Every beginner coach or mentor goes through a phase of questioning their own competence, based upon a sense that they could (or should) have had so much more impact.
The concept that humans are composed not of one single self or personality, but of numerous different “selves” that think and behave differently in response to different stimuli, is now well entrenched.
Having a team full of superstars doesn’t lead to high performance, according to research by Roderick Swaab. His researches indicate that when two-thirds of the team are star performers, they co-operate less and become more competitive with each other.
As a top management team aims for the stars, it might end up landing on the moon, if the core of its teamwork is not good enough.
There are a number of models of team development, which provide perspectives on how teams evolve over time. Most commonly cited is Tuckman’s four stages of forming, storming, norming and performing.
Builder of Success, Leadership Coach and Management Team Developer Vesa Ristikangas introduces his newest book "Stellar Management Teams" (Routledge, 2018).
It’s no news that organizations face multiple needs to adapt to changes in their operational environments. For instance, millennials’ values differ partly drastically from middle-agers’. Expectations of what makes a good leader are no longer the same as they were a decade ago.
Even very experienced coaches and mentors admit to worrying that sometimes they are not taking the conversation deep enough, or giving enough challenge to the coachee or mentee.
But people do! It sounds radical but it is not. Accepting this is the key to understanding what the future holds for us and so, for organizational development.
As a successful leader or organizational developer, you have to have enough understanding about these changes and their impacts. Learning systemic coaching skills can help you with that.
In the context of development relationships, there are three perspectives or levels at which it is helpful to establish the habit of measurement.
In all the major models of human maturity, two qualities recur constantly: wisdom and connectedness. Wisdom, as exemplified by the original mentor, Athene, relates to the process of reflection upon and learning from experience. The scope of wisdom is therefore associated with and to some extent limited by the range of experiences, to which a person is exposed, either directly or vicariously, intendedly or unintendedly.
Management teams face the same problems as all teams around the world: common goals and joint decisions are lacking, interaction is of low quality and the team members do not feel valued. These issues need to be solved, if the team wants to be successful.
When was the last time you have exposed your vulnerability to your management team? When was the last time, that you admitted that something was difficult or emotionally straining for you?
Choosing team members is something we do all the time. Starting from the playground all the way through our lives, we make the decision to who to work with which have influence in our individual and collective successes.
As I’m sitting here, in the middle of a Shanghaian subway station suburb, writing this blog post about learning, a group of old people comes sit to the table next to me. I listen to them being their loud, own selves, making fun of each other and enjoying beer and tea on a sunny Wednesday afternoon.
In challenging working environments, resilience is increasingly an essential competence. People, who are resilient, are better able to cope with unexpected change, with setbacks and disappointments, with high stress environments and with periods of excessive workload.
Wоrkіng wіth a соасh іѕ an enlightening life сhаngіng experience. Cоасhіng can аѕѕіѕtѕ уоu in gеttіng аhеаd іn lіfе bу рuttіng kеу components in order, to rеасh your full potential, both іn уоur professional аnd personal lіfе.
Asking questions is something we do all the time. It’s essential to how we learn, how we keep safe, how we collaborate with other people, how we make decisions, and so on… It’s a core skill of being human, yet few people stop to think about how they ask questions or whether they could be better at doing so.
A vast amount has been written about the competencies of coaches and mentors, and even more about the qualities of great leaders. Much of this is contradictory and dependent on circumstance or context.
