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3 Team development

This chapter will look at the following topics:

Characteristics of effective teams

Step 1 – Understand that a team goes through a series of development stages to achieve high performance

Step 2 – Adapt your approach to their different stages of development

Step 3 – Creating a shared language for the roles that people prefer to play

Step 4 – Encourage diversity

Summary

Different working preferences

Learning points from this case study

The role of learning and development in team development

Key points

What makes an effective team-building event?

Design of the team intervention

Introduction exercises

Review of current team-working

Development of self-awareness

The role of learning and development managers in team building

A checklist of key questions for any team-building activity

Individual commitment to a group effort – that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilization work.

– Vince Lombardi

Characteristics of effective teams In this chapter, we will look at how to build and develop truly effective teams that can deliver results. Many of us inherit individuals who seem to work perfectly well in isolation, but fail to build a cohesive force for achieving results together.

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Although our experiences may not be the same as just described, many of us see the necessary qualities in the individuals we manage, but still fail to bring out the best in them. Our challenge is to bring together the different skills, personalities and value sets to gain the momentum required to achieve greater performance from the team than we would gain from the same people working on their own.

There are many different types of teams and there is no single solution for all. However, there are some fundamental principles that will create the foundation for highly performing teams

The following list will provide a useful basis for any team discussion regarding team effectiveness.

• A clear goal – How clear are the team members on the overall vision and strategy for the team? Do they have a shared view on what is expected of them?

• Clear measures of success – Are the team members clear about what suc- cess looks like and how it should be measured? Are they individually and collectively measured based on results?

• Shared commitment – Do they all share an agreed commitment on what they are required to do?

• Capable team members – Do they have the appropriate skills and knowledge required to do the job?

• Collaborative working – How willing are people to help each other out and work with others to achieve a common goal?

• Standards of excellence – How do they set objectives and continually raise the standards?

Reflection point

Rate your team on a scale of 1 to 10 for each of the above criteria.

(1) What do they do well?

(2) What do they not do so well?

(3) What do they need to do differently, to improve their ratings on each criteria?

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In order for teams to work effectively, the manager needs to pay attention to the following four steps:

Step 1: Understand that teams go through a lifecycle from forming to performing. Step 2: Adapt the approach to meet the teams’ needs at different stages of their development.

Step 3: Create a shared language to help the team understand what roles they would like to play and what roles they need to play in the team.

Step 4: Encourage different skills to flourish and recognize the benefit of diversity within the team.

Understanding the team’s behaviour patterns and dynamics is essential if the team is to develop and perform. The skillful leader must do more than just focus on the task in hand; the leader needs to pay attention to the pro- cess of how the team is working and the feelings that are going on between individuals.

Figure 3.1 shows the different levels that operate in any team dynamics.

The ‘content’ is what the team is doing – its task. The ‘process’ is how they are working together to achieve the task. The ‘relationships’ are the emotions and interpersonal dynamics that affect the other two factors.

Many managers spend 90 per cent of their time on the task and forget the other two elements completely. Likewise, some managers feel that they are the counsellor of all and pay no attention to the process of getting the job done. The role of the manager is to pay attention to all three parts of the equation, as without any one component, the team can easily fall apart.

Content (i.e., the task)

Set clear objectives and parameters. Clarify timescales and deliverables.

Process

Hamburger model

Task

Relationships

Figure 3.1 Process – task – relationships

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Process

Agree on how the team will work together to achieve the task. Allocate roles. Agree on a plan. Ensure that everyone is utilized to his or her best advantage. Be flexible on changing the plan if the nature of the task changes. Review progress and adapt if needed.

Relationships

Review on how people feel about working together. Address any conflicts or issues. Check out people’s motivation levels. Check whether everyone is included.

This process of process/task/feelings is a useful review mechanism for any team development you may be asked to undertake. This can either take the form of the group reviewing against each area themselves, or you may wish to give feedback on each of the three areas yourself.

In terms of setting some basic foundations for effective teams, let us consider the following steps.

Step 1 – Understand that a team goes through a series of development stages to achieve high performance

Twenty years ago, the psychologist Tuckman developed the ORMING principle, which demonstrated that teams go through a natural lifecycle. Leading teams involves understanding these different stages and taking time to allow the teams to go through the different phases, in order to achieve high performance at the end.

There are four main stages that a team will go through during its lifecycle (Figure 3.2).

1. Forming • Feelings not exposed or dealt with • No rocking the boat • Weaknesses covered up • Lack of clarity around expectations • Low involvement in planning and decision-making • Manager taking the lead and making most decisions

2. Storming • Experimentation with boundaries • More risky issues debated • Personal feelings raised

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Stages in Team Development

Stage 1

Forming

Testing/undeveloped Polite Guarded Watchful Impersonal

Stage 2

Storming

Infighting/experimenting Controlling conflicts Confronting people Opting out Difficulties Feeling stuck

Stage 3

Norming

Getting organized/ consolidating Developing skills Establishing procedures Giving feedback Confronting issues

Stage 4

Performing

Mature closeness Resourceful Flexible Open Effective Close and supportive

Figure 3.2 Stages in team development

• More inward-looking • Sometimes uncomfortable • Establishing a pecking order • Confrontation • Disagreement

3. Norming • Agreed procedures • Clear expectations • Agreed ways of working • Established ground rules • Clear identities within the group • More systematic and intuitive

4. Performing • High flexibility • Maximum use of energy and ability • Needs of all members taken into account • Focus on development • Leadership shared depending on task • High achievement and delivery

So, what do you do to take your team through the different stages? In step 2, we will look at each of the four phases of team development.

Step 2 – Adapt your approach to their different stages of development

Forming – the undeveloped team

We have all joined a new team and experienced the feelings of discomfort and watchfulness while we wait to see how things work and how decisions will be made. At this stage, the team members will tend to be polite and courteous to each other, not wanting to share much personal information. They are looking very much to the leader to take control and manage the process.

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So, what do you do?

• Demonstrate openness by example • Encourage team members to discuss and share their views • Listen to any individual’s concerns and issues • Provide solutions for any initial team problems • Spend time as a group, both socially and informally • Give maximum direction and support

Storming – the experimenting team

At this stage, people will start to find their own pecking order and the group will be looking to see who takes the lead and who follows. Disagreements may well occur as people start to feel more confident in their viewpoint and wish to assert themselves within the group. People will opt out if they feel that things are not going their way or that they will challenge the process and the approach being taken. Conflict and challenge are all part of the process of people getting to know each other well enough to work effectively later down the line. It is easy to try to cover up conflict and stop the disagreements that happen at this stage. However, it is only by allowing time for constructive disagreement and debate that people begin to understand the views of others and start to create some shared ways of working.

So, what do you do?

• Encourage greater openness between individuals • Allow conflicts to surface rather than stopping them • Involve the team in assessing their own performance • Question decision-making and problem-solving methods being used • Render high levels of support • Encourage team members to air their issues with each other and come to their

own solution

Norming – the consolidating team

By this point, the team will have created a clear role for themselves within the group and will be starting to agree to some formal or informal working norms. The distinct culture of the group will become more apparent and more focus will be on the task rather than on the process of how they work together. They are ready to start delivering the task…

So, what do you do?

• Clarify task objectives for the team and the individuals • Regularly review performance and plan further improvements

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• Develop the decision-making and problem-solving skills used by the team • Encourage people to share their strengths and compensate for each other’s

weaknesses • Celebrate successes • Give moderate support

Performing – the mature team

By now, the team members are working at a high level of cohesion and they seem to know what part everyone plays. They may well be very defensive of each other against other teams and see themselves as the top of the bunch. They are delivering high-quality performance and seem to be needing your inputs less and less.

• They are clear about their objectives and stretch themselves. • They define their job roles as needed without prompting. • They continually build skills in questioning, listening and giving feedback. • They support and trust each other. • They confront issues face-to-face. • They celebrate successful deadlines, key events and openly review mistakes

and setbacks. • They manage the entry and exit of colleagues easily.

