Confidence, visibility and credibility – ingredients for realising our potential

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.

Taking a pragmatic approach

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.

Recognising and developing your network

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.

Developing allies and advocates

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!

Other approaches for realising our potential

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:

• communication
• work / life balance
• well-being
• motivation
• efficiency, effectiveness and engagement
• having a clearly defined remit
• obtaining respect

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.

Conclusion

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?

Notes

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.

Flexing our learning muscle for personal 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:

• set clear goals for what we want to learn about
• give ourselves a timeline in which to achieve the goals
• commit to and gain support for achieving our goals by telling others about them.

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.

Taking a focused rather than a scattergun approach

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?

Working outside our comfort zones

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:

• Identify a small thing to change and just try that for starters
• Observe how others do things, do a bit of research, to see what we can learn from them
• Enlist a member of our family, a friend, a colleague at work to support and encourage us
• Once we’ve had a go, repeat the experience until it starts feeling that little bit more comfortable, then stretch a bit further…

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?

Adopting a reflective approach

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:

• what happened?
• so what (can you learn from that)?
• now what (will you do the same or differently as a result)?

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?

Notes

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.

What if neurodiversity was simply treated as another form of diversity?

By Elisabeth Goodman, 18th January 2021

Some background on neurodiversity

The term neurodiversity was first coined by Australian sociologist Judy Singer, and encapsulates a whole range of cognitive, sensory and behavioural diversity associated with neurological differences from what is deemed to be more ‘neurotypical’ configurations.

Temple Grandin is a well-known author and advocate for autism, who is also autistic. Grandin & Panek (2014) share their insights on early studies of Grandin’s own brain and that of others that go some way to describe these neurological differences.

Nancy Doyle, psychologist and CEO of Genius within is also an author and advocate, as well as a researcher, for the wider range of neurodiversity, such as ADHD, Dyslexia, Tourette Syndrome as well as Autism. I was struck by her statement about the relative prevalence of neurodiversity.

“It is estimated that just 59% of people can be considered “neurotypical”. With prevalence data like that, we have to assume that neurodiversity is a natural variation within the human species.”

Doyle, 2019

Spiky profiles

One of the ways in which the estimated 41% of people with neurodiversity are different, is in their ‘spiky profiles’ (Genius Within, n.d.) and the significant strengths that the spikes represent. These spikes cover a range of skills including, creativity and innovation, verbal communication, honesty, empathy and authenticity, focus and sensory awareness. I work with managers and teams in the vibrant Life Science community in Cambridgeshire, UK, where such strengths could confer many advantages.

Whilst I have not sought a diagnosis for myself, and recognise the fallibility of claiming to be ‘a little autistic’ (Doyle, 2021), I am the parent of a diagnosed young autistic adult, and we often talk about how we might have this or that trait in common. We also discuss the strategies that would enable autistic people to address some of the ‘troughs’ associated with their ‘spiky profiles’ and so thrive and shine. These strategies are not so different from those that would enable many so called ‘neurotypicals’ to also interact and communicate with others, and to deal with change more effectively.

Possible strategies for supporting a “neurominority” in the workplace

What if we treated neurodiversity as an under-represented form of diversity, or a “neurominority” (Genius Within n.d.) and focused on the strategies that could enhance the representation, inclusion and general well-being of this minority at work?

Jo Farmer is another advocate for neurodiversity, and for autism in particular. She is also autistic and has written a series of enlightening blogs on how organisations could more effectively access the autistic skill-set, starting with recruitment (Farmer, 2020). Much of what Farmer suggests is to do with:

• clearer communication, with less ambiguity
• creating calm environments
• being more tolerant of the different ways in which someone might need to think and process information
• providing representation or support

As often happens, when I’m exploring a topic, the Harvard Business Review has a very relevant article too. Paul Ingram (2021) has chosen to focus on social class, as a ‘forgotten dimension of diversity’. His article addresses the 32% of of US workers from lower social-class who are less likely to become managers than their higher-class colleagues. His research suggests that organisations are consequently missing out on a potential pool of candidates for leadership that typically demonstrate strengths and values associated with empathy and caring for others, trust and loyalty, and motivation and the courage to change.

