of the most important skills is to be able to create win-win situations, that is where both those involved have genuinely gained from the transaction. Almost everyone knows how to ‘win’ by playing games, beating others and creating a ‘win-lose’ situation, but making sure that both of you ‘win’ is much harder.

To start to consider how to do this, we need to discuss a bit of psychology, and in particular, Transactional Analysis. Thomas Harris’s book ‘I’m OK – You’re OK’ is the fundamental text, written very much from a clinical perspective. However, the thinking works for all transactions.

Transactions are the everyday currency of human interaction. In its most simple form, a transaction is ‘I do something to you and you do something back’, where ‘doing’ may include speaking.

Transactional Analysis is based on the understanding that everyone has three parts, Parent, Adult and Child.

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• The Parent is the learned element, and is basically the unfiltered recordings of the first five years of your life. It can be thought of as what your parents taught you, consciously or unconsciously, in that time. It may include safety information (“Don’t run across the road!”), beliefs (religious or ‘life’ systems), and rules for life.
• The Child is the ‘felt experience’, or the remembered responses of the ‘little person’ to the adult world, again in the first five years. In general, the Child is about emotion and feelings, as these are the predominant response in small children.
• The Adult is the thinking or reasoning element who examines the Parent and Child data and decides whether it is right or not based on reality and experience.

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Transactional Analysis Skills

The basis of Transactional Analysis is to identify which of the three parts, Parent, Adult or Child, is involved in the transaction, and then take appropriate action.

How does the identification work?

• When the Parent is involved, there are some give-aways in the language used, with common phrases being ‘never’, ‘always’, ‘should’, and ‘ought’, especially when these are used without considering whether the position is sensible. There may also be gestures such as finger-wagging and head-shaking.
• The Child often manifests in a very emotional response. Verbal clues include use of childish words and phrases such as ‘I wish’, ‘gonna’, ‘don’t want’, and ‘won’t’.
• The Adult manifests through fact-finding. The basic language of the Adult is a series of questions: who, what, why, where, how?

With this is mind, you can start to identify who is involved in your day-to-day transactions, and you can also start to see how you might change the world, at least a little.

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Consider someone complaining about the level of service they have received.

Suppose they say "It’s just not good enough. Something must be done!" This is probably their Parent talking, because it’s very indignant.

The person on the end of the complaint has a choice about who responds:

• Child: It’s not my fault, I had nothing to do with it. It’s no good telling me.
• Parent: It’s disgraceful, isn’t it? It’s the computer, you know.
• Adult: I do see your problem. What can I do to help to put it right?

The Child response is likely to lead to more Parental criticism, and possible shouting, as the complainant tries to make clear that they don’t care whose fault it is, they just want something done!

The Parent response is unlikely to be very helpful in terms of getting something done or the complainant moving away swiftly. In the best case, the two will find themselves agreeing that it is awful, and something really ought to be done about it, probably at considerable length.

The Adult response, on the other hand, moves the complainant to an Adult position. It quickly ascertains what will solve the problem and make them happy again.

Life Positions

The next part of Transactional Analysis is the identification of life positions.

Harris believes that from a very early age, a child accepts the position that their parents are ‘OK’. Parents spend a lot of time telling children not to do things, as a normal part of helping them grow up into a civilised and functioning adult.

The 'Adult' in a child logically decides that he or she must be ‘Not OK’.

So the basic position for most people from childhood is ‘You’re OK – I’m not OK’. Harris stresses that this is not about whether you had a happy or unhappy childhood: this is a life position which everyone reaches. It leads the child to do things to please the ‘OK’ people, so that they will earn praise and rewards, and feel better about themselves.

Many people never move beyond this basic life position. They continue, all their life, to seek out rewards and praise from those who are bigger or more important than them, to validate themselves, and make themselves feel more ‘OK’. However, their fundamental position does not change: they still feel, deep down, that they are ‘Not OK’.

Harris believes that it is possible to decide to move to a new position, that is, to ‘I’m OK – You’re OK’, by the use of the Adult. Only the Adult can decide on and maintain this position. This means that if your Child or Parent get ‘hooked’ by something, you may well find that you have returned to the old position of ‘I’m not OK’, and will need to consciously engage your Adult to get you out of it.

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Using Transactional Analysis to Create Win-Win Situations

It is hopefully clear that in order to want to create true ‘win-win’ situations, that is where both of you have genuinely gained from the transaction, you need to start from a position of ‘I’m OK – You’re OK’. If you’re starting from ‘I’m not OK’, then you probably want to either:

• Score points off other people so that you win and they lose and you feel more ‘OK’

or

• Lose yourself, so as to confirm your ‘Not OK’ position.

