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Elisabeth Goodman
2nd February 2022
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By Elisabeth Goodman, 28th September 2021
We have a module on communication skills that we include in RiverRhee’s management training courses, and also as part of our Effective Influencing and Communication course. Delegates often tell us that they would like more scenarios to learn from, so I decided to include a bit of a role play in my management course last week. It wasn’t difficult, as the people there had customer facing roles.
I had them simulate two conversations, one with the perfect customer, the other with one who was being difficult. Their skills were superb!
I asked them to tell me what they had noticed:
I also noticed that they listened intently, and that they asked lots of open questions. They also took the time to understand their customers, and adjusted their approach accordingly. And I reminded them of the power of silence: to let their customers finish what they needed to say, and also allow for any thinking time they might need.
Then I asked them:
“What would happen if you used all of these skills with your direct reports?”
It was a powerful reflection!
Some of the organisations I work with clearly do use these skills internally: recognising that their employees are valuable internal customers. The resultant harmony between different layers of management is palpable.
What would happen if you the reader used these skills with your direct reports, with your colleagues, with your managers?
In closing: the courtesy and interest that these delegates took in me felt like a real gift. I may have been a supplier in acting as their facilitator, but I felt like a customer too!
The idea of asking delegates to explore how they interact with their customers, and then consider how this could translate to working with their employees is one that my colleague John Hicks first introduced during a course we ran on Performance Reviews and Appraisals. It was particularly effective then too.
Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, specialising in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through group-coaching style workshops and courses, with a focus on the Life Sciences. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.
Elisabeth founded RiverRhee in 2009, and prior to that had 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry in line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting teams on a global basis.
She and her trusted partners help RiverRhee’s clients to exercise choice and realise their potential in the workplace by recognising their individual values and strengths. Together they explore such topics as enhancing their leadership / management, interpersonal and communication skills, self-organisation and how to deal with change.
Elisabeth is an advocate for Neurodiversity at work, and specialises in coaching for autism both in the workplace and privately. She has recently become an Associate Coach with Genius Within CIC, a social enterprise established in 2011 to help neurominorities fulfill their potential in employment and their careers.
Elisabeth is accredited in Coaching (ACC – International Coaching Federation, PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching), Change Management, Lean Sigma, Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is also a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.
She is also the founder of The Coaches’ Forum – an international community of interest for coaches to explore ideas and insights as an extension to their personal and professional development.
By Elisabeth Goodman, 12th September 2021
It’s been a while since I’ve blogged on anything other than coaching skills and Neurodiversity, as these are the areas I am most focused on at the moment.
However it feels good to revisit a topic that has also been area of focus for me over the years, and that is everything to do with managing change. How an organisation, and individual leaders and managers within it, deal with change can have a profound effect on employee wellbeing.
Only 4 years ago, I was a co-author with other members of the APM Enabling Change SIG of “Introduction to Managing Change” (Association for Project Management, 2017). Our publication made several references to the importance of engaging with stakeholders (including internal employees) as in this extract:
“Engage with and nurture your stakeholders to build trust, so that the want to help you make the change succeed and feel supported through (win hearts and minds).”
Association for Project Management (2017). Introduction to Managing Change p. 30
We also emphasised the importance of measuring change initiatives as a way of tracking whether they are progressing as planned, whether adjustments are needed, and to generally facilitate reporting to senior managers and others concerned.
So my attention was caught by Michels and Murphy (2021) description of “change power” as a new metric for measuring an organisation’s capabilities relating to change, and their claim that companies that score high on this sytem:
“have leaders and cultures that rate significantly higher in the eyes of their employees… and they have employees who feel more inspired and engaged.”
Michels, D. and Murphy, K. (2021 July-August). How good is your company at change? A new system for measuring (and improving) your ability to adapt. Harvard Business Review p.62-71
Michels and Murphy’s findings are the result of analysing a decade’s worth collection of corporate change programmes combined with a survey of about 2,000 employees from nearly 40 large global companies.
They identified nine elements (traits or capabilities), as shown in the illustration, that can be measured based on employees’ scores. The combined scores generate a “change power” number that can then be used to rank the organisation through comparison with others.
They grouped these nine elements into three broad categories:
This list is not too different from the key factors of change that we documented in the APM Enabling Change SIG as shown in this next illustration.
Perhaps the biggest difference is reflected by Michels’ and Murphy’s second category around accelerating change and the ninth element of flexibility.
They put a greater emphasis on the dynamic nature of change: that there will always be more happening and the need to contextualise it in terms of what else is going on in the organisation.
Michels’ and Murphy’s explicit commentary on this is limited to the quote from their article at the beginning of this blog.
I and my colleagues have anecdotal evidence of this from our work with managers in our courses, and in my one-to-one coaching. The managers, and individual team members we work with are definitely more or less motivated and engaged depending on the clarity of purpose, quality of planning, and level of involvement of change initiatives within their organisations.
It’s also possible to pick out some indirect evidence of this from the four archetypes of change initiatives that don’t work out that Michels and Murphy describe in their article. (Incidentally, I was curious as to why they hadn’t identified archetypes for effective change!)
Here are their four archetypes and my inference from them in terms of the impact on employee engagement:
In search of focus. The companies falling in this category do apparently have a lot of energy, are constantly innovating and are successful at this, but the effective leadership for change is not apparent. Without clarity of purpose, direction and connection with the people impacted by the change, the result for employees could be a certain amount of burn-out and disillusionment.