Although the situation is very different, if neurodiversity is another such ‘forgotten dimension’, then similar measures might be helpful. These might include:

• Adding neurodiversity to your organisational goals for diversity and inclusion (with measures for success)
• Working with your community: schools, colleges and local advocacy groups to reach out to those who are neurodiverse
• Being open to ‘non-conventional’ academic routes i.e. not just degree requirements but also lived experiences for prospective candidates (see one of my earlier blogs for more on this – Goodman (2019))
• Taking diverse approaches to interview your candidates e.g. through completion of designated tasks
• Including people who are neurodiverse on your recruitment and interview panels
• Having neurominority role models and advocates in the workplace

Concluding thoughts

Finally, how comfortable are people to disclose that they are neurodiverse? Should they have to? And if they don’t, how will that affect their ability to communicate what they need, and others’ ability to support them?

Amanda Kirby (2021) has an excellent article on this topic, which suggests to me that, more important than any advocacy or diversity and inclusion policies, is a mindset amongst all of us to express our own needs, develop strategies to be at our best, and be attentive and receptive to, and supportive of the needs of others.

Notes

References

Doyle, N. (2019, Feb 1). Making the invisible visible – supporting neurodiversity in the workplace. Personnel Today. Retrieved from https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/making-the-invisible-visible/

Doyle, N. (2021, Jan 18). Is everyone a little autistic? Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/drnancydoyle/2021/01/16/is-everyone-a-little-autistic/?sh=3ff6c75b5666

Farmer, J. (2020, May 20). Accessing the autistic skill set – 1. Recruitment and interviews. Retrieved from https://jofarmer.wordpress.com/2020/05/20/accessing-the-autistic-skill-set-1-recruitment-and-interviews/

Genius Within (n.d.). What is neurodiversity? Retrieved from https://www.geniuswithin.co.uk/what-is-neurodiversity/

Goodman, E. (2019). Using smarter criteria than experience for selecting the right candidates? Retrieved from https://elisabethgoodman.wordpress.com/2019/10/24/smarter-criteria-than-experience-for-selecting-the-right-candidates/

Grandin, T. & Panek, R. (2014). The autistic brain. Exploring the strengths of a different kind of mind. United Kingdom: Rider.

Ingram, P. (2021). The forgotten dimension of diversity. Social class is as important as race of gender. Harvard Business Review, January – February, 58 – 67.

Kirby, A. (2021, January 27). Is neurodiversity coming out in 2021?.. and should we have to? Neurodiversity 101 Retrieved from https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/neurodiversity-coming-out-2021-should-we-have-prof-amanda-kirby/

About the author

Elisabeth Goodman, ACC 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 be true to themselves and exercise choice 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), 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 working towards her PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching with Barefoot Coaching and the University of Chester. 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.

Developing your career – with choice

By Elisabeth Goodman, 12th January 2021

An article in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review (Bowles, H.R. & Thomason, B., 2021) caught my eye because it is a topic I am passionate about: helping people to realise that they do have choice in their lives, and how to do something about it.

I remember one of my managers once accusing me of taking an opportunistic approach to my career: influencing the nature of my work based on what was important to me. I was surprised by her remark, as I believe that is absolutely what I should be doing with my life!

Bowles and Thomason (2021) have confirmed that for me – with some very helpful nuances. They also point out that the pandemic that we are living through is a very good time to take stock of what is important to us in our life and in our work, and to negotiate with those around us to make that happen.

Start by developing clarity around your goals

We are often so caught up in just getting through our work, getting through our day, that we can lose track of what’s important to us. We might not even know what our long term goal is, and be happy to just take opportunities as they come along. However, those opportunities might not come along, or we might not be in a mindset to spot them and make the most of them when they do.

One of the things that we ask delegates on RiverRhee’s management courses is to think about what unique contribution is their’s to make at work. What strengths they have, and what value they bring that perhaps no-one else does. What they would love to be able to focus their time on more if they had the choice to do so.

It’s surprising how difficult clarifying your own goals can be. There are a couple of tools that I use with coaching clients that can help.

The career timeline

This works by visualising a timeline of your career, and focusing in on four or five career points that were particularly significant. For each of these, draw out the successes, what you particularly enjoyed about them, what skills or qualities contributed to those. These insights will help you to identify what you might like to continue having in your career, or have more of, going forward.

A coach can also help you to truly associate with each highlight in your career and capture the insights from them.

‘Do more great work’

I have written about Michael Bungay Stanier’s approach for helping people identify how they can do more of what they enjoy in a previous blog (Goodman, 2020a). It’s a lovely reflection tool that can be used on your own, or talked through with a coach.