So, what is your role now?

• Build bridges with other teams • Allow leadership to change with the needs of the group • Consider opportunities for further responsibilities • Encourage informal communication • Fight any insularity • Expose team to external benchmarks and best practices • Provide minimal direction and trust the team to perform independently • Celebrate successes and show clear recognition for high performance

Reflection point

Think about the team that you are working with.

What stage of development have they reached? Forming/storming/ norming/performing

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What should you do to support them at this stage?

How do you begin to move them on to the next stage?

Step 3 – Creating a shared language for the roles that people prefer to play

Success can only be achieved when the team leaders and team members work together as one unit to achieve results. As the project manager or team leader, we have to develop the team to ‘win the game’.

Using a sporting analogy, the game is the project or work function with its associated terms of reference. As the team leader or manager, our role is that of a coach and the team members are our team of world-class players. We may occasionally feel that they are more like the fourth division reserve team, but that is all part of the challenge.

The role of the manager is to coach the players through the game and ensure that they gain the best result possible.

Any successful relationship is dependent on the coach/manager establishing a relationship of trust in which the player is able to be honest in what he or she requires from that coach in order to achieve the highest potential. In addition, we all know that people are different and yet this seems to contradict the outdated management mantra ‘I have to treat people the same to show that I am a fair manager’. The secret is in welcoming the diversity of players in our teams and exploiting those differences to the highest degree.

Earlier in this chapter, we looked at how teams develop over time with regard to how they work together. Obviously, their individual preferences will influence the roles they take on and this is where the use of team questionnaires is useful. There are many different personality and psychometric tests available in the market today.

Many successful organizations use the tried and tested Belbin Team-Type Ques- tionnaire, designed by Meredith Belbin. This diagnostic instrument is easy to use and provides a great way of understanding the different roles played in the team.

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Belbin team-type questionnaire What is it? A questionnaire which identifies the roles that an individual prefers to play in a team, assessed against all nine roles that are key to effective team working.

How do I use it? Simple-to-use questionnaire that takes about 20 min- utes. The computer-generated report can be obtained online, or through submission of a paper copy.

When would I use it? Useful for the start of a team building workshop. Great with teams who are at the storming stage to bring out differences and understand how to work more collaboratively together. Can provide individual reports or collective reports on the whole team, identifying the best persons for different sorts of tasks in a project.

What benefit does it bring? A shared language for discussing team issues, greater self-awareness of each individual about how their behaviour affects the behaviour of others.

The questionnaire is designed to highlight which roles people are most comfort- able with in a team setting and which roles they should best avoid. According to the research of Meredith Belbin, all members of a team have two roles. Their first role is a functional role in terms of what they do, e.g. marketing or accountant or production engineer. The second role is much less obvious and yet equally valid. It is their role in terms of the process they use to achieve tasks and interact with other people in order to achieve the desired results. Meredith Belbin identi- fied nine different temperament types in all as being the key to successful team working.

Briefly, the roles are tabulated in Table 3.1. So, how does knowing about your preferences for different team roles help create a better team?

Many of us know people who have been highly successful within a team and then go on to become far less successful when they move on. We have seen really great teams pulled down by the promotion of individuals out of the team. We have also seen teams that have produced far more than what the individuals could have produced on their own.

How often have we unconsciously recruited people into our project team who are similar to ourselves because it is often frustrating to work with people who approach things in a different way?

Although a ‘shaper’ or ‘monitor–evaluator’ or ‘implementer’ may be very different in their approach to the team in its achievement of objectives, all are equally valuable in the diversity of their contribution. If we have players who frequently fight to play in the same position, would it be helpful if they recognized another position that they could fall into when needed?

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Table 3.1 Belbin team types

Plant Creative, imaginative, unorthodox, solves difficult problems

Resource investigator

Extrovert, enthusiastic, communicative, explores opportunities, develops contacts

Co-coordinator Mature, confident, good chairperson. Clarifies goals, promotes decision-making. Delegates well

Shaper Challenging, dynamic, thrives on pressure. Drive and courage to overcome problems

Monitor– Evaluator

Sober, strategic and discerning. Sees all the options. Judges accu- rately

Team worker Co-operative, mild, perceptive and diplomatic. Listens, builds, averts friction

Implementer Disciplined, reliable, conservative and efficient. Turns ideas into practical actions

Completer Painstaking, conscientious, anxious. Searches out errors and omissions. Delivers on time

Specialist Single-minded, self-starting, dedicated. Provides knowledge and skills in rare supply

Source: Team Roles at Work by R. Meredith Belbin published by Butterworth-Heinemann/Elsevier (1993).

Using belbin, you can see when two people are fighting to play the same role. Using a secondary strength will often take the conflict out of the situation and allow the individuals to bring different strengths to the party. Increasing the self- awareness of the team by using a shared language is sometimes all that is needed to overcome these ‘personality clashes’.

Alternatively, the manager needs to take account of the different team-type pref- erences when allocating people to new projects. There is no benefit in putting the creative, hard-driving decision-maker in charge of a low-key maintenance activity such as reviewing health and safety compliance when you have someone who is far happier working behind the scenes and who loves creating order and completing a job to the last detail.

Recently, we were working with a board team who had just completed their business plan for the year. Each Director then held an objective setting session with their team. The different departments split the tasks by who they felt was most suited to each activity rather than what they had always done before. The benefits were higher commitment to the overall strategy, greater understanding of everyone’s part to play and the opportunity for development for individuals into new areas of responsibility. Surely, it is better to play to the strengths of a team as they develop rather than impose the same roles onto people year after year.

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Step 4 – Encourage diversity The managers can only achieve this buy-in if they truly understand the strengths of each team member. The role of the manager/coach is vital in identifying and growing the potential of each individual. They need to take time to find out how the player likes to play and what they need to help them move forward. The Belbin team profiles give the coach and the whole team a shared language to discuss their strategy for working together to achieve their objectives.

Summary So, as the leader, what do we need to do when managing a team?

Identify what roles the individuals are best suited to play in any given project. Develop an individual relationship with each player that maximizes their strengths.

Develop the agility of the team to play a number of different roles or positions when needed.

Develop personal flexibility to adapt your coaching style to the different needs of the different players.

Celebrate and encourage the diversity that leads to success. The responsibility for achieving success lies with both the manager and the team members.

So, what does the whole team need to do?

Listen to each other and learn from each other Communicate clearly and honestly with each other Develop trust amongst individuals Welcome diversity Play to each other’s strengths Celebrate success as a team

The perfect team does not develop overnight or just because their names have been picked out of the hat. Building the team and keeping the team on target takes time, energy and constant coaching. The secret is to establish the value of each player within the team, work with him or her on their development, and create an environment of real teamwork that brings results.

Different working preferences Teams are often made up of highly skilled individuals who fail to work effectively together. As we have seen from the belting work, individuals often prefer to play different roles in the team. However, there are many other diagnostic tools that can be used for looking at team dynamics.

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One very useful instrument is the Insights Discovery Profile designed by Insights Learning and Development Ltd. The questionnaire can be completed online and is available in over 20 languages. This in-depth profile gives individuals an overview of their strengths and weaknesses, how they tend to interact and communicate with other people, and suggestions for their development. It also focuses on how to communicate with people who are of opposite types and gives ideas on how to manage the individual most effectively. This profile also pro- vides a description of the team-role preference that the individual will be most comfortable with.

Again, this is a questionnaire that can be used at different stages of team devel- opment. With a team in the first stages of forming, it will be a useful way to get to know each other better. Likewise, in a team that is at the storming stage, this diagnosis may well help unpick some of the clashes and tensions between different team members.

It can also be used in a situation where two individuals are struggling to achieve a positive working relationship. In this case, they may complete the question- naire individually and then the facilitator can run a session with the two people together, where they share their profiles and discuss areas of commonality and areas of difference.