Stuck and sceptical. This archetype crosses all three categories of elements in terms of connection, scaling and action. It seems to suggest a lack of energy and drive from leadership and hence a lack of enthusiasm amongst those tasked with implementing the change.
Aligned but constrained. These initiatives also cross all three categories and suffer from poor connection, capacity and development. So the necessary resources for change are either not fully engaged, limited, or people don’t have the necessary skills. Re-prioritisation, talent development, recruitment will address some of this. In addition, Michels and Murphy use a case study in their article to show how a company was able to address poor connection and turn the company’s fortunes around by using a company wide transformation team and large scale employee workshops.
Struggling to keep up. These companies are apparently those that are weakest in the more dynamic elements of change initiatives that I highlighted as distinctive of Michels’ and Murphy’s model. As they authors say, they have a “single-minded focus” and are “action orientated”. Whilst this may be all well and good when a company has only one or two major change initiatives to implement, such a positioning is not realistic in today’s ever changing landscape. Again, the impact on employees is going to be, to use the authors’ word, “gruelling” and the resultant quality of their engagement can only be negative.
Michels’ and Murphy’s article highlights some novel as well as more established key factors for successful change. They are ones that leaders and managers could effectively use as a check-list that would also result in more effective employee engagement.
The list could even be used for gathering scores from employees to rate how well the organisation is doing (its “change power”), and so identify ways to improve the approach accordingly. Asking employees to do this form of rating could in itself build greater employee engagement.
Association for Project Management (2017). Introduction to managing change.
Michels, D. and Murphy, K. (2021 July-August). How good is your company at change? A new system for measuring (and improving) your ability to adapt. Harvard Business Review, 62-67
Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, specialising in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through group-coaching style workshops and courses, with a focus on the Life Sciences. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.
Elisabeth founded RiverRhee in 2009, and prior to that had 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry in line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting teams on a global basis.
She and her trusted partners help RiverRhee’s clients to exercise choice and realise their potential in the workplace by recognising their individual values and strengths. Together they explore such topics as enhancing their leadership / management, interpersonal and communication skills, and their ability to deal with uncertainty and change.
Elisabeth is accredited in Coaching (ACC – International Coaching Federation, PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching), Change Management, Lean Sigma, Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is also a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.
She is also the founder of The Coaches’ Forum – an international community of interest for coaches to explore ideas and insights as an extension to their personal and professional development.
By Elisabeth Goodman, 13th August 2021
This comes from my experience as a parent, and as a Trustee for 5 years of the Red Balloon Learner Centre who support young people who are “missing from school”, some of which will have been as a result of their Neurodiversity.
It also comes from the impact I’ve witnessed as a coach and as a trainer of a lack of understanding and valuing of Neurodiversity in the workplace.
Most recently, my advocacy has come from my self-diagnosis through the Do-IT Solutions profiling tool and the realisation that I gained through participating in Helen Amery’s Space of Transformation programme that I no longer need to choose between fitting in or rebelling but can simply speak up with my own voice.
I have just finished reading “Neurodiversity at work” by Theo Smith and Prof Amanda Kirby (2021). This has been the culmination of the journey I’ve been on so far, and I’ve lots more to learn.
The phrase “anticipatory inclusion” really gelled with me during a “Deep Dive” course on Neurodiversity for coaches with Lynne Tapper and Katie Friedman of Gold Mind. That, and my advocacy for Neurodiversity, have consolidated a journey I began in 2017 when Carol Fowler and I co-delivered a seminar, sponsored by Abzena, for the Life Science community at Babraham Research Park in the UK. The number of people who turned up could be counted on the fingers of one hand, but the discussion was rich and enlightening for all.
Since then I have had insightful conversations with my RiverRhee Trusted Partner John Hicks, who describes himself as a Neurodiversity coach and blogger, attended seminars and other courses with Julie Myles of The Spectrum Guru, the Gold Mind team, Jasmine Miller with Barefoot Coaching. I have also followed the learned writing of Dr Nancy Doyle, CEO of Genius Within, and of Prof Amanda Kirby, CEO of Do-IT Solutions. and many more voices on the topic of Neurodiversity who I’ve discovered so far on LinkedIn.
As of next week, I will be embarking on another voyage of discovery, as an associate coach with Genius Within. I can’t wait to begin!
Smith and Kirby (2021) do a tremendously thorough job of exploring this topic. They do so to such an extent that I would say this is a ‘go to’ reference work for any coach, HR practitioner and line manager full stop! It’s not a question of whether you have an interest in Neurodiversity: it’s a question of whether you have an interest in understanding, valuing and finding ways to work more effectively with all of the people that you work with.
So the book covers definitions, origins, descriptions of Neurodiversity – as you would expect. It also covers everything you need to know from a legal and practical perspective for managing people through the whole employee life cycle process – something I touched on in my recent talk, with Téa Romero, for the Women in Technology Mentoring Programme (2021).
Smith and Kirby (2021) also talk about the value and risks of using Neurodiversity labels – another topic that I included in my talk for the Women in Technology Mentoring Programme (2021).
So what surprised, delighted me and generally enlightened me in Smith and Kirby (2021)’ s book?
The fact that they include a chapter on how to support both participants (delegates) and presenters / speakers in meetings, conferences and seminars.
Having a full chapter on what line managers can do to create a psychologically safe environment for people to speak up about what they need to be at their best at work.