As Bowles and Thomason (2021) point out: you don’t need to only accept jobs that fit with your long-term goals. There might be jobs you can do that will help you along the way; that are a convenient tactical fit (e.g. to develop skills or experience) whilst keeping the longer-term goal in mind.

Develop and tap into your network

It’s tempting to think that we have to resolve our career decisions on our own and yet, I’ve found from experience, that people can gain great satisfaction from being able to help you.

These people can be friends, family members, existing colleagues (up and down the hierarchy), potential new colleagues and others.

As Bowles and Thomason (2021) suggest, we can and should reach out to others for such things as:

• facts and data about career moves that we are considering
• their views about potential blockers and enablers
• whether or not they might be willing to act as advocates or allies in our negotiations about our careers

Reaching out to people in this way will strengthen your network and relationships for the longer term too.

Have courageous conversations

The approach that Bowles and Thomason (2021) advocate to having conversations with your existing or potential manager, or interviewer is one that seeks a win:win outcome for all parties concerned. Rather than focusing in on the salary, talk about the kind of outcome you would like, how this fits in with your values, strengths, longer term goals. And explore how this would sit within the context of the manager’s, team’s, organisational goals.

This approach reminds me of what Myles Downey also advocates, as reflected in another of my blogs (Goodman, 2020b): the importance of finding a good match between your own values and those of the organisation.

As Bowles and Thomason also say, the nature of your discussion might be about:

• How you could adjust a request to you to do work that moves away from your longer term goals or ask it to be treated as a temporary / short-term arrangement to meet an immediate organisational need. (The authors call this an ‘asking’ negotiation.)
• Asking for some special new arrangement that advances your longer term goals (this could include remote working / quality of life arrangements). (These ‘bending’ negotiations might need to be carefully positioned to show how they would benefit the organisation as well as yourself rather than just being a ‘special case’.)
• Coming up with a significantly new or different role for yourself or other conditions surrounding your work (‘shaping’ negotiations).

Any of these negotiations might be particularly timely given the significant impact that most organisations are currently experiencing with the pandemic. If you can show how your suggested career changes can benefit your place of work, your home life (if negotiating with family members), or the new organisation that you would like to join, then your negotiations will have a greater chance of success.

Conclusions

The start of a new year is always a great opportunity to pause and think about your goals. The ongoing upheaval caused by the pandemic seems to make it doubly such a good time – both for individuals and for the organisations in which we work.

There are some good tools out there to help us think this through. Coaches, friends and family, our own colleagues can help us with that too.

Making choices about and changes to what we are doing takes courage and time, but the benefits would seem to be amply worthwhile.

References

Bowles, H.R. & Thomason, B. (2021). Negotiating your next job. Focus on your role, responsibilities, an career trajectory, not your salary. Harvard Business Review, January – February, 68 – 75.

Goodman, E. (2020a). The manager as coach: helping others find their goal. Retrieved from https://elisabethgoodman.wordpress.com/2020/06/11/developing-your-coaching-skills-as-a-manager/

Goodman, E. (2020b). Keeping our personal values in mind in the workplace. Retrieved from https://elisabethgoodman.wordpress.com/2020/02/13/keeping-our-personal-values-in-mind-in-the-workplace/

About the author

Elisabeth Goodman, ACC 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 be true to themselves and exercise choice 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), 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 working towards her PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching with Barefoot Coaching and the University of Chester.

Going on a growth mindset journey

By Elisabeth Goodman, 10th August 2020

Have you ever…?

• Decided that something that you wanted to do was just too difficult?
• Hit obstacles that have put you off continuing with something that you started?
• Got depressed or had a sense of failure because something has not worked out?
• Felt put off by someone being a lot better than you?
• Judged that someone you were managing was not capable of doing something – perhaps a little too hastily?

These are all examples of what Dr Carol Dweck (2017) describes as a fixed mindset. Her book “Mindset” is a rich source of information on fixed and growth mindsets, their consequences and what we can do about them.

This is applicable to us as individuals, as managers, leaders and coaches, as parents and teachers.

Here are some points that stood out for me from Dr Dweck’s book. They are helping me to go on a growth mindset journey as an individual, and in my work with managers and individuals within teams.

Fixed mindsets and limiting beliefs get in the way

They stop us from achieving our potential, and from helping others to achieve theirs.

