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eManagement Tips - December 2020

Our monthly update for Associates and Members of RiverRhee's Managers' Community
Welcome to the December 2020 issue of eManagement Tips.
 

It has been a transformational year for us at RiverRhee, as I'm sure it has been for many of you.

I would like to start this newsletter by sharing my appreciation of my RiverRhee Associates and other colleagues who have helped me 'pivot' my training online in such an enthusiastic and flexible way.  The feedback from clients has been really positive.

Thank you to our clients too. I appreciate how you were willing to try out our online training and coaching, and how you recognised the importance of ongoing learning and development, somehow finding the bandwidth to fit that in amidst increased workloads and tumultuous working arrangements.

It's been a year of tremendous learning for me individually, as I undertook a Post Graduate Certificate in Business and Personal coaching with Barefoot Coaching.

Thank you to all my coaching colleagues, and coaching clients who have supported me on this journey.  I have some wonderful testimonials, and we have been able to apply my new insights to deliver team coaching, group coaching (see for example an approach for project management) and continue with one-to-one coaching.

This issue covers themes to help you with your communication and interactions with others:
  • Giving feedback from a mindset of positive intent
  • Creating the conditions that make difficult conversations possible
  • Tuning into metaphors as a valuable resource for understanding and change
We will continue to schedule all of our activities on demand in 2021, and are keen to tailor them for you in a way that enables your managers and teams to draw out the best of themselves.

Do get in touch if you would be interested in any of our courses, team workshops, or if you would like us to support you through one-to-one coaching, team coaching or a version of our group coaching.

Wishing you all a well deserved rest, good health and well-being this festive season, and looking forward to working with you again in 2021.

Elisabeth Goodman

Giving feedback from a mindset of positive intent

How to give positive and constructive feedback is one of the management skills that attracts the most interest in our management training. It’s a performance-related skill that people are often uncomfortable about both delivering or receiving.

Basically, when someone gives us feedback, it’s easy to respond with some fairly strong, automatic, emotional fight, flight or freeze-style responses.

What Mike Robbins (2020) advocates, is that giving feedback should be a two-way process between a manager and their direct report.  This immediately changes the tone of the relationship from an autocratic (or parent-to-child) one, to one that is more in the nature of a partnership, collaboration, adult-to-adult one.

If a manager models their receptiveness to feedback as an opportunity for their own learning and development, then they will make it easier for their direct reports to do the same.

Another thing that we notice, when delegates ask us for help in developing their feedback skills, is that their focus is often on how to give ‘negative’ feedback. What we also often find, is that they are not used to or comfortable with giving positive feedback.

What Robbins also reminds us is that leaders, managers and high performing teams are skilled in balancing “care and challenge”. 

So giving people positive feedback could enhance their sense of being valued and supported (or cared for). Positioning constructive feedback as a sought-after opportunity for learning and development will help to challenge and grow individuals, their managers and their teams.

You can read more about this in Giving feedback from a mindset of positive intent.

Creating the conditions that make difficult conversations possible

Mike Robbins (2020) latest book also gets to the heart of what’s important to high performance teams. It’s about, amongst other things, psychological safety, and going beyond diversity and inclusion to creating a sense of belonging for every single member of your team.

There are things that team leaders, and every individual team member can do to create the climate that makes difficult conversations possible:

  1. Remembering that "they" are also "us": overcoming organisational silos by remembering our common goals. Getting past hierarchical barriers by remembering we are all human underneath our work personas.
  2. Having conviction without being self-righteous: so we can express what we think and feel, but are open to considering others' points of view.
  3. Leaders creating a learning environment that takes the threat out of making mistakes, trying things that might not work, and expressing different opinions.
  4. Team members speaking up and taking ownership: we have a responsibility to speak up and to take joint ownership for the success of our teams and organisations.
You can read more about this in Creating the conditions that make difficult conversations possible.

Tuning into metaphors

Most of us use metaphors as part of our everyday conversations. We might enjoy them as colourful additions to our own and others’ speech, but don’t often explore the full potential have to offer us.

Metaphors are a way of expressing something that could be important to us, that connects to something in our subconscious, that we haven’t necessarily fully articulated in our conscious minds.

Exploring our metaphors can help us to access the senses and emotions associated with problems, potential solutions and desired outcomes. The richness of metaphors can enable us to access our creativity, in a way that more literal linguistic descriptions might not.

So for instance we might articulate a problem that we have, or a goal we would like to achieve, in terms of a metaphor to do with swimming through treacle, or climbing a mountain.

As a manager or coach we can use "clean questions" to help an individual develop and use their metaphors in a productive way.  Examples of such questions are:

  • “What kind of [thing] is that?”
  • “What shape or size does [that thing] have?” or “Is there anything else about [that thing]?”
  • “Where is [that thing]?” or “Whereabouts is [that thing]?”

And finally, we can ask the individual to consider how the metaphor relates to their original goal:

  • “How does this change things?”
  • “Is there a relationship between [metaphor] and your desired outcome?”
  • “What do you now know about your goal?”

You can read more about this in The manager as coach: tuning into and exploring metaphors with clean language

We are keen to tailor RiverRhee’s courses, workshops and coaching in a way that will help you, your managers and your teams be at their best.

See the RiverRhee Consulting website or contact Elisabeth at elisabeth@riverrhee.com or on +44 (0)7876 130 817.
Copyright © 2020 RiverRhee Consulting, All rights reserved.


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