Step-by-step guidelines for how to make each stage of recruitment and on-boarding neuro-inclusive.
The rich seam of case studies that people can learn from in terms for how to create a neuro-inclusive environment in small as well as large organisations.
Also a series of interviews to hear the voice of influencers in the field of Neurodiversity, including one by Nancy Doyle who warns us to be careful of “elitism, bad science and amateurism”.
The exploration of how to create networks of champions, whilst not over-burdening the champions, and making sure they have the necessary support for their and other people’s mental well-being.
That there is awareness training on Neurodiversity out there from the likes of Right Resources and that it includes listening skills, mental well-being, common workplace challenges and how to access workplace-related support.
That there is a new BSI guide (PAS 6463) in development that will address work place design in the context of sensory sensitivity and embodies the concept that “it should be a fundamental requirement to anticipate and design for neurological differences and wellbeing”.
All in all, Smith and Kirby (2021) fully fulfilled their goal (p.21), for me, “to excite, delight and open up the discussion around Neurodiversity”.
I pledge to:
What will you do?
And what views, comments and questions do you have on what I have shared here that I can learn from too?
Elisabeth Goodman (2021, 6 August). A perspective on Neurodiversity. Presented in a co-session with Téa Romero for the Women in Technology Mentoring Programme. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrqPE9nFWw4&feature=youtu.be retrieved 13 August 2021
Smith, T. and Kirby, A. (2021). Neurodiversity at work. Drive innovation, performance and productivity with a neurodiverse workforce. Kogan Page
Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, specialising in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through group-coaching style workshops and courses, with a focus on the Life Sciences. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.
Elisabeth founded RiverRhee in 2009, and prior to that had 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry in line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting teams on a global basis.
She and her trusted partners help RiverRhee’s clients to exercise choice and realise their potential in the workplace by recognising their individual values and strengths. Together they explore such topics as enhancing their leadership / management, interpersonal and communication skills, and their ability to deal with uncertainty and change.
Elisabeth is accredited in Coaching (ACC – International Coaching Federation, PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching), Change Management, Lean Sigma, Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is also a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.
She is also the founder of The Coaches’ Forum – an international community of interest for coaches to explore ideas and insights as an extension to their personal and professional development.
By Elisabeth Goodman, Sunday 18th July 2021
My blog on practising situational coaching has been one of my most widely read posts, with about 8,500 hits in 2020-2021 so far! I wrote it for managers who coach, but I suspect that many professional coaches and also coaching students are reading it too. If so, I think you may find that Maria Iliffe-Wood’s “Coaching Presence” (2014) has even more to offer you in this space.
We may be more or less conscious, when we coach, of shifting between pure intuition:
and deliberately choosing the nature of our next intervention:
Whether we go with the flow, or are more deliberate in our choice, either will determine the nature of our “coaching presence”, and the consequent nature and quality of the coachee’s thinking or deliberation.
Professional coaches, student coaches and managers who practise coaching as part of their ‘regular’ jobs, can all benefit from reflecting on what happened during a coaching session, and what they might do the same or differently next time.
Iliffe-Wood gives us a model that can help us be more deliberate in our choices during a session, and more analytical in our reflections following it. I for one have started to apply the insights that I’ve gained from her approach and I certainly feel that they are helping me to ‘up my game’.
Here is a somewhat basic and rendition of the essence of what I took from her book:
As the illustration above shows, Iliffe-Wood suggests that there are four modes for our coaching, and four levels for our clients’ thinking.
You might recognise that we tend to use some of the coaching modes more than others.
You might also have a sense, whether from your own reflections or from what you’ve been taught by others, that you should or shouldn’t apply some of these modes.
Iliffe-Wood skilfully shows that each mode does deliver value in terms of the impact that it has on our clients’ thinking.
I have a tendency for example to use the “evident” mode less: to not articulate what I’m noticing, and to not share personal examples. However, as I learn to do so more, I do find that this helps to raise the coachee’s awareness of what’s happening and what they are experiencing, to relax more into their reflections and to be more comfortable and find the words to share more about what they are thinking and feeling.
The “invisible”, “emergent” and “visible” coaching modes come to me more naturally. I particularly enjoy the magic that can happen when I offer a client a coaching intervention that enables them to think about their issue or situation in a different way, as in “emergent” coaching. I find that clients sometimes get stuck with simple verbal processing: whereas exploring their metaphors, drawing, using plasticine or even soft toys, or physical movement can dramatically open up their thinking.
Iliffe-Wood also cross-references the coaching modes to the competencies defined by professional coaching organisations. As I am working towards my next level accreditation (PCC) with the ICF (International Coaching Federation), all of this definitely supports “PCC markers” 7.5, which is where a coach evokes awareness by sharing “with no attachment – observations, intuitions, comments, thoughts or feelings, and invites the client’s exploration through verbal or tonal invitation.”
By the way, for anyone who is worried about the apparently over-directive nature of the “visible” coach mode, the ICF PCC markers couch this kind of intervention in terms of invitation or partnership. For instance:
3.1 Coach partners with the client to identify or reconfirm what the client wants to accomplish in the session
5.3 Coach partners with the client by supporting the client to choose what happens in this session
8.1 Coach invites or allows the client to explore progress toward what the client wanted to accomplish in this session
ICF Professional Certified Coach (PCC) Markers, Revised November 2020. rev. 06.25.21
Iliffe-Wood suggests that we have four levels of thinking: the first being uppermost in our consciousness. This strikes me as somewhat like the most open window of the Johari four-box model: what we know about ourselves and what is also known about us by others. The levels go increasingly deeper into our subconsciousness, until we get to level 4 which includes things that are actually unknown to us.