They cause us to feel anxious or depressed about what we might or might not be able to do.

In an organisation, this can result in high levels of turn-over, and missed opportunities to increase productivity, innovation and competitive standing with respect to other organisations.

Fixed mindsets are based on assumptions

These assumptions include thinking that:

• People can either do things or they can’t.
• We have a limit to our intelligence.
• You are either born with talent or you are not.
• To admit that you can’t do something is a sign of weakness.
• Having to put effort into learning how to do something means that you are not good enough.

For people with a fixed mindset, not being able to do something that you are supposed to be talented in can feel literally terrifying. Having to put effort into something with the possibility that you might fail can be equally so.

Managers, leaders and organisations can either reinforce a “culture of genius” or they can cultivate a “culture of development”

A “culture of genius” is symptomatic of a fixed mindset. It leads to everything being about validation – and to “group think”:

• The CEO or team leaders are not to be contradicted because they are so talented that they have all the answers.
• To express a different point of view would be seen as dissent and might be punished.
• To comply is to fit in.

Where there is a “culture of development”, or a growth mindset, in Carol Dweck’s words:

• Everything feels more possible.
• The world expands and is filled with energy.
• It feels like fun!

Dweck cites examples from Jack Welsh at GE, and Anne Mulcahy at XEROX. They role modelled how listening to people, giving them credit, nurturing them, focusing on learning, and combining toughness with compassion can turn things around in organisations that were previously floundering.

What a growth mindset is and is not

A growth mindset is about…	It is not (just) about..
Being dedicated to growing talent	Being open minded and flexible
Putting in hard work AND trying new strategies AND seeking input from others	Putting in lots of effort
Providing or accessing support and resources to make progress	Telling others or yourself that “you can do anything”

How to cultivate a growth mindset in the people that you manage, and in yourself

As managers, leaders and coaches we can expand our belief in human development and growth by:

• Recognising that skills can be learnt – that people can develop their abilities
• Valuing learning and perseverance in those that we work with
• Giving feedback in a way that promotes learning and future success
• Being a resource for learning

As individuals we can:

• Acknowledge that we are likely to have a mix of fixed and growth mindsets.
• Be aware of our fixed mindset triggers (see the opening list to this blog!).
• Here’s the fun bit: recognise the fixed mindset persona within ourselves (I’ve named mine Defensive Deirdre!).
• Our fixed mindset personas were born to protect us and keep us safe – when they crop up we can acknowledge and educate them and invite them to go on our growth mindset journey with us.
• We might even want to let other people around us know when our fixed mindset persona is being triggered and what we are trying to do about it.

What growth mindsets will deliver and conclusion

Carol Dweck conducted a study across a number of organisations and found that those that adopted a “culture of development” witnessed:

• A greater sense of trust by individuals towards their companies.
• A greater sense of empowerment, ownership and commitment by people within their companies.
• More support by the companies for a (reasonable) level of risk-taking, creativity and innovation.

For us as individuals, a growth mindset offers us a richness of opportunities to continue to learn and develop and reach ever higher levels of achievement in our professional and personal lives.

Notes

References

Dweck, C. (2017) Mindset. Changing the Way you Think to Fulfil your Potential. Robinson,

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 courses, workshops and coaching, 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 develop management, interpersonal and communication skills, and to deal with change.

Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in Lean Sigma, in Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.

Elisabeth is also a member of the ICF (International Coaching Federation) and is working towards her PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching with Barefoot Coaching and the University of Chester.

The manager as coach: helping others find their goal

By Elisabeth Goodman, revised 11th June 2020

(Originally posted as “Developing your coaching skills as a manager” 18th January 2017)

Helping people perform at their best – where to start?

We teach coaching skills in  RiverRhee’s Introduction to Management  course and also in Coaching Skills for Managers.

We also apply these skills ourselves as coaches.

The result is a double benefit: it enhance managers’ performance and it gives them a tool to develop their direct reports’ performance.

Click here for information on RiverRhee’s Introduction to Management course.

[You can read more about some of these coaching skills in my blog on Appreciative Inquiry which also references the GROW model of coaching.]

Michael Bungay Stanier’s  (2010) “Do more great work” is proving to be a valuable starting point for helping people who are making decisions about their direction in life: what they want to achieve.

Helping people to articulate what they want to achieve

This the Define step in Appreciative Inquiry, or the Goal in GROW.