Case study

Several years back, an HR Director was in the process of recruiting a new HR team. He was telling me how pleased he was that all four individuals he had selected seemed to share the same approach to current HR issues as he did. He explained how two of the women had been at the same university and how they all appeared to be fairly assertive and would be able to stand up to the fairly cynical workforce. It sounded like a great team in the making. Six months later, I met up with the Director and heard what had happened. For some reason, the team had not gelled at all and there had been great antagonism between two of them who were of the same age, same backgrounds and similar approach to life. He could not understand what had gone wrong.

‘They spent all their time competing with each other rather than doing the job’.

‘I thought I had recruited some great people, but they were hopeless’.

He had indeed recruited some great people but had taken no account of the fact that they needed to work closely with each other and that there is a huge difference between great individuals and great teams. He recruited great individuals and made the assumption that they would constitute a great team. Teams need effort and focussed support if they are to develop and work effectively.

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We took the team away for a two-day workshop and together, they addressed the following areas:

Identified their strengths, both as individuals and as a team, using the Insights Discovery Profile.

Re-visited the distribution of objectives and re-assessed who was best suited to the different roles.

Allowed the team to voice their discontent with the ways of working and the relationships within the team.

Set some new groundrules for working together, having identified the shared values and the success criteria.

Six months later, the team looked back and realized that they had, by them, established a far stronger, collaborative style of working. Results are now improved and the atmosphere is currently far more positive for all concerned.

Learning points from this case study Teams can achieve more than the sum of the individuals.

Attention needs to be given to three main areas – the process of how people work together, the content of the task in hand and the feelings of the individuals involved.

Teams develop on their ability to perform well. It does not happen by magic.

Individuals have different strengths and we need to know what they are.

Conflict is not always negative, sometimes it is needed to move the team on.

We can learn what we need to do differently by asking the team for feedback.

Recruit individuals for both their skills and their compatibility with the existing team.

The role of learning and development in team development This is one of the areas where learning and development teams are often asked to help. There are three key steps that need to be followed in any team-development activity.

Diagnostics – Design – Delivery Diagnostics to identify the objectives of the team-building activity.

This is the most important stage of any team development. It is all too easy to assume that we know what is required when managers ask for a team-building event. There are many reasons why a team-building event may be needed:

• A new team with members who do not know each other well. • A team that has got stuck in the storming stage of its development.

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• An existing team having changed roles and responsibilities. • A high-performing team with members who want to celebrate success. • An existing team that wants to review its strategy and plans for the year ahead. • A team that wishes to develop an already successful strategy and ways of

working. • A team with a new leader, or new team members joining a well-established

team.

These different scenarios, all require different types of team building, and it is the role of the learning and development manager to identify the objectives and desired outcomes of the team-building event. So, how to do this?

There are several methods for completing a team-development diagnostics:

Face-to-face interviews using a structured interview approach Focus group with the whole team Pre-event questionnaires, such as Belting or Insights Discovery Profile

The following questions can provide a useful template for one-to-one interviews or a group discussion. You may want to adapt the following questions to use with different teams, depending on what they have requested:

• What do you enjoy about working in this team? • What do you not enjoy about working in this team? • How well does the team perform when it comes to delivering results and right

on time? • How would your customers describe their experience of working with this

team? • How well does the team work together? • What is your opinion on how the team communicates? • What would you like to change about the team and the way it works? • How are different views and opinions dealt with within the team? • What would you like to gain from this team activity? • What else do we need to know about how this team works as a unit and with

other divisions of the company?

The results of these interview questions in terms of overall themes and views could be fed back to the group at the start of their event. This would then lead to an initial discussion about the key issues that are faced by the team.

The purpose of the team-diagnostic exercise is to identify the objectives for the team-building activity and to gain buy-in from the participants. The exercise is partly for the benefit of the learning and development manager to understand the needs of the team. It also serves the purpose of allowing individuals to voice their feelings and frustrations, which enable them to move forward more quickly when they get together. Knowing that other people share the frustrations can often be very helpful in getting the team to address the issues collectively and constructively.

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Key points • People will all have different perspectives on how the team operates. • The manager will have different views as compared to the team members. • Different people will want to achieve different outcomes from the event.

What makes an effective team-building event? This depends on what the objectives are for the event. However, in my experience, truly effective team events manage to address two sets of objectives. They need to address key work-related issues for the team, as well as issues concerning team dynamics and team working. Team-building events are different from a team social event. There is a place for team socializing and this is very beneficial in maintaining team spirit and group morale. Team building is different in that it is a specifically designed intervention meant to develop the team in terms of what its members are doing and how they are working together.

Elements of a successful team-development event include the following:

• Clearly defined and written objectives • A shared understanding and buy-in of the objectives • Complied diagnostics with each of the participants and the leader • Agreement on the roles and responsibilities of the leader/manager during the

event • A mixture of learning methodologies to suit different learning styles – input,

discussion, activities, presentations • A clear contract on what is expected from the facilitators • An agreed set of specific and measurable actions at the end of the event • A review held after the event to monitor progress • Action and improvement in performance against the agreed measures

Reflection point

Think about the last team-building event you had organized or facilitated, and rate yourself on how well each of the above criteria were met.

What do you need to do differently next time?

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Design of the team intervention The design of the event will depend on what you are aiming to achieve. An effective team-development event should include at least some of the following topics:

Introductions and agreement on objectives Review of current team-working Identifying key issues to be addressed Action plans for key improvement areas Review of how people operate with each other Increased self-awareness of impact of people’s behaviour on each other Personal action planning in relation to team working

Introduction exercises People generally remember the start and finish of any team event most clearly. Any team event needs to start with a sharing of objectives and agreement on outcomes, roles and responsibilities for the event. There are various ways in which this can be achieved and I have listed a couple of them below:

In groups – Identify two ways in which you are similar and two ways in which you are different, and present this back to the main group. This exercise encourages people to share their personal knowledge about each other; useful when working with a team having members who are new to each other.

In groups – Create a Flipchart shield using a selection of 4–5 questions from the list below:

• What are your objectives for this event? • What do you want/not want from the facilitator team? • What worrying concerns do you have about this event? • What would success look like for this event? • What ground rules do we need to adopt for the event? • What will you do to contribute to the success of this event?

All these questions will serve to kickstart the group focussing on what they want to achieve from their time together. You can choose several of these questions and split the groups into smaller units to work on this together as an introductory exercise. This is all part of the forming stage within the event. No matter how well people know each other, they need to spend time agreeing on what they want to achieve from their time together.

An alternative approach is to ask these questions in the diagnostic interviews and then present the complete set of responses back to the group. They can then discuss the responses and add any other still-outstanding objectives or issues.

The purpose of this introduction session is to focus people on what they need to achieve over their time together.

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Review of current team-working This can be done as a SWOT exercise, either individually or as a group, using four flipcharts around the room for people to go up and add their ideas to.

Discussion can them take place around how to exploit the strengths, overcome the weaknesses, maximize the opportunities and plan how to address the threats if needed.

With a team of 8–10 people, this discussion can take a couple of hours, or more if you have more people in the team.

The group can then identify the key areas they can influence and start to highlight the key areas to be addressed if they are to move forward.

Ideally, this exercise will then give you three to four key themes for the group to work on in terms of team improvement. These issues may be work-related such as increasing sales revenue or team dynamics-relates like improving sharing of best practice.

The team can then split into different working groups to come up with an action plan for each of the areas.

Alternatively, you may want to take a more creative approach to identifying the key issues facing the team by facilitating a now and future picture exercise.

The team creates a picture of how they see the team currently as a mode of transport. Encourage the team to think about the speed, colour, weight and size of their vehicle and identify who is driving it, where the people are and what the environment looks like for this vehicle. It may not be a typical vehicle; rather, it could be a mix of boat and car, space machine or a fleet of dinghies, all sailing in opposite directions.