So a coach can help clients to access the deeper thinking and, Iliffe-Wood suggests, may actually help further in the level 3 and 4 thinking by adding new information and knowledge for the client to reflect upon.
Each of the four coaching modes broadly maps to the corresponding four levels of thinking. However, we would in practice move in and out of each coaching mode, and as Iliffe-Wood says, the invisible coach mode is one to keep coming back to, to allow the client to deliberate more effectively on what they discover during the session.
It would be interesting to hear if and how this approach to “coaching presence” deepens the practice of other coaches, student coaches and managers who coach: whether it does indeed offer more than situational coaching.
Iliffe-Wood’s book is definitely worth reading right the way through to get a greater understanding of the approach that she proposes. Her writing is infused with wisdom too: her principle and guiding beliefs are a salutary reminder for everyone and anyone who coaches.
Her principle belief is that:
“Every person that I meet has a deep well of inner wisdom that they can tap into… they can achieve whatever … they are aiming for… they are genuinely striving to achieve it and… they can do it no matter how high the aspiration.”
Iliffe-Wood (2014 p.5)
And her guiding beliefs cover the coach, the client and the coaching relationship. I’ve just pulled out a few of her headings relating to the client as these seem particularly relevant to me in the context of this blog:
“Clients are whole persons. They are not broken and therefore they do not need fixing….”
“Clients learn best when they have worked things out for themselves..”
“Clients know much more than they think they know..”
Iliffe-Wood (2014, p.7)
“Clients are the expert on themselves and their system. ..[they] know the situation, the organization, the people involved…and therefore they are in a better place… to draw conclusions, make judgements and work out any solutions..”
Iliffe-Wood (2014, p.8)
Goodman, E. (2019). The manage as coach: practising situational coaching. Retrieved from: https://elisabethgoodman.wordpress.com/2019/11/23/the-manager-as-coach-practising-situational-coaching/
Iliffe-Wood, M. (2014). Coaching presence. Building Consciousness and awareness in coaching interventions. Kogan Page
Johari window. See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window
Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, specialising in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through group-coaching style workshops and courses, with a focus on the Life Sciences. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.
Elisabeth founded RiverRhee in 2009, and prior to that had 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry in line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting teams on a global basis.
She and her trusted partners help RiverRhee’s clients to exercise choice and realise their potential in the workplace by recognising their individual values and strengths. Together they explore such topics as enhancing their leadership / management, interpersonal and communication skills, and their ability to deal with uncertainty and change.
Elisabeth is accredited in Coaching (ACC – International Coaching Federation, PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching), Change Management, Lean Sigma, Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is also a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.
She is also the founder of The Coaches’ Forum – an international community of interest for coaches to explore ideas and insights as an extension to their personal and professional development.
By Elisabeth Goodman, 22nd May 2021
“If you don’t try it, you’ll never know” is a message that Melanie Boyle, VP of Project Management and Fellow of the Association for Project Management (APM), learnt early in life from the elder sister of a schoolfriend.
Chance remarks like these can have a powerful impact on our attitudes, beliefs and self-confidence. As Stephen Joseph (2016 p.6) reminds us, we have “potentials inherent in our nature”. Our internal narrative, and how we choose to interact with those around us will influence how we realise that potential.
Michelle Ware, Head of Blended Learning at OBRIZUM Group and I had the pleasure of interviewing Melanie and hearing about the elements that have shaped her career so far.
Project Management is not one of the highest profile activities in small or larger Life Science organisations, where the pressure is on to discover and develop innovative solutions to patient, scientific and technological challenges and questions.
Yet Project Management, like other support services such as HR, finance, IT, can make a significant difference to the efficiency and effectiveness with which people use their expertise, time and other company resources to meet stakeholders’ expectations. Having self-confidence, being visible, and establishing your credibility will facilitate making this kind of impact in your organisation.
As Melanie has learnt, the success of activities like hers comes from learning and becoming secure in the knowledge and language of her craft, and in applying it, in a pragmatic way, to what the organisation is receptive to and needs. A small biotech does not need the same level of sophisticated plans as a an organisation designing and delivering complex engineering plants. But it does need some consistency in how it goes about its projects, for example to facilitate co-ordination of resources the transfer of learnings between projects.
Having the learning and development to be able to speak up and add value in a pragmatic way is one source of credibility. The other is working on your visibility: finding ways to get to know, and be known by those around you.
As Melanie points out in the interview, the people we work with and generally interact with in the course of our work are our natural network. We can expand that network, and enhance our visibility, by volunteering to get involved in cross-functional activities, as well as by taking the time to have casual conversations during the course of our working day. (Doing the latter has been a lot more difficult during lockdown, but it might still possible to look for and instigate such casual conversations even if we are working remotely, or if our shifts on location don’t always coincide.)
Widening our network will give us new insights that might inform suggestions that we make in our work. It could also help us to create allies and advocates to support our suggestions, and to enhance our credibility with others in this and future roles.
There is a lovely article by Leslie John (2021) in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review, full of practical tips on how we can promote ourselves most effectively.