What you’re looking for, in terms of a coaching conversation, is what will help the individual define, in positive terms: what they want to move towards, rather than away from.

Adapted from Michael Bungay Stanier, 2010

Ask them to think about what’s currently happening: find the great work and what makes this so

Use this 3-part circle to help individuals differentiate between the aspects of their work that is OK, that they don’t particularly enjoy, and that is ‘great’.

(This equates to the Reality step in GROW).

What you’re after are the instances of great things that happen for them in their work.

• What are they doing when they are feeling wonderful?
• What do they really enjoy?
• Feel fulfilled about?
• What are they doing when they are completely “in the zone” or absorbed in their work?

Then ask them to differentiate what they are doing in terms of:

• How it relates to interaction with others – is there any interaction; does it involve training or mentoring; working things out together; anything else?
• The kind of thinking they are doing – does it involve researching; creating new theoretical models; evaluating alternatives?
• What they are practically doing – is it hands on work; making or testing things?

Helping them to drill down in this way will help them to identify the kind of work they might want to focus on going forward:

• What they value most about their work
• What motivates them
• What their particular strengths are that they would like to use more fully

What to do once someone has discovered what makes their work great

Stanier (2010) gives us a 4-box grid which compares and contrasts the things that an individual cares and does not care about, with those that their organisation does or does not care about.

I have super-imposed the grid with the 5-Ds’ from the MindGym’s (2006) “Give me time”.

So this becomes a useful tool for discussing what options the individual has for doing their ‘great’ work within or outside of the organisation.

(‘They’ is the organisation. ‘I’ is the individual.)

Michael Bungay Stanier’s (2010) ‘caring’ 4-box matrix overlayed with the 5Ds (in blue text) from the MindGym

At this point, the person you are coaching may be ready to consider what they will do…

The ideal is of course is to achieve the dream scenario: a perfect match between what the individual cares about, and what the organisation expects.

(The dream scenario fits nicely with the Dream step in Appreciative Inquiry.)

The reality is that we tend to have a mix in our work – and the individual may need to decide what they want to do about that.

(These are the Design / Deliver steps in Appreciative Inquiry or the Will step in the GROW model.)

If they arrive at the conclusion that there is not a good fit between what they want to do, and what the organisation expects from them – then that is a useful realisation in terms of their onward career planning.

Conclusion

Having this kind of coaching discussion with your direct report might assume a high level of trust between you.  It could equally be a way of building trust: you are demonstrating a real interest in what they value in their work.

Your ability to respond to the outcome in a positive and supportive way will also help to reinforce that trust.

Using this approach will enable an open and honest conversation about your expectations and theirs, and their options within or outside your organisation as a result.

As always, I’d be interested in hearing what readers think of these tools and approaches.

NOTES

References

Stanier, M.B. (2010) Do More Great Work. Workman Publishing Company, Inc.

The Mind Gym (2006) Give me Time. Time Warner Books.

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 courses, workshops and one-to-one coaching, 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 develop management, interpersonal and communication skills, and to deal with change.

Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in Lean Sigma, in Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.

Elisabeth is also a member of the ICF (International Coaching Federation) and is working towards her PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching with Barefoot Coaching and the University of Chester.

Starting from a position of choice in manager-employee relationships

By Elisabeth Goodman, 17th May 2019

An article in the latest issue of Harvard Business Review has, as is often the case, triggered some lateral thinking on my part.  Borys Groysberg (2020) explores a case study of whether a manager should fight to keep a star employee who decides to leave the organisation without any apparent prior indication of wanting to do so.

There follows some very valid discussion, from the author and from two contributing experts, on the merits or otherwise of various remedial-style actions.

What are your options when an employee says they plan to leave your employment?

As the manager you can:

• Make various forms of counter-offer to the employee
• Find out why the employee is leaving and see if the reasons can be addressed in a way that would stop them doing so
• Promote their colleague to stop them leaving as well, and to fill the gap even if they might not (yet) have the necessary skills
• Give their colleague the incentive to work towards promotion by developing their skills to fill the gap
• Put your own work to one side in order to fill the gap until someone else can be found to fill it

What the article also begins to explore is what preventative actions the manager could have taken which might have prevented the employee wanting to leave in the first place, or helped them to be better prepared for them wanting to do so.

What are your options to pre-empt an employee taking you by surprise with their career choices?