Ask the group to explain their picture and identify the key strengths and weak- nesses of the current situation.

The team members are then asked to create a future picture for one year from the present day. Create a model of transport that will describe how they would like the team to be working and what the future environment could look like for them.

Finally, the team members are asked to identify the key changes they need to make if they are to achieve their future picture.

This picture exercise can be used in a variety of ways. One team can create a picture of how they see the team internally, while another group can depict that exam from the perspective of customers or other stakeholders. This will also highlight the differences in perception and key issues from this point of view.

Development of self-awareness The team-building event is an ideal opportunity to raise the awareness of the team in terms of how they operate as a group of individuals and how they work together.

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Belbin team types are an ideal way of looking at team types for a group having relatively low awareness and little expertise of team dynamics.

Alternatively, with a more mature team or a team with people who are more advanced in their understanding of team working, you may want to consider using the Insights Discovery Profile.

Team exercises

Most team-building activities include one or more team exercises. The purpose of this is to engage the team in a working activity and then facilitate feed- back on the behaviours and working styles that they demonstrate. This can then be used to add weight to some of the later discussions on how they work together.

There are many books around that list team exercises, and you will need to choose one that meets the needs of the team in terms of complexity, learning points that you wish to bring out and feasibility depending on the number of people you have involved.

Remember that people learn in different ways, and you need to design the event to encompass the different learning styles that people have:

Theorist – enjoys understanding theories and models – prefers well-proven ideas and case studies.

Reflector – likes to take time to think about what has happened and reflect on the group’s thoughts and views.

Activist – enjoys new experiences and an opportunity to try new things. Pragmatist – prefers practical examples and learning, which could be easily used back at work.

An effective team-building event needs to have elements of each of these learning approaches included.

Action planning – whole group

The output of the team event should be clearly understood and outlined with everyone, before the event finishes. One of the easiest ways to agree on actions is to use SMART and create a SMART objective for any of the actions to be taken forward.

• Specific • Measurable • Achievable • Realistic • Time bound

Again, the team should be working in groups on this and can then be asked to present their SMART plans back to the main group for comments and buy-in.

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Action planning – individual

A tea event needs to work on two levels – the team objectives and the specific actions that individuals will take to develop their own performance in the team. Again, there are several approaches to this part of the event.

Individuals can be each asked to write up their own action plan using an agreed format:

• One thing I will stop doing • One thing I will start to do • On thing I will continue to do in this team

A more challenging approach is to ask people to give feedback to each other on what they would suggest they stop/start/continue. This will lead to a discussion between individuals about the behaviours they feel are useful to the team and the behaviours that they feel are not helpful. Individuals then choose the actions they feel that will gain the greatest benefit and that they feel they can take on willingly.

A team charter

Each person writes up his or her personal commitment to action on a flip chart and these are then printed up and circulated to the whole team. This encourages people to put their commitment into action because other people will be looking to see if they are making the changes they earlier signed up to.

A letter to yourself

Each person writes a letter to himself or herself, outlining the changes that they are looking to make. These letters are then held and sent to each individual a few weeks later, to act as a reminder of what they committed to do. They can then be shared at a review meeting.

All these techniques are simple ways of ensuring that people start to make changes in their behaviour after the event. The success of an event cannot be measured at the close of the event. It can only be measured a few weeks and months later when the team members review to see if they have achieved the improvement plans that they had set for themselves.

Common problems with teams

Often, the learning and development manager may be asked to come in and support a team with people who are not working effectively together. Some of the common issues are tabulated in Table 3.2.

This list can be divided into four different types of problem areas:

(1) Leadership (2) Systems and processes

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Table 3.2 Team issues

Leadership Systems and process

Skills and technical competence

Working relationship and interpersonal skills

Lack of competence ! !

Lack of confidence ! ! !

Poor interpersonal relationships

! !

Confusion over roles and responsibilities

! ! !

Lack of trust between team members/leader

! !

Lack of clear objectives

! !

Complacency ! ! !

Ineffective leadership !

Too much internal competition

! !

Too much group think

! ! !

Infighting ! !

Low standards ! ! !

Poor relationships with other teams

! ! !

(3) Interpersonal working relationships (4) Skills and technical competence

As part of the diagnostics, it is important to highlight where the problems lie.

Not surprisingly, the success or failure of a team is directly related to the skills of the leader, and the interpersonal skills and team dynamics of all the individuals involved. Team problems are more often likely to be due to behaviour and team relationships. However, if the issues are mainly around technical skills and competence, then these issues need to be addressed separately.

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Reflection point

Think of a team that is currently not working effectively

List the issues that they are facing

Categorize the issues in the four columns

Identify the key actions that need to be taken to improve team effectiveness

The role of learning and development managers in team building Experience of working with a wide variety of teams suggests that several factors need to be present in order to maximize the opportunity for improved perfor- mance through any team-building event:

Clear and agreed goals

The team must have a clear understanding of the vision and goals for the team. This should include the changes that need to occur, the expectations of individuals and the department as a whole, as also the methods of measuring progress towards the goals.

Support from senior management

This includes a willingness to accept feedback from the team, to make personal commitments to changes in behaviour or working methods, and the energy and drive to ensure that changes which the team agrees to are translated into action. Most team members want to see evidence of change from the top as a role model for the changes they may be asked to make themselves.

Involvement of the team

Decisions need to be agreed to and believed in. Although team members will inevitably have different views on the current situation, and possible solutions, it is important that people feel they have been listened to and have had a chance to voice and discuss their opinions.

The team needs to be engaged and involved if you are to gain their buy-in to the event and to gain their views on what the important issues are for them in terms of any development event.

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Realistic expectations

People do not change their behaviour overnight, and a team is not developed in a day. The process of developing a team from its current state to that desired by the business will take several months, as also a lot of effort.

It is important for people to understand their own behaviour in order to start to understand the behaviour of others. You will be starting a process of change, which can then be continued by the team after the first event.

Direct linkage between work performance and team/individual behaviour

Many teams view their process – the way they work together to achieve their objectives – as being separate from what they do and the objectives that they achieve. Effective and high-performing teams recognize the fact that the two are clearly linked.

A checklist of key questions for any team-building activity • What are the objectives of the proposed team-building activity? • What issues are the team looking to resolve? • What diagnostics have the team carried out already? • How much time has been spent on team building before and what were the

results? • What would be the appropriate diagnostic questionnaires/interventions to use? • How much time does the team want to commit to the team-building event? • Over what timescale do they want to complete the team building? • What activities are they looking to do and why? • Should the team building be offsite and or residential? • Who do they want to facilitate in the event – internal L&D or external

consultants? • How many people are involved/should be included in the team building? • To what extent would they want to include team members in the design of

the event? • What would success look like for this event and how will they measure it?

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4 ‘Change’ leadership

This chapter will cover the following topics:

The change context

The role of the leader in managing change

The effect of change on individuals

Developing effective change leadership skills

An example change leadership workshop

The role of HR in supporting organizational change

The change context The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.

– Harry Emerson Fosdick

By any standards, the change that we see today in organizations is both faster and more radical than ever before. Significant changes are happening at a faster rate and the effect of these changes has created a new psychological contract between employees and their companies.

Thirty years ago, British Telecom was a state-owned monopoly. Twenty years ago, it was an organization that had no need for a sales team, no competitors and over 240 000 staff. Within 10 years, it had changed from a state monopoly to a privately-owned monolith trying to move more quickly than its processes and culture were ready for. Ten years on, with less than half the number of staff, it had lost whole chunks of its operation, slimmed down its operation and is now unrecognizable in terms of its culture, approach and speed of response. It has successfully made that transition. Examples like this are rare. Far too many organizations fail to make the transition either quickly enough or cleverly enough to successfully represent themselves in a changing world.