One of the insights in the article is that if we are too active in promoting ourselves we might be seen as braggarts. However, if our allies / advocates promote us then other people are more likely to be receptive to that, and, incidentally, will also think well of the people who are doing the promoting!
I had the opportunity yesterday to engage with other professionals in the project management space, by speaking at an APM webinar on “Unlocking your potential as a project manager in the life science and pharma sector”. I asked delegates to consider what needed to happen for them to be at their best. Themes that emerged included:
There may be a common thread here around being clear about what we need and want, and then finding ways to make that happen for ourselves, and through our engagement with others. I would say there is a connection here too with self-confidence, visibility and credibility!
Incidentally, I had an enjoyable time exploring some of these themes further with the delegates, using resources that I typically use in my one-to-one and group coaching and training.
What role have self-confidence, visibility and credibility played in your life and in your ability to realise your potential?
What else have you done, or could you do to help you in this space?
References
Goodman, E. (2021, May). One step towards realising our potential – Episode 3. An interview with Melanie Boyle and Michelle Ware. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHa8aY-06rk
John, L. K. (2021). Savvy self-promotion. Harvard Business Review, May-June.
Joseph, S. (2016). Authentic. How to be yourself and why it matters. Piatkus.
About the author
Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that specialises in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through coaching, courses and workshops, and with a focus on the Life Sciences. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.
Elisabeth founded RiverRhee Consulting in 2009, and prior to that had 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry in line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting teams on a global basis.
She is developing her coaching practice, with a focus on helping individuals to exercise choice and realise their potential in the workplace by recognising their individual values and strengths. They explore such topics as enhancing their leadership / management, interpersonal and communication skills, and their ability to deal with uncertainty and change.
Elisabeth is accredited in Coaching (ACC – International Coaching Federation, PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching), Change Management, Lean Sigma, Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is also a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.
Elisabeth is also the founder of The Coaches’ Forum – an international community of interest for coaches to explore ideas and insights as an extension to their personal and professional development.
By Elisabeth Goodman, 10th May 2021
I’m starting to see and hear a flurry of articles and conversations about what hybrid working will mean, as companies open their doors for people to return to the workplace post Covid-19.
I’ve been discussing this with colleagues too who are involved, like me, in coaching and other forms of learning and development with leaders, managers and teams in Life Science, SMEs and other sectors and organisations.
Hybrid working is something that all leaders and managers will need to consider and role-model. It will impact recruitment and retention, policies on inclusion and fairness, the nature and quality of management and leadership, the well-being of employees, creativity and productivity. I’ve probably missed a few other aspects too!
This blog is based on two articles in consecutive issues of Harvard Business Review. The first, by Anne-Laure Fayard, John Weeks and Mahwesh Khan (2021), focuses on how we can re-design the workplace to reflect the different types of social interactions and activities that will take place in hybrid working. The second article, by Lynda Gratton (2021), analyses these interactions and activities, along with other factors that will influence the design of hybrid policies.
Gratton (2021) leads the Future of Work Consortium of 100 companies around the world. She has focused their recent research on the impact of the pandemic.
In her article, Gratton describes four critical drivers of productivity: focus, coordination, cooperation, energy and uses these to evaluate their influence on optimum hybrid arrangements.
She has come up with a useful framework for thinking about hybrid working arrangements in terms of both place (location) and time.
I’ve populated Gratton’s framework with my insights from her article: which of the productivity drivers might fit which of the four boxes, and what kinds of activities might fit alongside them.
My annotations are suggestions only, to stimulate further reflection. I expand on them in the rest of this blog.
As the author says, advances in technology as well as personal preferences will continue to influence how this picture evolves.
Anne-Laure Fayard and her co-authors (2021) suggest that the workplace will become, post-pandemic, particularly important as a hub for social interaction, enabling people to build closer working relationships and to have the kinds of unstructured conversations that are more conducive to impromptu learning and to innovation.
Gratton echoes this conclusion in her ‘cooperation’ driver for productivity, where she suggests that people need to be in the same space and time for activities relating to innovation. I’m curious to learn more about how some of my clients in the Life Sciences might be managing this with people currently working in shifts in and out of the lab, and communicating virtually to support this.
Teams can be effectively managed on a day-to-day basis without being co-located, a task that Gratton describes as ‘coordination’. My experience of working in and with companies where teams are geographically dispersed certainly bears this out. It can be tricky working across time zones but it’s helped if at least some of the working day overlaps as is the case with teams based in Europe and on the east coast of America for instance.
Although Gratton includes mentoring and coaching as something that can be done remotely (which is certainly my experience with my clients), Fayard et al. convincingly describe how being in the workplace will better support impromptu learning for junior and less experienced staff. Managers and more experienced colleagues can more easily spot, when co-located an opportunity for sharing some helpful insights or guidance. Junior and less experienced staff can more easily learn through observation and ask for clarification in a more casual way than when working remotely.
Tasks that require individual focus (another of Gratton’s critical drivers), such as strategic planning (if done alone), studying and report writing lend themselves well to remote working and more flexible work hours.
The last of Gratton’s critical drivers is energy – something that she describes as being core to those engaged in such activities as marketing. When and where these are done depend somewhat on the nature of the marketing activities, and the availability of clients.
How people derive their energy is also a very individual characteristic. So this is where personal preference and style are particularly relevant.