I believe that such preventative options could be even better positioned were managers and employees to adopt the mindset that:

1. People work for a company by choice, just as a company chooses to recruit people for specific jobs
2. The relationship between an individual and their manager is a collaborative one, which combines meeting the organisation’s requirements and supporting the individual in their personal development plans
3. An individual may find that their personal development is best continued elsewhere
4. A company’s requirements from an individual will also evolve over time

There are various tools that can support discussions between managers and employees about their respective expectations. Most important is to have the conversation itself. [Illustration based on various RiverRhee courses for managers.]

How to start from a position of choice in manager-eMployee relationships?

If we start from a position of choice in manager-employee relationships, then some good practices, which the HBR article does mention, could be re-cast as follows:

1. Have regular one-to-one discussions which are not only task-focused, but also reflect on how things are going in terms of :

• The individual’s expectations for their personal development
• The organisation’s requirements from the individual

2. Discuss succession planning:

• How the individual’s career might evolve within the organisation in terms of potential gaps from other people leaving
• What the individual could do to develop others who might fill their role if they move to other roles within or outside the organisation

3. Perhaps most importantly of all, regularly demonstrate, through positive feedback, how much you value the individual’s contribution to the company

notes

Reference

Groysberg, B. (2020) Case Study: Should you Fight to Keep a Star? Harvard Business Review, May – June

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 courses, workshops and one-to-one coaching, 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 develop management, interpersonal and communication skills, and to deal with change.

Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in Lean Sigma, in Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.

Elisabeth is also a member of the ICF (International Coaching Federation) and is working towards her PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching with Barefoot Coaching and the University of Chester.

Working with diversity in thinking, learning and interpersonal styles

Elisabeth Goodman, 9th May 2020

I’ve been doing a bit of reading and thinking about the impact of diversity in how we think and learn and how this might play out in our interactions with each other at work, or indeed at home.

A look at Neurodiversity

There is a lot that we can learn from people who are described as ‘neurodiverse’, given, as Nancy Doyle (2019) says, that:

It is estimated that just 59% of people can be considered “neurotypical”. With prevalence data like that, we have to assume that neurodiversity is a natural variation within the human species.

People who are ‘neurodiverse’ include those “with autism, Asperger’s, dyslexia, ADHD. They have a cognitive profile of extreme strengths and weaknesses and in how they think, and in how they interact with others. People who are ‘neurotypical’ tend to score about the same on all measures of their cognitive profiles.

According to Genius Within , the cognitive strengths of the ‘neurodiverse’ cover a plethora of intellectual and interpersonal skills (or intelligences) such as problem solving, holistic thinking, verbal skills, visual thinking, mechanical skills, creativity, attention to detail, hyperfocus, empathy, persistance etc.

The list represents all the different skills that we would want in the workplace the difference being, Doyle (2019) suggests, that individuals who are ‘neurodiverse’ will specialise in some of these, whilst those who are ‘neurotypical’ might be more generalist. Or would they?

Insights from personality tools and learning styles

We have a vast choice of personality tools available to us to help us understand our individual strengths and those of others.

MBTI summary slide from RiverRhee’s training courses, with illustrations by Nathaniel Spain

What we can learn from personality tools is that we are all diverse in terms of which cognitive and interpersonal skills come to us most naturally, and which ones we have learnt to develop over time.

Kolb, and Honey and Mumford add yet more perspectives to this in terms of our different learning styles such as:

• experiential or activist
• reviewing or reflecting
• concluding or theorising
• planning or pragmatism

Are we simply talking about different types of intelligences?

In digging deeper on this whole subject, as part of carrying out my research for my PG Certificate in Business and Personal Coaching, I came across Watagodakumbura (2014).  His focus is on the need to address all of these differences in terms of education.

He quotes, amongst other really useful things, a range of intelligences: linguistic, spatial, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, intrapersonal and interpersonal, naturalistic and existential.

Watagodakumbura also reminds us, as Grandin (2013) does, that a lot of the differences in our cognitive and interpersonal skills can be related to differences in brain development. This opens up further questions for me about what we are born with, and what we can develop over time.  What role does neuroplasticity for instance play in all of this?

Conclusion: So what can we do with this understanding of diversity?

I personally find this whole area tremendously fascinating and exciting.  There is so much we can learn about ourselves and the people around us.

We can use this knowledge in a way that is enriching for ourselves and to enhance our interactions with others. We can make conscious choices about how to develop ourselves, and how to take advantage of opportunities that make the best of our strengths.