In addition, people have less loyalty to the companies they work for. There is no such thing as a job for life or a life-long career path. Companies need less people and those with constantly developing skill sets. Individuals get to work for a number of different companies; and these days, we see many more contract workers and freelance specialists moving in and out of companies, as and when needed.

This constantly changing environment is unlikely to slow down. Although we may think that there is a limit to the amount of downsizing, re-organizing and merger activity that can continue, there is no reason to suggest that it will not continue, as we appear to be smaller fishes in a larger global market.

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Working with a global distribution company recently, there were 15 different nationalities at their leadership conference. The key topics were resourcing, suc- cession planning and leadership development. This would seem fairly straight- forward, apart from the fact that we had the added dimension of different pay conditions, different employment conditions and different levels of leadership capability. Eastern Europe had seen little leadership development in the past 20 years and was at a very different starting point than its Northern European counterpart. Pay conditions in China were significantly tougher than that in Europe. Succession planning policies had to take into account the need to move people across different cultures and give them a global skill set before promoting them to more senior positions.

In summary, there is an unprecedented degree of change that these leaders are expected to lead and to participate in is previously unimaginable.

This example is from a large global organization. The same also applies to smaller UK-based companies which are facing changes in all the following areas:

• Customer expectations • Employee expectations • Technology • Financial constraints • Legal and EU legislation • Social conditions • Environmental changes • Global competition • Changing skill sets • Mobility of workforce • Speed to market of new products

Reflection point

Look at the list above and highlight the key changes affecting your organization now.

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In summary, we cannot ignore the need for leaders to be highly skilled in leading change through any of our organizations. My personal belief is that the concept of change managers is outdated. Many of the large organizations still have change management units. This is missing the point. All leaders without exception need to have these skills as part of their core competence. It is not a ‘nice-to-do’ activity undertaken by HR. It is a key part of any leader’s role to lead change and to develop a change competence in their managers and teams. The role of Learning and Development is not to set up OD teams and Change Management Units but to develop these skills across the whole organization as a core set of skills at management and leadership levels.

The role of the leader in managing change ‘Leading Change – Why Transformation Efforts Fail’ by John P Kotter HBR was written in 1994, based on Kotter’s own experience of working with many change initiatives within different organizations. Kotter talks about an eight-stage change framework and this framework is used within many successful change initiatives in a wide variety of organizations today. It also provides a useful template for leaders in terms of what they should be focussing on and what activities they should be undertaking at the different stages of a change initiative.

This links to the earlier discussion about the difference between leadership and management. Management is about a set of skills and processes that keep people and processes running smoothly and efficiently. Leadership is about defining the future, aligning people to that vision of the future and inspiring them to make it happen. Organizations that undergo successful change need to rely on leaders far more than we realize. Good managers will not create and implement change at the speed and scale that most organizations need if they are to stay in the game. Great leadership is required if organizations are to make the transitions that they need to make in the timescale they have open to them.

The Kotter eight-stage change framework

Figure 4.1 shows the Kotter eight-stage change framework and we will give a brief overview of what is required at each of the different stages.

Establishing a sense of urgency

Establishing a sense of urgency is crucial if people are going to commit to making significant changes to how they work and what they do.

when an organization is on a burning platform, the decision to make a major change is not just a good idea – it is a business imperative

– Daryl. R. Conner, ‘Managing at the Speed of Change’

It is part of human nature that people will not change unless they see the benefits of doing so. Many organizations are full of people who feel very comfortable and do not see the need to change. They are complacent in their positions and this is the real enemy of a successful change.

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Sense of urgency

Creating a guiding coalition

Creating and celebrating short-

term wins

Empowering others to act

1 3

Developing a vision and strategy

Communicating the change vision

Embedding these changes

in the culture

Producing even more change

Figure 4.1 The Kotter eight-stage change framework

Characteristics of complacent employees • Say yes and do nothing • Achieve 50 per cent of what they could achieve • Lack of initiative • Low motivation • Do what they need to do and no more • Satisfy customers rather than delight them • Influence others to take the same route • Block new ideas and innovation

In order to start a journey of change and innovation, leaders need to instil a strong sense of urgency within a significant number of their people. Only having a mere 5 per cent of them feeling a sense of urgency is unlikely to create the momentum needed to move things forward. Leaders need to create this sense of urgency across all their teams. So, how do leaders do this?

Set higher standards: Complacency happens when people feel that they can easily achieve the targets and the goals that are set. I recently conducted a workshop in a marketing team and asked them as to how many people felt that they would reach their objectives and targets for the current year. Without fail, they all agreed that they would achieve this. They pointed out that they have had clear conversations with their senior leadership team to agree on reasonable targets and that there was no point in setting unrealistic goals. This may be true, but I did not see a sense of any urgency in them within the room. No one was concerned about not delivering and on top of this, there was a comfort level around their not having to do anything differently.

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Setting higher standards has several benefits:

• It stretches people to achieve more. • People feel more motivated when they are achieving more. • It differentiates between poor performers, average performers and high

performers. • It sets the standard and therefore your standards of what ‘good’ looks like.

Reflection point

(1) How clear are my team members on what they are expected to achieve, both personally and as a team?

(2) How stretching are these goals?

(3) Who is performing well and who is not performing well?

(4) How much feedback am I giving them on their performance?

(5) When was the last time that I gave recognition to an individual for great performance?

(6) How much are the team members acting on the feedback that I am giving them?

(7) What are the implications for people if they do not develop their stan- dards of performance?

(8) What am I doing to stretch the high achievers?

(9) What am I doing to develop the poor performers?

Provide more feedback on performance

Individuals will only start to gain a sense of urgency once they know how important it is to change. If they are unsure about what they are doing well and what they need to do differently, they will have little incentive to make changes. Leaders need to have clear, honest conversations with their people on

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how they view their performance and what constitutes ‘good performance’ in any particular field. These conversations need to be held regularly with a high degree of honesty and challenge. Many leaders work from the assumption that as they do not need any feedback from others, they do not have to give feedback to their team members either. If people are to perform well, they need to know how they are performing from the perspectives of their teams, colleagues, customers and leaders. It may not be easy to listen to, but if they are to develop their performance, they need to have data on which to measure themselves.

Case study

An MD of a multinational construction company came to talk to me about the issues that he was facing with his Board. Individually, they were all highly experienced leaders and had been in the business for many years. The MD was newly appointed and had taken the role after 5 years as a board member on the same board. The team had spent several days discussing the business goals and strategy for the next 2–3 years, and on paper everything was very clear. However, the MD was becoming frustrated that he could see no difference in how people were spending their time. Results were flat and the goals ahead were very challenging. He could see little prospect of the business plan being met if things continued in this vein.

When I asked him as to what conversation he had had with individuals on this subject, he suddenly went very quiet. At no time had he thought of having one-to-one conversations with individuals on their own personal objectives and focus. He had simply assumed that the team members were committed to the plan and therefore would make it happen. The team operated as a committee with a great deal of shared ownership, consensus and group discussion and buy-in. Decisions were only made when everyone had had their say and there was general agreement. This had lead to a lack of personal ownership and a lack of personal accountability when things went well or, more importantly, did not go well.

We agreed that he would sit down with each board member and agree to their improvement plan for their part of the business. During these sessions, several in the team admitted that they were not clear on what was expected of them personally; they felt that colleagues were getting involved in areas that were not part of their domain and that they were not truly accountable for delivery.

After having agreed on personal objectives with each of the board members and a stretching improvement plan for each area, the MD started to see a real difference in both the pace and the efficiency of how the board members were operating. He had successfully inculcated a real sense of urgency in each individual to deliver his or her part of the business plan. The team still has a sense of shared passion for the business, but they now have begun to possess a personal commitment to making it happen.