As Gratton suggests in her article, people might have different preferences depending on their home circumstances (which by the way could also have an impact on their ability to focus). Some people derive more energy from the interactions that they have in a busy workplace. Others thrive in a quieter environment, which could be at home, or elsewhere.
Fayard et al. describe how offices can be designed to provide different environments to suit different activities and personal preferences.
Gratton also describes how some companies, such as Fujitsu, have created an ‘ecosystem’ of hubs, satellite offices and shared offices, within and outside the workplace, that enable people to engage in cooperative, coordinated or focused types of activities.
As Gratton points out, one of the key criteria for success, as we move forward, is to engage employees in discussing what their hybrid workplace and practices should consist of. Doing so may enhance inclusivity and fairness.
Without such consultation we also risk repeating previous assumptions such as open plan offices and hot desking being good for productivity. Whilst open plan and hot desking might facilitate cooperation and coordination style activities, many of the people that I coach and train have struggled with the negative consequences for their focus and energy. And some people have thrived from the opportunity of working from home that the pandemic has offered them.
As these HBR articles and my own observations and discussions with others show, simply returning to old ways of working post-pandemic does not seem to be an option. Employees have experienced what the alternatives can be, as have employers. There are benefits all round for quality of life, well-being, recruitment and retention, and productivity. But there are also risks to the same if new approaches are introduced without proper consideration of the implications for all.
Managers and leaders have an important role to play in consulting with their teams, and in considering how they will apply and role model different ways of working in place and in time. What will you be doing?
References
Fayard, A.-L., Weeks, J. & Khan, M. (2021). Designing the hybrid office. Harvard Business Review, March-April, 114-123
Gratton, L. (2021). How to do hybrid right. Harvard Business Review, May-June, 66-74
About the author
Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that specialises in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through coaching, courses and workshops, and with a focus on the Life Sciences. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.
Elisabeth founded RiverRhee Consulting in 2009, and prior to that had 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry in line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting teams on a global basis.
She is developing her coaching practice, with a focus on helping individuals to exercise choice and realise their potential in the workplace by recognising their individual values and strengths. They explore such topics as enhancing their leadership / management, interpersonal and communication skills, and their ability to deal with uncertainty and change.
Elisabeth is accredited in Coaching (ACC – International Coaching Federation, PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching), Change Management, Lean Sigma, Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is also a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.
Elisabeth is also the founder of The Coaches’ Forum – an international community of interest for coaches to explore ideas and insights as an extension to their personal and professional development.
By Elisabeth Goodman, 28th April 2021
I came across an excellent McKinsey article by Christensen et al (2021) on “intentional learning” – the idea that we:
The 3x3x3 heuristic relates to 3 goals, a 3-month time-frame and 3 people.
There is more in the article to support this approach. It set off a string of reflection in me on how the biggest breakthroughs happen, for myself and for my coaching clients, when we get intentional and develop habits to support our learning.
I love to learn! It’s one of my values in life: to keep learning for my personal development, and to discover resources that I can share with others. It’s no wonder that I am a coach, facilitator and trainer – and of course it feeds my blogs.
My office is stacked with books, and I do manage to read them and draw insights from them. But it comes at a price, my brain gets over-active and jagged, I don’t know what to focus on first, I lose depth, I don’t have enough time for everything I want to do. And then I remember to stop and breathe….
I’ve learnt that there is a time to be focused, and there is a time to take a more exploratory approach. When life and work get busy, when there are things I need to get done, I simplify, I focus, I enjoy going into depth on just one or two things.
When life and work are quieter, and they do get quieter, I start exploring more widely again. And, because I want to make sure I have opportunities for that wider exploration, I also look for ways to simplify my life and work to create that space.
The result – both the approaches are possible and feel good when they are the right approach. Both are a version of being focused: in depth or in breadth. The broader approach no longer feels like a scattergun approach.
Does any of this resonate with you? What is or are your preferred approaches to learning?
A book that made a big impression on me during my coaching training was Carol Dweck’s Mindset. If we have a mindset to learn and “grow” then we will get more comfortable about experiencing and experimenting with things that feel uncomfortable.
I went on a really helpful follow-up course with Ted Bradshaw, one of the Barefoot Coaching tutors, on Cognitive Behavioural Therapy. One of his suggestions is that we identify some aspect of our behaviour that we want to change. In my case I had an example of shifting my mindset from feeling that I had to be self-sufficient, towards finding opportunities for more interdependence with family, friends and colleagues.
The chances are that making this change, “stepping off the path” of what we are used to, will feel scary in some way. So we have some options. We can:
What I’m experimenting with (in relation to the example that I shared above) is being more conscious of opportunities where I can ask for ideas, and be more receptive to offers of help and support. Recognising the value that I get from that for my personal development as well as in my work. Also that I’m being more authentic in modelling the kind of behaviour that I encourage in others.
What aspect of your personal development could you step out of your comfort zone about and experiment with, to get more of the results that you would like to have?
In my days of developing and supporting knowledge management strategies (Goodman 2016), “After Action Reviews” were central to everything that we did. The phrase was coined by the US army. It was about taking time, after any significant activity, to objectively review what happened, how it related to the original goals, what could be learnt from that, and what action would be taken and new knowledge shared as a result.
There is an abbreviated version of this approach that I learnt about from Barefoot Coaching, and that I use and share with my coaching clients:
It’s very simple, and very effective. It’s also another instance where we need to be deliberate or intentional with our learning. It requires time and attention to make it happen though.