This is where Transactional Analysis is really useful in practical terms. If you can identify that your own or someone else’s Child or Parent is involved, you can engage the Adult instead, and return to the ‘I’m OK – You’re OK’ position again.

In the example above, for instance, if the person dealing with the complaint had given the Child response, the complainant could have replied as Adult, and said ‘I understand that it’s not your fault [responding to and reassuring the Child], but is there anything that you can do to help me?’ Thus inviting the other to say ‘Yes, I can give you a discount on a future purchase’, or ‘What would you like me to do?’ or even ‘No, I’m afraid not, I have no discretion over this, but I can get someone more senior to talk to you if you like’.

In each case, the Adult invites an Adult response from the recipient, once the Child has been reassured that they have been heard.

Resource: skillsyouneed.com

Giving and Receiving Feedback

What is Effective Feedback?

For our purposes, we will define effective feedback as that which is clearly heard, understood and accepted. Those are the areas that are within your power. You have no control over whether the recipient chooses to act upon your feedback, so let’s put that to one side.  

So how can you make sure that your feedback is effective?

Develop your feedback skills by using these few rules, and you’ll soon find that you’re much more effective.

1. Feedback should be about behaviour not personality

The first, and probably the most important rule of feedback is to remember that you are making no comment on what type of person they are, or what they believe or value. You are only commenting on how they behaved. Do not be tempted to discuss aspects of personality, intelligence or anything else. Only behaviour.

2. Feedback should describe the effect of the person’s behaviour on you

After all, you do not know the effect on anyone or anything else. You only know how it made you feel or what you thought. Presenting feedback as your opinion makes it much easier for the recipient to hear and accept it, even if you are giving negative feedback. After all, they have no control over how you felt, any more than you have any control over their intention. This approach is a blame-free one, which is therefore much more acceptable.

Choose your feedback language carefully.

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Useful phrases for giving feedback include:

“When you did [x], I felt [y].”

“I noticed that when you said [x], it made me feel [y].”

“I really liked the way that you did [x] and particularly [y] about it.”

“It made me feel really [x] to hear you say [y] in that way.”

3. Feedback should be as specific as possible

Especially when things are not going well, we all know that it’s tempting to start from the point of view of ‘everything you do is rubbish’, but don’t. Think about specific occasions, and specific behaviour, and point to exactly what the person did, and exactly how it made you feel. The more specific the better, as it is much easier to hear about a specific occasion than about ‘all the time’!

4. Feedback should be timely

It’s no good telling someone about something that offended or pleased you six months later. Feedback needs to be timely, which means while everyone can still remember what happened. If you have feedback to give, then just get on and give it. That doesn’t mean without thought. You still need to think about what you’re going to say and how.

5. Pick your moment

There are times when people are feeling open to feedback and times when they aren’t. Have a look at our page on emotional awareness and work on your social awareness, to help you develop your awareness of the emotions and feelings of others. This will help you to pick a suitable moment. For example, an angry person won’t want to accept feedback, even given skilfully. Wait until they’ve calmed down a bit.

Feedback doesn’t just happen in formal feedback meetings.

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Every interaction is an opportunity for feedback, in both directions. Some of the most important feedback may happen casually in a quick interchange, for example, this one, overheard while two colleagues were making coffee:

Mary (laughing): “You remind me of my mum.”

Jane (her boss): “Really, why?”

Mary: “She gets really snappy with me when she’s stressed too.”

Jane: “Oh, I’m so sorry, have I been snapping at you? I am a bit stressed, but I’ll try not to do it in future. Thank you for telling me, and I’m sorry you needed to.”

Mary had, quite casually, raised a serious behavioural issue with Jane. Jane realised that she was fortunate that Mary had recognised the behavioural pattern from a familial situation, and drawn her own conclusions.

However, Jane also recognised that not everyone she would ever work with would do the same. Having been made aware of her behaviour, she chose to change it. Mary had also, casually or not, given feedback in line with all the rules: it was about Jane’s recent behaviour, and so was specific and timely, and showed how Mary perceived it. It was also at a good moment, when Jane was relaxed and open to discussion.

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Receiving Feedback

It’s also important to think about what skills you need to receive feedback, especially when it is something you don’t want to hear, and not least because not everyone is skilled at giving feedback.

Be Open To The Feedback

In order to hear feedback, you need to listen to it. Don’t think about what you’re going to say in reply, just listen. And notice the non-verbal communication as well, and listen to what your colleague is not saying, as well as what they are.

See our pages: Active Listening and Non-Verbal Communication for more information.

See our further pages: Questioning,Reflecting and Clarification to ensure that you have fully understood all the nuances of what the other person is saying and avoid misunderstandings. Use different types of questions to clarify the situation, and reflect back your understanding, including emotions. 