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Creating a guiding coalition

Creating a close-leadership team with members who are all committed to the same goal is a key challenge for any leader. When you consider the scale of the changes that we are expecting leaders to achieve, they need to have support from a well-formed team with members who trust each other and have a shared objective. No one person can single-handedly develop, lead and implement the changes that people need to achieve today. Creating a guiding coalition does not mean putting together a committee of people who will come together each month, to slowly move forward on the action points from the last meeting.

A guiding coalition is a group of individuals who have a mixture of skills, experience, expertise and seniority, to create a powerful vehicle to drive change through the organization, quickly, willingly and with long-lasting effectiveness.

Do not

• Set up a team with members who cannot make decisions • Have monthly meetings with standard agendas • Ask the team to present its proposals to a higher decision-making authority • Include people based on their title or job position • Include someone from each department to make it fair

Do choose people who are

• Motivated • Challenging • Committed to a shared goal • Having credibility in their work area • Having expertise in the given field • Having enough seniority to drive decisions • Inspiring and engaging others to work with them

A guiding coalition is a diverse group of influential leaders who will drive a clear vision, and create momentum and space for their managers to deliver what is needed.

Developing a vision and strategy

Once there is a sense of urgency and a strong guiding coalition in place, the organization has to agree on its vision and strategy for changing the company.

Vision-setting is not a solo sport. The role of the leader is to involve people in the debate about what the future looks like and then to decide what the direction will be. The purpose of the vision is to motivate people to achieve something that may not be purely in their short-term interests. A vision is there to make decision- making easier. A vision serves to bring people together around a common cause.

What constitutes a good vision?

• It is imaginable • It is desirable

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• It is feasible • It is focussed • It is flexible • It is communicable

The leader’s role is to ensure that the vision fulfils these criteria; and they can only do this by spending time with people, engaging them in debate about what is possible and what is desirable.

Most organizations that have been in existence for more than a few years have a clear vision that has evolved and developed over the years. This is not the real challenge for many leaders. The real challenge is in communicating the vision and ensuring that people buy into it at every level within the organization.

Communicating the ‘change’ vision

We talked earlier about the need for leaders to demonstrate emotional intelligence rather than rely purely on their technical competence. This is often where even exceptionally bright and gifted leaders can fall. There is an assumption that once you have told people something once, then that is enough. Communication around the vision needs to happen regularly rather than on a once-a-year basis at the annual conference. Research conducted into communications in business highlighted that communication about the vision accounted for less than 1 per cent of total communication. When you consider the enormous quantum of messages e-mail and verbal communication carry each day, there has got to be a place for more discussion around the vision and what it means for people.

Communication about the vision also needs to be communicated via different channels. Team briefing and face-to-face meetings are the keys to enable people to air their views and discuss the vision and strategy. It also needs to form a part of written communication and play its part in company newsletters, quarterly updates and other in-house communications.

Discussion of the vision and strategy needs to happen at every level of the organization, not just in senior leadership forums. The skill of the leader is to adapt the message to a variety of different audiences and be able to gain buy-in at each level.

Reflection point

Analyse the communication skills of your leaders. Do they

! Regularly talk about the vision and strategy? ! Adapt their communication style to the needs of the audience? ! Include discussion of strategy at team meetings? ! Ask for views and ideas on the strategy? ! Relate operational activities to the long-term plan? ! Clearly communicate the vision both verbally and in written form?

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! Engage and persuade others on the desirability and feasibility of the strategy?

! Inspire others to make it happen?

What do they do well?

What do they not do so well?

What do they need to do differently?

Empowering people to act

Kotter talks about this stage of the change process as removing the barriers and obstacles so that people can do a good job. Empowering is one of those words that engender a range of negative feelings in many people. However, by empowerment, one means a feeling of freedom to act in the best interests of the customer, or business.

Leaders cannot lead in isolation. They need people to implement the activities that will lead to achievement of the overall vision. So, how do good leaders empower others to act?

Case study

A large service organization had several hundred people employed in its call centre, in the early 1990s. Customer complaints were high, attrition rates in the call centre were over 100 per cent and there was a generally low morale and feeling of frustration in the centre. Staff were monitored on the time away from their desk, the time to answer calls and the number of calls answered per minute. This old-style approach to leadership had more in common with the theory of piece work than the enlightened high-technology environment that had been the dream of this particular multinational service organization.

Staff felt that they had no ability to make decisions, they had no freedom to act in the interests of the customers, and they felt untrusted and undervalued by the managers.

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It took a new MD to decide to create a changed vision for the company and within a year, they had transformed the lives of these individuals, lowered attrition rates by 50 per cent and lowered the number of customer complaints dramatically. So, how did they do this?

First, they asked the staff what would make their work lives better.

Second, they took away the micro-monitoring mechanisms and created a new set of metrics that focussed on customer satisfaction rather than time to answer calls.

Most importantly, they listened to the concerns of the staff and gave them autonomy to take decisions about whether to reduce a bill, give a discount or remove a charge on their bill. Previously, a supervisor had been needed to make these financial decisions. Now the limits were lifted to allow all operators to take these decisions, based on agreed limits.

The benefits:

• Supervisors had more time to spend coaching rather than answering calls to customers who refaced to accept the answer of the operator.

• Customers were more satisfied with the service due to the fact that the operators took time to listen to them and acted on the conversation.

• Staff felt more valued and gained greater satisfaction from their work. • Business results improved due to customer retention andminimal increase

in costs due to discounting by operators. • Operators developed their skills and increased the level of competence

throughout the call centre.

This case study shows empowerment at its most practical. Individuals who feel that they are trusted to take decisions, do a good job. Great leaders provide the environment for their people to perform well. They allow their people space to do a good job and take responsibility for making a difference.

Reflection point

(1) What decisions do you currently make, which your team members could as well make?

(2) How much recognition do people gain for doing a good job?

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(3) What do you do that makes the lives of your team members easier?

(4) What do you do that creates obstacles in their way?

Celebrating short-term wins

Most leaders understand the need for recognition and reward. Few leaders, how- ever, provide these on a regular and consistent basis. Part of the key to this is ensuring that the company’s performance-review process recognizes the skills and behaviours that make a difference, rather than re-enforcing old behaviours that actually act as obstacles to change. In addition, leaders need to be focussing on what people do well rather than constantly looking for what they do wrong. This is part of the pace-setting temptation. In an effort to raise standards, it is tempting to focus on the negatives and the problems rather than on the progress and the positive gains.

Recognition can take many forms:

• The public ceremony to recognize individuals and teams, offering prizes and gifts.

• The private one-to-one recognition by letter or through face-to-face interaction. • The pat of the back when something goes well. • The mentioning of good work at team meetings. • Saying ‘thank you’ to individuals for continuing to do the day-to-day grind. • Taking people out for lunch. • Specific feedback on what the individual has done well.

Consolidating gains and producing more change

whenever you let up before the job is done, critical momentum can be lost and regression may follow

Throughout this book, the central message is around the need for leaders to provide positive recognition and support for their people. These final stages of the change framework are critical for long-term success. Recognition needs to be given, but there is also a need to provide continual motivation to maintain the pace and scale of change that is required. All too often, people celebrate the first year of a project and then find that the gains made in the second year are signifi- cantly lower. Creating a change journey is like running the marathon. The leaders and the teams need to pace themselves and realize that they are in for the long term rather than a short sprint. The responsibility is with leaders to set the pace and maintain motivation to keep the pace going till the chosen end-point is reached.

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Embedding changes in the culture

This final stage of the change journey is around the need to create alignment between organizational policies and individual behaviour. If employees in a call centre need to be more empowered to make decisions for the customer, then the financial and commercial policies need to back this up. If the organization expects individuals to take initiative and be innovative, they need to support this with policies and procedures which encourage this rather than constrain it. Performance-review systems need to reward the behaviours that are needed for the future, not the past.

In order to assess the effectiveness of the change journey within an organization, there are several diagnostics that may be required. The short questionnaire below is a useful guide to ascertain where the leaders of the organization are succeeding and where they need to focus more of their energy and time.