I aim to do this after every coaching intervention, after every course that I deliver, and in my diary at the end of the day. I don’t manage it every time, but it’s enough of a habit for me to come back to it and ‘catch up’ if I’ve missed an occasion or two. I find that going for a walk, or allowing myself some time for reflection on a Saturday morning also help. I know the value that this delivers for me and that motivates me to keep doing it.
Do you do this kind of reflection? Would you like to try? If so, when might be the times of day, or occasions that would lend themselves best for you to do it? What would get you motivated, and keep you motivated to carry on?
References
Christensen, L. et al (2021 April 19) Intentional learning in practice: a 3x3x3 approach. McKinsey Accelerate. Retrieved from https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/mckinsey-accelerate/our-insights/intentional-learning-in-practice-a-3x3x3-approach
Dweck, C. (2017). Mindset. Changing the way you think to fulfil your potential. Robinson.
Goodman, E. (2016). The effective team’s knowledge management workbook. RiverRhee Publishing.
About the author
Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that specialises in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through coaching, courses and workshops, and with a focus on the Life Sciences. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.
Elisabeth founded RiverRhee Consulting in 2009, and prior to that had 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry in line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting teams on a global basis.
She is developing her coaching practice, with a focus on helping individuals to exercise choice and realise their potential in the workplace by enhancing their leadership / management, interpersonal and communication skills, and their ability to deal with uncertainty and change.
Elisabeth is accredited in Coaching (ACC – International Coaching Federation, PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching), Change Management, Lean Sigma, Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is also a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.
Elisabeth is also the founder of The Coaches’ Forum – an international community of interest for coaches to explore ideas and insights as an extension to their personal and professional development.
By Elisabeth Goodman, 18th March 2021
My work involves working with managers, and working with team members. The questions they ask are often mirror reflections of each other: how do I work with a difficult team member? How do I work with a difficult manager?
Some possible answers that we explore in our coaching and training are listed in this illustration.
There was an article a few years ago relating to when the difficult person is a boss that I wrote up as a blog (Goodman, 2016). There’s another excellent one in the current issue of Harvard Business Review (Grant, 2021) that gives a number of options for more extreme situations, based on people’s experiences of working with Steve Jobs.
I shrink from directly referencing scenarios that draw on what seem like negative depictions of someone I did not know. However the actual lessons can be generalised and seem valuable enough to share and reflect about here.
Julia Hoggett, currently Director, Market Oversight Division at the Financial Conduct Authority, and soon to be CEO of the London Stock Exchange, gave an inspiring talk on Diversity and Inclusion at the recent Rising Festival. One of her comments that stayed with me was the importance, as a leader, of surrounding yourself with people who think differently to you, and who will, as a consequence, stretch your comfort zone in the opinions and questions that they ask you to consider.
It may be worth, if you find yourself as a team member faced with a manager or leader who is apparently not receptive to different points of view, reminding yourself that it’s worth persevering – for the benefit of the team, the organisation, and also for you own sense of value and worth.
Needless to say, a manager or leader will be less likely to hesitate about the value of persevering with a direct report who is not receptive to alternative points of view.
In both cases, it’s useful to have a few strategies at your disposal. Here are some that I’ve evolved from Grant’s article.
Our intention is of course positive. We want to listen to and understand their point of view. We’re curious. That can be flattering for the person we’re seeking to influence.
But the expression ‘digging a hole’ for themselves might be apt. The more someone seeks to explain something that they have insufficient knowledge about, or that is flawed in some way, the more this will become obvious.
And so the opportunity may then more easily present itself for you to offer help to ‘fill in that hole’. Or they may even ask “What would you do / say in this situation?”
Some people have a stronger drive to have control over situations than others. If you go straight into ‘telling’ mode with them, they may get defensive, and even do the exact opposite of what you ask them to do.
We know, as coaches, that people are more likely to change their behaviours if they’ve chosen the change they want to make and when and how they will do it.
So this is the ‘ask not tell’ approach again. As Grant says: questions like “what if..?” and “could we..?” might prompt the other person’s curiosity and willingness to consider other possibilities. They may not do so straight-away, but they might think about it and even surprise you by offering alternatives as their own idea! It will be their choice to do so. They will still be in control.
Hopefully you won’t be dealing with bullies or narcissists but whether you are or not, everyone likes to be liked. Expressing some as close to genuine positive feedback or affirmation for someone is likely to make them more receptive to some challenging remark.
As Grant says, it’s important to give praise in an area that’s different to the one you are seeking to influence. So you might for instance praise a leader for the quality of their strategic thinking, and then suggest that they take suggestions for day-to-day operational management. With luck they might acknowledge that the latter is not a forté of theirs. It’s worth a try!
Some so called “difficult” people actually enjoy arguments and conflict, and are disappointed when other people don’t rise to the challenge. So, marshall your facts, prepare your arguments, and get ready to defend your position. You may well find that you earn the other person’s respect in the process.
These influencing strategies are not for the faint-hearted. Nor is there any guarantee that they will work. But, according to Grant, they are worth a try. I would be fascinated to hear from any readers who do try them, or who have seen others use them and what results they have had.
References
Goodman, E. (2016). What to do when the difficult person is your boss? Retrieved from https://elisabethgoodman.wordpress.com/2016/12/19/what-to-do-when-the-difficult-person-is-your-boss/
Grant, A. (2021). Persuading the unpersuadable. Lessons from science – and the people who were able to sway Steve Jobs. Harvard Business Review, March – April, 131-135
About the author
Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that specialises in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through coaching, courses and workshops, and with a focus on the Life Sciences. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.