For example, you might say:

 “So when you said …, would it be fair to say that you meant … and felt …?”
“Have I understood correctly that when I did …, you felt …?”

Resource: skillsyouneed.com

What Every Leader Needs To Know About People’s Motivation

Here are three simple habits that you, as a leader, can exhibit every day to create a culture that motivates people to follow you willingly.

Show your Appreciation

It motivates people to have their efforts appreciated.  That doesn’t just mean ‘paid for’; it means noted and commented upon.  It doesn’t have to be a big razzmatazz or a special award or valuable prize, just a simple, low key ‘thank you’, delivered in person.

Research by Dan Ariely in association with MIT suggests that people whose work is not appreciated need to be paid double to be as productive as people whose work is appreciated.  This isn’t soft fluffiness, it is hard economics.

Conversely, it switches people off when they see their effort completely unappreciated, hidden or destroyed.  ‘Unsung heroes’ of today tend to become the defectors or the saboteurs of tomorrow. So sing!

Of course, if you are the leader of a large organisation, you seldom actually see many of the people who work for you. Showing your appreciation of their efforts, in person, regularly, is not easy; it takes a lot of time and effort. 

There are three habits that can help you if you are in this position:

• Show your appreciation of the efforts of the workforce to your immediate reports.  Ask them to pass on your recognition and gratitude.
• Make a conscious effort to refer to the appreciation you have for your workforce whenever you are dealing with outsiders.  Whether it is the media, shareholders or customers, make sure to “big up” your staff.
• Practice ‘Management By Wandering About Taking An Interest’~ a great way to appreciate someone’s contribution is just to take an interest in it, ask questions rather than offering judgements.

Help your People to Develop ‘Mastery’

At the beginning of the modern era of mass manufacture the watchword was ‘efficiency’.  The whole job was broken down into small, repetitive chunks and each person solely worked on their chunk.  Employees might spend their entire 48 hour week putting the front, left-hand side wheel on cars, but never actually see a complete finished car.  That was the norm when the company was manufacturing cars, and the staff had little education or access to information. 

Now your staff members are more educated and have more information at their fingertips than ever before.  They also have higher long-term aspirations. They likely to be providing some more knowledge-based service to customers; the basic manufacturing is more likely completed by machines.

Developing ‘mastery’ of their chosen area of career means that they want to keep abreast of the pace of change, they want to improve their knowledge and skill and they want to broaden their experience.  This doesn’t mean that as a leader you have to send them all away on long expensive training courses. 

Here are three habits that will help you to create an environment where people can gain mastery:

• Encourage exploration amongst your departments or teams.  Job-swaps or work-shadowing help people understand the bigger picture and provide new eyes to look at old problems and practices.  Rather than employing consultants to look at improving performance and processes, encourage your people to do it themselves.  When they make recommendations, appreciate them, and where possible implement them.  Allow the people to judge what has worked and what hasn’t.
• Encourage ‘informal learning’:

  “The odds are that development will be about 70% from on-the-job experiences, working on tasks and problems; about 20% from feedback and working around good and bad examples of the need, and 10% from courses and reading.” 
  ‘The Career Architect Development Planner’ Lombardo and Eichinger

  So encourage people to take on responsibilities above their grade level, even if only for short periods. 
• Encourage the setting of challenges for individuals and teams (not higher targets, but challenges to improve things, solve problems and learn and demonstrate new skills).
• Encourage teams and individuals to seek performance feedback, to analyse and to learn from both good and bad experience. (This is an area that can be challenging; analysis of bad experiences can often appear to be or descend into “blame sessions”, analysis of good experiences can be seen as a waste of time... ”it went well, why the post mortem?”). 
• Encourage your people to read, to benchmark and to use the web and social media to keep abreast of new developments and competitor activity.
• Keep the more formal learning going; invest money and intelligent effort in providing in-company training and development. Sponsor people to gain relevant qualifications.

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Share the Big Picture

It is often said that what separates a ‘manager’ from a ‘worker’ is the ability ‘to see the bigger picture’. 

That may well be one of the important characteristics, but it doesn’t mean that the people lower down the hierarchy aren’t motivated by being shown the bigger picture.

There is that old story where a visitor to NASA in the 1960s saw a janitor sweeping the floor and asked him what he was doing; “Helping to put a man on the moon” was the reply. (It probably isn’t a true story; why on earth would anyone look at a man who was sweeping a floor, and ask him what he was doing?)

As a parable, the story hints at the day-to-day motivational effect of knowing the overall purpose of the organisation and how your little bit contributes to that grand design. Implicit in it is also the fact that the janitor had a pretty good idea how the organisation as a whole was doing in relation to actually getting Neil Armstrong to take that ‘one small step, one giant leap’.

Resource: skillsyouneed.com