There is so much more to learn about this area.  I’m looking forward to finding out more.

Notes

References

Doyle, N (2019). Making the invisible visible – supporting neurodiversity in the workplace. Personnel Today, 1st Feb. https://www.personneltoday.com/hr/making-the-invisible-visible/ (Accessed 9th May 2020)

Genius Within – https://www.geniuswithin.co.uk/infographics-and-literature/neuro-diversity-venn-diagram/ (Accessed 9th May 2020)

Grandin, T. and Panek, R. (2013). The Autistic Brain. Rider Books.

Honey and Mumford – https://www.open.edu/openlearn/ocw/pluginfile.php/629607/mod_resource/content/1/t175_4_3.pdf (Accessed 9th May 2020)

Kolb – https://www.simplypsychology.org/learning-kolb.html (Accessed 9th May 2020)

Watagodakumbura, C. (2014). The need to address psychological and neurological characteristics of learners in the mainstream education system. Journal of Studies in Education, Vol 4(1), 94-108

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 courses, workshops and one-to-one coaching, 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 develop management, interpersonal and communication skills, and to deal with change.

Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in Lean Sigma, in Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is a member of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG.

Elisabeth is also a member of the ICF (International Coaching Federation) and is working towards her PG Certification in Business and Personal Coaching with Barefoot Coaching and the University of Chester.

Keeping our personal values in mind in the workplace

By Elisabeth Goodman, 13th February 2020

I am finding some great intersections between my regular reading of Harvard Business Review and my new reading as part of my development as a coach.

This blog explores how congruence between our personal values and those of the organisation for which we work can influence how we feel about our work. It relates to Myles Downey’s writing (2014) and Maryam Kouchaki and Isaac Smith’s article in the January – February issue of HBR (2020).

Congruence between the inner and outer worlds of individuals and organisations

Downey builds on the work of Tim Gallwey (1974) to develop a model of individuals’ and organisations’ inner and outer worlds as shown in this illustration.

Values at work – illustration adapted from Myles Downey (2014)

As my adaptation of Downey’s illustration shows, values are a key component of the inner world of individuals, and of organisations. These values are, in turn, reflected in how an individual behaves, and in how an organisation articulates its goals and assesses the performance of individuals.

It follows that, if there is not a good match (or congruence) between the four quadrants, then:

• Either the organisation will not be satisfied with an individual’s performance
• Or the individual will not be happy in their place of work

The values that might have the greatest influence on these dynamics are those associated with the ethics of the organisation, or in how they play out as individual morals. Kouchaki and Smith refer to these as “eulogy virtues”.

Eulogy virtues

Eulogy virtues, as the name implies, are the ones by which we would like others to remember us after we’ve died. So they may relate, for example, to our kindness, our generosity or our honesty. In an organisation they would translate to how we would expect peers and managers to behave towards each other, and towards their customers.

Kouchaki and Smith’s article has some useful guidance on how we could help ourselves keep to our chosen values for instance by:

• Anticipating situations where they might be compromised and how we would behave in those situations
• Sharing our values with others who could hold us accountable for our behaviour
• Thinking about how we would feel if our behaviour was publicised (if we did not adhere to our values)
• Considering ourselves as role models to others

Identifying and relating personal and organisational values

Barefoot Coaching Ltd (2019) has a beautiful set of cards covering 50 potential values.

A snapshot of Barefoot Coaching’s values cards (Barefoot Coaching Ltd, 2019)

These and other values-related tools can be used to stimulate reflection and discussion with individuals, in teams, and in organisations.

A previous HBR article by Patrick Lencioni (2002) has some excellent tips for defining company values – an approach that I have facilitated in team building events as part of my work with RiverRhee.

Lencioni suggests that company values typically relate to three areas:

1. What makes your company unique
2. Employee qualities and interactions
3. Customer service

Examples of questions that individuals could ask themselves when developing or reflecting on their company values include:

• Why do I enjoy working at my company?
• What unspoken values have contributed to our success so far?
• How could each person in the organisation integrate their company’s values into their day-to-day work?
• How will we know that people are practising the values

Conclusion

Values are an important component of our inner lives.  They affect how we approach and feel about our lives at work as well as at home.  We can gain some valuable insights from the authors mentioned above about how we can shape and influence organisational values to achieve maximum congruence with our own and others’ personal values.