Elisabeth founded RiverRhee Consulting in 2009, and prior to that had 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry in line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting teams on a global basis.
She is developing her coaching practice, with a focus on helping individuals to exercise choice and realise their potential in the workplace by enhancing their leadership / management, interpersonal and communication skills, and their ability to deal with uncertainty and change.
Elisabeth is accredited in Coaching (ACC – International Coaching Federation, PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching), Change Management, Lean Sigma, Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is also a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.
Elisabeth is also the founder of The Coaches’ Forum – an international community of interest for coaches to explore ideas and insights as an extension to their personal and professional development.
Posted in coaching, Developing managers
By Elisabeth Goodman, 15th March 2021
I had the opportunity recently to host a breakout discussion during a One Nucleus’ (2021) “My question is..” lunchtime session. The question I posed was: “If individuals can choose the company they work for, how do leaders and managers demonstrate that they value that choice?”
It was a deliberately provocative question, seeking to go beyond questions of financial incentives to the essence of what leaders and managers can do to demonstrate that they value each and every individual in their employment. It’s a topic that is close to my heart and integral to a lot of my work with managers and team members in the Life Science. The current pandemic and the changes it’s created in working practices and in individuals’ expectations was of course a big influence on the lunchtime discussion with One Nucleus.
We thought that leaders and managers would have to respond to requests from employees for new ways of working. We also thought that value can be demonstrated by building in time for social connections at the start of team meetings and regular 1-on-1’s between managers and members of their teams. Providing opportunities for learning and development will also increase motivation – something that I have seen several employers try to do despite the disruptions at the present time.
Interestingly, the latest issue of Harvard Business Review also echoes these themes in two of its articles.
The first article is a review of a Gartner white paper (2021) on “Reengineering the recruitment process”. The pandemic has apparently accelerated shifts that were already starting to happen. Amongst the trends is an indication that prospective candidates are increasingly selecting where they work based on the “value proposition” of the employer. Candidates’ criteria include:
Amongst the author’s (Dion Love) conclusions, this one in particular stood out for me:
“Firms must understand candidates’ expectations” and craft positions accordingly, “in the same manner in which they tailor their services to customers”
Dion Love as cited in Harvard Business Review, 2021
This idea of treating employees as you would your customers is an interesting one for managers and leaders to consider too. There is a link here to the impact on a company’s reputation as in the next section of this blog.
The second article, by Dachner and Makarius (2021) focused more on valuing employees when they leave. As the authors point out, the imperative is not just one of meeting legal requirements. It also makes sense from a competitive, reputational stand point. They quote George Sample, an HR practitioner:
“The tighter the competition and the tougher the battle for talent in your industry, the more imperative it is to have dedicated and thoughtful offboarding efforts.”
George Sample cited in Dachner and Makarius, 2021
This other quote by Mike Quinn, a senior vice president at a chemicals company is also very illustrative:
“When people leave, they are going to talk about the company and the way they were treated on the way out. You want them and your current employees to realize that people are treated well even when they leave.”
Mike Quinn cited in Dachner and Makarius, 2021
The authors come up with a list of recommendations, based on their own research on employee turnover, a review of academic and practitioner articles (1980 – 2020) and a scouring of company websites, newspapers and magazines and interviews with HR professionals.
These recommendations include:
I’ve deliberately focused in this article on what organisations can do to demonstrate that they value employees at various stages of the employment life cycle.
There is of course another side to the equation: what employees can do to demonstrate their commitment to the organisation. Employees are accountable for delivering against expectations, and for working with the other members of their team in a way that promotes trust, inclusivity, mutual support and continuous improvement. That’s something that I have covered elsewhere. (See for example Goodman 2018).
References
Dachner, A.M. and Makarius, E.E. (2021). Turn departing employees into loyal alumni. A holistic approach to offboarding. Harvard Business Review, March – April, 89-97
Goodman (2018). Defining team norms for high performance teams. Retrieved from https://elisabethgoodman.wordpress.com/2018/06/03/defining-team-norms-for-high-performance-teams/
Harvard Business Review (2021). Reengineering the recruitment process. The skills needed in many roles are continuously changing – and sources of talent are too. March – April, 17-20.
One Nucleus (February, 24 2021). My question is…. Retrieved from https://onenucleus.com/blog/my-question-isnetworking-lunch-24th-february
About the author
Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting, a consultancy that specialises in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through coaching, courses and workshops, and with a focus on the Life Sciences. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.
Elisabeth founded RiverRhee Consulting in 2009, and prior to that had 25+ years’ experience in the Pharmaceutical Industry in line management and internal training and consultancy roles supporting teams on a global basis.
She is developing her coaching practice, with a focus on helping individuals to exercise choice and realise their potential in the workplace by enhancing their leadership / management, interpersonal and communication skills, and their ability to deal with uncertainty and change.
Elisabeth is accredited in Coaching (ACC – International Coaching Federation, PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching), Change Management, Lean Sigma, Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is also a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.
Elisabeth is also the founder of The Coaches’ Forum – an international community of interest for coaches to explore ideas and insights as an extension to their personal and professional development.
Posted in Developing managers
Tagged employee retention, employee value, employment lifecycle, recruitment
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