agile journeys

...rants by Asheesh Mehdiratta on Coaching, Transformation and Change

Tag: resistance

What are the ‘common’ barriers to Coaching ?

June 21, 2020 /
common barriers to coaching
Flickr photo – heat13hr

As a Coach, you will always face challenges working with teams or individuals (read as Coachee’s) and Sponsors. You are always trying best to Break down the Walls, brick by brick. So this post is a starter list for some of the most common barriers to coaching with the Sponsors and the Coachee.

For a SPONSOR, some of the common barriers to Coaching are –

  • Coaching in any form starts with the basic premise that you have – Permission to Coach the coachee, but if coaching is ‘imposed’ on the Coachee by eager Sponsors, then there is no permission really between the coachee and the coach. The relationship then simply becomes an ORDER = “Thy shall be coach’d or else !!“
  • On the opposite end, there is simply a lack of Sponsorship for coaching, where the Sponsors see Coaching as only a add-on and not really a strategic investment ! In these scenarios, we find that the the coaching is ineffective or if the money simply runs out and thus fizzles out over a period of time.
  • Sometimes Coaching is seen as a fancy ‘buzzword’ reserved only for few select high potential (hipots 😐 ) as an ‘accelerated career’ move / higher promotion to take up leadership responsibility or on the flip side for the ‘bottom percentile’, who are often ‘told’ to get coaching as a ‘development’ or ”remedial’ activity, thus falling prey to – are you Rewarded or Punished ? and the majority in the middle are thus not offered any coaching.

For a Coachee, some of the common barriers to Coaching are –

  • Coachee’s suffer the common syndrome of ‘I don’t have time’ for coaching or the coaching followup actions. The coachee’s other priorities (personal / professional) overpower the coaching conversations / and actions for followup.
  • Lack of peers, and senior executives (Role Models) – who come out openly and speak about their ‘personal’ coaching and the benefits gained. As coaching is often seen as ‘remedial’, since the Coachee’s are reluctant to appear as vulnerable and acknowledge that they are possibly not fulfilling their full potential. The coachee’s do not wish to appear weak in public, especially in the corporate jungle.
  • Coachee’s are not aware of the possible benefits of coaching for personal growth of individuals, or the benefits of coaching teams and how coaching can directly impact the enterprise results and business outcomes. This lack of awareness is a primary reason for under investment by Coachee’s or enterprises on their coach-ing *team.

This is just the tip of the iceberg in terms of common barriers, and the list is surely much longer, and would be happy to hear your thoughts. Do you have any stories to share about your coaching barriers ?

If you like what you read, subscribe to my blog, and feel free to share your feedback here.

Are you learning from your failures?

December 22, 2017 /

failureIf you are a Star Wars fan, and have watched the latest movie The Last Jedi, you would have been struck by the sudden appearance of Yoda, the ‘Grandmaster’ of the Jedi order, and talking to Luke Skywalker about failures.

Yoda explains to Luke, the Last Jedi, that failure is a good teacher, and we must learn from our mistakes!

“The greatest teacher, failure is.”  – Yoda

In the real world,  some teams will fail at various stages in their transformation journey, and others may falter multiples times, before they finally succeed. It is never an easy straight line from point A to point B.

But as a Leader of teams, how do you treat these failures?

Do you reflect on the failures with the team and have an open discussion without any blame?

or Do you punish them for the failure?

Do you ask the question – “What have we learnt from this failure?”

If you are aiming to build self managed teams, who can truly recognize their weaknesses and strengths, then it is important to let them fail and learn from their mistakes. It is important that they can do safe experiments, and design a better outcome, and solutions that delights the users.

To help, it would be good to look at Etsy’s culture of running ‘Blameless postmortems’, which talk about “what” happened? and how we can systematically remove the constraints so that human error can be reduced, instead of ‘blaming’ the person.  This is a powerful shift in the mindset and triggers a behavioral change in your teams.

But if as a Leader, you continue down the path of measuring failures, and then punishing the team, the organization culture becomes risk-averse. Teams will then not be ready to take risks, think outside the box, or have crazy ideas, and it would dampen the innovative mindset and creativity that we all humans possess.  You will never learn from your failures.

Conclusion:

To learn from failures is a key trait for successful teams. Even the famed Luke Skywalker had to be reminded by the Yoda, that failure is the greatest teacher!

So, if you can change your behaviors and are ready to take risks, with known constraints, then you will start looking at failures as learning opportunities and of course Yoda would be really proud of you!

So go ahead and ask your teams to share – what has been their biggest learning opportunity in the projects/products that you develop and support? go ahead and conduct the ‘Blameless postmortems’ and you would be surprised pleasantly.

You can subscribe to this blog , and would encourage you to share your stories and your feedback here.

 

Wanna jump start your Transformation?

November 16, 2017 /

change rewardsIn my previous post, we talked about Changing our Habits, to be able to successfully make any real impact with your transformation change initiatives.

Let us review how we can make these habit changes really possible and sticky.

In his book, The Power of Habit, author Charles Duhigg, talks about why habits exist and how they can be changed. He talks about how changing our habits can be done and how we can start to think scientifically, which would help us  in our large scale transformations.

Critical steps for Changing our Habits

As a first step, the author talks about looking for the Cues which are the starting point for the Routine/Habit, that you wish to change.

But possibly the habits that you need to change, are mostly the KEY Habits, which are really required for your Transformation.

But this is where most transformations are stuck ! as you and your teams cannot seem to change these Habits. So you need to identify these routines/habits.

Then you would need to find out what is the Reward that you are getting from this routine/habit. The reward can take various forms and you may need to be able to articulate the same very clearly.

Here’s a Common Scenario to reflect –

Are you asking for Status reports – because you have to simply share information with your boss or you are not confident about your teams capability or you need to take an executive decision, etc.?

Discovering your Triggers and Rewards is the KEY to changing your Habits!

So if you can see that your team is not doing peer reviews, not running unit tests, or not merging their code base continuously,  and you want to CHANGE this Habit. It would be goo to now reflect and introspect and see what are the cues, rewards which lead them to forming these habits.

Sometimes it helps to facilitate this conversation in the team retrospectives and trigger the difficult dialogues, to make a lasting impact on your transformation journey.

So what has been your experience in breaking team habits? 

If you like what you read here, then do subscribe to my blog , and feel free to share your feedback in the comments below.

Breaking down the Walls, brick by brick !

November 8, 2017 /

brick by On your transformation journey, sometimes you meet the bright sparks who simply GET IT, and sometimes you are faced with the hard rock faced bozos, who are simply DEAD! They build a WALL around themselves. They simply have no desire to CHANGE!

What do you feel?

Do you get mixed feelings, mixed emotions ?  Do you ignore this dead stock ? or do you try to turn them around ? 

What if they are a critical piece to the overall transformation? with all the right authority and are riding the right power pedestal? and you simply cannot ignore them.

What is your next step?

For me, sometimes it helps to simply listen to them and give them your ear !

The act of empathizing with the hard rock faces sometimes melts them ~slowly~ one day at a time and then another day and so on.
It helps if you understand what are their Drivers? which may be in conflict with the transformation agenda! Sometimes their ego simply needs a massage.

By listening to them and all the other nay-sayers, you just break down one brick at a time and suddenly one day you find that the wall no longer exists, and they simple GET IT!

Time to move to the next wall to break !

Do you have any stories to share of your hard rock faces, who you were able to turn around? brick by brick ? what was your strategy?

 

If you like what you read, subscribe to my blog , and feel free to share your feedback here

© 2024 agile journeys

Theme by Anders Norén — Up ↑