Notes

References:

Barefoot Coaching Ltd (2019). Values coaching cards.

Downey, M, (2014). Effective modern coaching. London: LID Publishing.

Gallwey, W.T. (1974).  The inner game of  tennis.  New Yort: Random House.

Lencioni, P.M. (2002).  Make your values mean something.  Harvard Business Review

Kouchaki, M. & Smith, I.H. (2020) Building an ethical career. Harvard Business Review, January-February, 15 – 139

Other notes:

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting., a consultancy that specialises in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through courses, workshops and one-to-one coaching, and with a focus on the Life Sciences.

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 skills and practice, with a focus on helping individuals to develop management and ‘soft’ skills, especially associated with change, and with Neurodiversity.

Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in Lean Sigma, in Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is a member of the ICF (International Coach Federation) and of the APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.

The manager as coach: leadership, management and coaching

By Elisabeth Goodman, 4th February 2020

We had a question during our recent RiverRhee Introduction to Management course about the relevance of learning about leadership skills as part of a management course. (We do have a follow-on Transition to Leadership course.) We believe that the visionary aspects of leadership are valuable ones for managers to bear in mind, albeit their focus might be more on the operational side of things.

I have, coincidentally, just come across a connection with this topic as part of my reading on coaching skills (Downey, 2014).

Adapted from Myles Downey’s illustration (Downey, 2014)

Myles Downey asserts that a manager can usefully draw on skills from all three areas: leadership, management and coaching, depending on the situation and the individual involved.

(This is a slightly different take on Hersey and Blanchard’s ‘situational leadership’ model (Hersey and Blanchard, 2013))

exercising leadership vs management vs coaching in a management role

Referring to my version of Downey’s illustration above, a manager can make good use of their leadership skills to inspire the members of their team.  They can articulate and role-model the organisation’s vision and values.

They can use their management skills to clarify purpose, roles and responsibilities, to define measures for performance and to foster continuous process improvement.

And they can use their coaching skills to assist with the on-the-job and career development of the individuals reporting to them by:

• providing feedback on their performance
• listening to understand and asking open questions to stimulate further thinking
• supporting (rather than automatically advising) them so that they can find their own answers and solutions

An Individual’s authority over their destiny

I remember feeling ‘liberated’ in my last months as an employee to be totally myself, and more in control of my destiny than I had ever been. I did not worry unduly about needing to respect hierarchy and the boundaries between departments, so much as looking for opportunities to collaborate, share knowledge and ideas, and be of value. How different would my life at work have been if I had adopted more of this kind of attitude throughout my career?

Myles Downey suggests that, whilst an organisation (and a manager) have authority about what work an employee needs to do, the employee could have authority about how they do their work.  It’s something that is often referred to as ’empowerment’, and as something that is in the gift of managers to give to their direct reports; or that individuals should somehow take the initiative to acquire.  Wouldn’t it be better if we just assumed that this is the way we work?

Downey also suggests that an individual could think more in terms of whether an organisation will be a good fit for them before they join. They could ask themselves: “does the organisation have the kinds of purpose, values and ways of working that I can relate to?”.

Similarly, he suggests that an organisation, when recruiting new employees, could consider whether the individual’s aspirations, values and approach, as well as their technical skills are a good fit.

Conclusion

Underpinning all of the above is the necessity for a good relationship between managers and their direct reports.  Such a relationship would be founded on mutual respect, trust, open communication, honesty.  Building this relationship is in the gift of both the manager and the individual.

Notes

References:

Downey, M, (2014). Effective modern coaching. London: LID Publishing.

Hersey and Blanchard, (2013). https://www.selfawareness.org.uk/news/situational-leadership-and-developing-great-teams (Accessed 3rd February 2020.)

Other notes:

Elisabeth Goodman is the Owner and Principal Consultant at RiverRhee Consulting., a consultancy that specialises in “creating exceptional managers and teams”, through courses, workshops and one-to-one coaching, and with a focus on the Life Sciences.

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 develop management and ‘soft’ skills, especially associated with change, and with Neurodiversity.

Elisabeth is accredited in Change Management, in Lean Sigma, in Belbin Team Roles, MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator) and is an NLP (NeuroLinguistic Programming) Practitioner. She is a member of APM (Association for Project Management) in which she was a founding member of the Enabling Change SIG. RiverRhee is a member-to-member training provider for One Nucleus.