The effect of change on individuals It is often assumed that people react in similar ways to major changes in their lives. However, the key decide in how people react to change is whether they wanted the particular change to occur. There is great difference in leaving a job because you want to travel the world, and leaving the job because you have been made redundant. It is not the change itself that is the issue; instead, it is why the change is appending and how much control the individuals have over the effects of the change on themselves, personally.

Change can be seen as an enormously positive force:

• Exciting • Energizing • Motivating • Innovative • Chance to do new things • Opportunity to learn more • New challenges • Freedom to try new ways of working • Chance to work with different people

On the other hand, change can be seen as a highly negative force:

• A loss and ending • Frustrating • Demotivating • Upsetting • An end of good working practice • Damaging to existing relationships • Slowing down the speed of work

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People need to have control over as much as possible during the changes in the organization. They need to be involved at each stage and have a say in how things will work in the future.

People like change – they don’t like being changed ! ! !

Danger and opportunity – different experiences of change

Much of the organizational work around change comes originally from the world of grief counselling – and to some extent, all major organizational changes do involve an element of loss. It means people letting go of things they are used to, ways of working they are familiar with, and possible ending of work relationships they have established over the years.

Daryl Conner, in his book ‘Managing at the Speed of Change’, talks of the Chinese symbol for ‘change’ as being made up from two distinct ideograms – one representing ‘danger’ and the other ‘opportunity’ (Figure 4.2).

And from this, he develops a model of ‘D’ people and ‘O’ people.

Danger-oriented or ‘D’ type people see all change as full of dangers – they have probably suffered in previous organizational re-structuring. They may see themselves as victims of change and may look for conspiracy theories or others’ personal agendas. Change causes major stress and their first reaction is to try and resist it.

Opportunity-oriented or ‘O’ type people see all change as opportunity – a chance to push forward new ideas and advance their own career. Change is exciting for them and they probably see life as a set of constantly shifting interconnected variables, which produce ever more opportunities and challenges.

The majority of people involved in leadership development – and the majority of people reading this book, are probably ‘O’ type people. They have got to where they are by seizing the organizational opportunities to make things happen. But, many of the people they have to influence from an organizational-change perspective are probably the ‘D’ type people – who view the whole programme from a quite different perspective.

People whose job role or life experience means that they are in charge of change – active participants in the process – often find it enlivening and stimulating; and so, tend to embrace it and welcome it.

Figure 4.2 Danger and opportunity

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People whose job role or life experience means that change is imposed upon them – by someone high up the ranks, with no input from them – often find change threatening and stressful; and so, tend to ignore it or resist it.

Some people immediately want to calculate exactly what they will gain or lose, others want to knowwhy past beliefs and ‘sacred cows’ have been done awaywith, and yet others are so keen andwant to get really involved but alsowant to re-design the whole programme you would have probably spent months working on.

Similar differences occur in organizations too. A change strategy that works very well in one type of organization seems to fail completely in another – there are no universal answers. There seems to be some fundamental differences between different types of people and different types of organizational character, in the way we view the world and in how we react to major changes at work.

Mastering the change curve

The concept of the ‘change’ curve originally came from the world of grief coun- selling and was used to describe the emotional path that most people follow when faced with the overwhelming change of coping with the death of someone close to them.

• At first, there is a phase of denial – where people refuse to believe the reality of what they have been told. In organizational change, this can take many forms – from the shock and incomprehension often seen when telling people that they are being laid off as part of an organizational re-structuring – to the cynical ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’, or ‘if we keep our heads down, this idea will just go away like last year’s’.

• Once over with the initial shock, people often enter a stage of resistance. People understand what you are trying to do, but want to make sure it either does not happen, or at least they are not seen to be supporting it. People often focus on the losses that they or others in their team may suffer, or it may be hidden and appear just as apathy which can make it all the more difficult to deal with.

• Some people never get out of this stage. They see themselves as losers from the change and if they cannot get their own way – they might just choose to leave. And for a proportion of the organization it is probably best that they do it sooner rather than later.

• In time, people start to turn around and enter a phase of exploration. Here, they want to try out how working in the new world might be – but they do not want to give their complete endorsement until they have tested things in some way.

• Finally, people reach a stage of confidence and commitment to the new world and new ways of working; and hopefully, their performance in this ‘end game’ will hit the targets that you set when you designed the new supply chain in the first place.

The ‘change’ curve is a well known pattern of behaviour that people experience when going through any major transition, either personal or work-related.

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The responsibility of the leader is to recognize these different phases and provide the appropriate levels of support as individuals go through these different phases. This will happen at a different pace for each individual, depending on the personal impact of the change on them.

Developing effective change leadership skills Based on the collective evidence around individual attitude to change, cultural dif- ferences and organizational culture, it is easy to see why this aspect of leadership is one of the most difficult to execute successfully. So, what makes an effective change leader in the twenty-first century?

• Encourage people to see the change as reducing rather than increasing their current burden.

• Highlight the links between the change and the personal values and beliefs of the individual.

• Discuss the opportunities for personal benefit and development to meet the new challenges ahead.

• Give people the space to air their views and listen to them. • Encourage individuals to contribute to the changes and the way they will be

implemented. • Help individuals to build up a support network to help them through the

transition – colleagues and peers can often provide more support than the leader.

Reflection point

Task: Think about a major change initiative in your organization.

How well do your leaders understand their roles and responsibilities as change leaders?

How well have your leaders demonstrated these skills and attributes during the transition period?

What further skills development do they need?

How well does your current leadership development offer include skills on change leadership?

How can you provide further opportunities for individuals to develop these skills?

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Learning and Development Managers need to develop the skills of their leaders to create and lead successful change journeys on an ongoing basis.

To achieve this, leaders need to achieve the following:

• A clear understanding of the different stages of a change initiative • Clarity on their roles and responsibilities at each stage of the change process • Knowledge of the personal effect of change on individuals • Feedback on their change leadership skills • Ongoing development of their change leadership and interpersonal skills

Many organizations recognize that change leadership is a core competence in itself; and develop training programmes to introduce this challenging subject to their leaders. The benefit of this approach is that they are raising the conscious competence of their leaders in this often-overlooked area.

Again, this development can either be at the individual level through one-to-one coaching or at a team level by designing and delivering workshops to cover this area.

It may be appropriate to design and deliver workshops on the subject of man- aging change, particularly if the company is involved in a merger-or-acquisition situation. Additionally, it may be appropriate if the organization is failing to follow through on a change journey, either quickly enough or in a way that is carrying the employee workforce along with it.

This is very much a responsibility of senior leaders within an organization and one of the key topics for them to address as a senior leadership team.

An example change leadership workshop A starting point for a development workshop on leading change may include the following:

• An introduction to set the context and agree to the need for effective change leadership in the organization

• A discussion of what successful change leadership looks like in practice • An overview of the Kotter Change framework • A review on how the organization marks itself against each of these eight

stages – using the questionnaire • Overview of the personal change curve and discussion of personal strategies

for managing change • Overview of key competencies of a change leader • Personal reflection and action planning on individual skills as a change leader • Group action plan for creating a more effective leadership approach to change

This type of workshop could then be followed up with one-to-one coaching of key leaders to support them in providing more effective change leadership with their own teams.

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The role of HR in supporting organizational change Think of the difference between a Chauffeur and a driving instructor. The Chauf- feur does the driving for you and will follow your directions. However, you are constrained by his speed, skills and motivation to reach the destination quickly and safely. The driving instructor passes on the skills to the individual, allowing them to control and drive, using their own strategy, forward. They will then have full autonomy over the pace, and approach, and can decide when to stop, change direction or take a different turn, depending on the conditions they encounter. They can also come back to the driving instructor if they feel that they are getting into bad habits or need advanced skills to take them further. HR need to take off their chauffeur hats and take on the role of a driving instructor, giving direction where needed but focussing on coaching the individuals to become self-motivated and proficient drivers of their own ‘change’ journeys.

remember that change is most successful when those who are affected are involved in the planning. Nothing makes people resist new ideas or approaches more adamantly than their belief that change is being imposed on them

– Bennie 1993 An Invented Life: reflections on leadership and change.

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5 The leader as coach

In this chapter, we will look at the following areas:

Coaching – a definition

What is coaching?

The skills of an effective coach

The coaching process

How to choose a coach

Choosing an internal or external coach

Selecting an external coach

The difference between coaching, counselling and mentoring

Developing coaching skills in your leaders

Advanced coaching development

Linking coaching with other forms of leadership development: A coaching case study

There are many definitions of coaching; at times, it seems that each manager has his own. However, for the purposes of this book, we shall use the following definition:

Coaching – a definition Coaching is the process of helping someone to identify their own solutions to work issues in order to improve their performance.

Using this definition allows us to see the clear parameters that need to operate when coaching in a one-to-one situation.

The word ‘issues’ is used deliberately to avoid giving the impression that all coaching is about solving ‘problems’. Thus, coaching can involve working on issues such as:

• team dynamics • gaining greater credibility in board meetings • influencing colleagues and the boss • improving communications • raising profile of the team

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• raising expectations of the team • difficult relationships with colleagues or the boss • improving sales targets • developing new business • how to gain partnership • networking better • business strategy

What is coaching? Coaching is a two-way process. It is not beneficial or even possible to coach someone who does not want to be coached. The communication needs to be two-way, with the coach asking thought-provoking questions and the individual working hard to identify new ways of working that will improve performance.

Coaching is not a cosy chat to make people feel better. It is a challenging conver- sation between two people, which enables the individual to gain new perspectives and clarity of thought.

Coaching is about asking, stretching and challenging questions. The benefit of asking thought-provoking questions is widely underestimated. Coaches who ask great questions reap many benefits:

• The individual starts to think about the issue in different ways. • The individual starts to gain a new way of seeing the issue, which creates

different potential solutions. • The individual is doing the thinking, rather than relying on the coach to solve

his/her problems. • The coach is managing the process, leaving the individual to work on the

content of the discussion.

Coaching is about finding better ways to do things. It is an improvement process; in the same way that good golfers practise their swing every day, good managers daily practise and refine their game of management.

When leaders are asked what three things keep them awake at night, the answer is usually ! ! ! people – people – people.

Coaching is the means to help people improve their performance and deliver bet- ter business results. The time spent on coaching will improve results and create more bottomline profit. If you doubt this last statement, just think about the cost of recruitment, turnover and high attrition in companies that do not invest in coach- ing and development. Look at the amount of investment that the top FTSE 100 companies make in terms of coaching their people, in order to gain better results.

The skills of an effective coach A good coach needs to be a skilled one-to-one facilitator, with the ability to man- age the process and provide a set of frameworks that will enable the individual

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Telling

Coaching

Feedback

Directive

Telling

Instructing

Giving advice

Giving feedback

Making suggestions

Asking questions that raise

awareness

Summarizing

Paraphrasing

Reflecting

Listening to understand

Non- Directive

Coach may not know the answer Coachee come to awareness through self exploration

Coach knows the answer Coachee needs to be told

Figure 5.1 The spectrum of communication skills

to reach a clear plan of action. The framework above shows the different styles of intervention we make with other people. The coaching skills are at the right side of the continuum, allowing the individual to take control of the dialogue and come up with his/her own way forward. Most of us have years of practice of telling others what to do; we need far more practice in asking people what they think they could do (Figure 5.1).

What makes a good coach?

In addition, there are several things that differentiate excellent coaches from average coaches.

Excellent coaches can be recognized for their ABC skills:

1. Approachable 2. Build rapport 3. Challenge

1. Approachable – Great coaches have an uncanny ability to make people feel comfortable talking to them. They are genuinely interested in other people’s views and are able to switch off the ‘judgement button’ when working with an individual. They make time for people and recognize when people want to talk something through. Good coaching can take either two minutes or two hours. Effective coaches can tell what is needed and make the appropriate time for it.

2. Build rapport – Excellent coaches listen carefully for what is said and also for what is not said. They pick up on the unspoken word as much as the verbal dialogue, reading cues in body language and eye contact. They use authentic mirroring techniques. They build rapport by active listening and they are not afraid of silence, recognizing the value of reflection and thinking time.

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Most importantly, they work at the pace of the individual, matching the individual’s own speed of thought, reflection and decision-making.

3. Challenge for results – Coaches challenge people to think out of the box and jump out of their comfort zones. They do this by asking deep, thought- provoking questions that address the real issues and barriers, which get in the way of people making a change in their behaviour. ‘Challenging’ does not mean ‘aggressive’ or ‘abrasive’. Challenging questions are direct questions that do not skirt around the issue. Good coaches spend time looking at the barriers that people will face when trying to make changes and help the individual realize the obstacles, in order to find ways to overcome them. Coaching is about good business. It is not ‘nice to do’ if you have done everything else. Coaches deliver results. This does not mean that they have to find the answers themselves. They deliver results by clarifying the end goal that a person is working towards and helping the individual to develop a clear action plan that will enable him/her to reach that goal. They then build in review sessions, if needed, to check progress and work with the individual to remove any blockers or obstacles. Coaches want to see a change in behaviour, not just have a cosy chat that makes someone feel better in the short term but does not result in improved performance.

The coaching process This ABC of coaching needs to be backed up by a robust process for the coaching conversation. A simple process used with skill and fluency, rather than a compli- cated process that creates difficulty for the coach and the individual, is far more likely to achieve success.

A simple model that is widely used is known as The GROW Process. This was originally developed by John Whitmore and used in the world of sports coaching.

It is a simple process that relies on a key four-stage approach:

G – Goal R – Reality O – Options W – Will

The key to using this GROW model (see Figure 5.2) is to realize that each step is important and cannot be missed.

The goal

Examples of effective goal questions:

• What is the aim of this discussion? • What do you want to achieve? • Explain how you would like things to be in 3/6 months.

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WHAT WILL YOU DO?

WHAT COULD YOU DO?

WHAT IS HAPPENING

NOW?

WHAT DO YOU WANT?

WHAT?

WHERE?

HOW MUCH?

Goals Specific

Measurable

Realistic Time-phased

Agreed and accepted

Reality

No assumptions

Cut through irrelevant

information

Avoid problem- solving at this

stage

Will Commit to action

Make steps specific and time-phased

Identify possible obstacles

Options

Ensure choices are made

Generate all possibilities

Offer suggestions last

WHEN?

Figure 5.2 The GROW model of coaching

• What would success look like to you? • How will you measure it? • How important is this to you?

Delegates to coaching workshops often say that the individual starts by talking about the reality of the situation rather than the goal. This is true. However, the skilled coach then takes the individual back to the goal by asking him/her a number of questions as discussed above. Often, individuals give a first view of the goal, which is actually apresenting symptom, rather than the real goal itself. For example:

An individual starts to talk about the problems they have with their team not working well together. They describe their goal, as: ‘I want them to work better together.’ On further discussion, it emerges that the real issue is that the team members are not taking on enough responsibilities from the manager. This is probably because the manger is not delegating clearly enough or setting out clear enough expectations and objectives for each individual. Sometimes, when working in a team, the team members do not have sufficient clarity about each other’s objectives and there has been some overlap of activities, leading to bad feelings. The individual being coached soon realizes that the real goal is as follows:

‘To agree on clear objectives and responsibilities with each of the team members, and to ensure that they are shared and understood by everyone.’

This is a much more specific goal which leads the coach to then ask questions about how objectives are currently set and how much everyone buys into them.

Reality

Effective reality questions:

• What is happening now? • Who is involved?

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