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Coaching
Much is being said and written about the benefits of a healthy work-life balance. The UK saw the recent extension of the right to request flexible working hours. So how is it that in my coaching practice it seems that almost every single client brings it as a theme to improve?
Caveat: the biased view from the coach
Of course, people come to coaching for a reason. I predominantly coach clients in organisations, for example as part of a leadership development programme or as a coach supporting organisational change. Both can do much to upset work-life balance and both present opportunities to re-appraise habits and opportunities to re-balance where necessary.
Work-life balance: some facts
Let’s first have a look at some interesting facts and figures from the the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
The OECD’s Better Life Index report found that the UK scores above average when it comes to the percentage of employees working very long hours. 18% of men and 6% of women, together averaging at 12.3%, work more than 50 hours a week.
According to this report, the UK ranks 27 out of 36 of member states. Best ranking? Denmark, also known as the happiest country on earth. Also in the OECD work-life balance rankings top 5 is Norway, rated as the world’s most prosperous country in the world for five years in a row by 2013. There has to be a link!
Indeed, the EOCD report states:
Finding a suitable balance between work and daily living is a challenge that all workers face. Families are particularly affected. […] This is a challenge to governments because if parents cannot achieve their desired work/life balance, not only is their welfare lowered but so is development in the country.
– OECD Better life Index
Work-life balance as a theme in coaching
So, with that in mind, what gets discussed in a session where someone brings work-life balance issues to their coach? Three questions I am often asked in client sessions:
Am I allowed to use my sessions to discuss work-life balance?
This one is a telling question. The asker is looking for the boundaries of what can and cannot be on the coaching agenda as far as their employer is concerned, while also letting me know it is a theme for them personally.
Before I start coaching in an organisation, I always ask what is off the agenda as far as the sponsor (person or organisation who pays for my services) is concerned. Work-life balance is often mentioned as a welcome theme, albeit within boundaries. Many clients arrive at their first session not knowing what to expect, and need to first establish what would be unreasonable to expect their employer to pay for. For many work-life balance is a grey area when it isn’t for their employer.
What can I reasonably ask my manager or employer for?
Many clients discover in a session that they are simply unaware of what their organisation’s policies are when it comes to flexible working. Some people use their sessions to practise having a challenging conversation with their manager. They sometimes need figure out what they really want to achieve to improve their work-life balance, and what they are prepared to concede if a deal needs to be struck.
How do other people achieve a healthy work-life balance?
This theme pops up when people are looking for creativity to solve the problem of work-life balance. Sometimes the client needs my probing questions to recognise examples of successful behaviours they already exhibit in other situations. Sometimes our conversation uncovers successful strategies used by people they know. Occasionally I’ll share some examples from past clients, and use questioning to come up with new ideas for the client to try out.
Coaching for a good work-life balance
Coaching itself is unlikely to solve the problem of work-life balance for clients. It does, however, offer space to explore what strategies might work, while perhaps also getting some insight into what expectations clients may need to let go of.
As a coach I am never qualified to advise on legislation, policy or my client’s Terms of Employment. I also will withhold my personal opinion on what the client should think or do. For each of these needs there are HR professionals, colleagues and friends to help my client! What I am qualified to do though is to talk through options and support my client in finding new ways to balance work with personal time. My role as unbiased outsider fills the gap in the list of helpers above.
How much of a theme is work-life balance for you? And what strategies are you using – successfully or otherwise – to keep the balance?
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Coaching, Development, Facilitation, Strengths, Teams
I like to talk about strengths.
And because I spend a lot of my time talking with people, I am convinced that each of us has at least one strength we are not aware of at all. Or perhaps we are aware of something of a strength, but do not fully appreciate that strength the way it is perceived by others. I especially love talking about those.
The thing about strengths…
The nature of a strength is that it is something you do which doesn’t cost you a great deal to be good at. In fact, using your strength is a source of mental energy for you, making it a pleasure to engage with it. Knowing this, it is easy to see how our strengths might elude us, but not others: they might really catch the eye of others, but to us what we do is the norm, and so we take our strength for granted.
Unless…
The case of Bob’s hidden strength
Take for example Bob*. Bob had invited me to facilitate a team development day with him and his team. Using VIA Strengths Cards the team explored each others’ strengths to build a team profile. Working in pairs the team chose those cards they felt applied to their colleague, explaining along the way why they opted for each one.
The conversations around the room were revealing. Every participant discovered how something they ‘just do’ was considered a strength in the eyes of their colleague. It was a very cheerful session, peppered with hoots of laughter and the odd squeal of disbelief.
Bob had opted to study his cards on his own instead of joining a pair to make a three. When the team decided to pick Bob’s strengths cards for him, they noted with surprise that ‘creativity’ was not a card he had picked for himself. The discussion which followed highlighted not only how Bob’s talent for problem solving was seen as above average by all, it also showed Bob that his personal interpretation of ‘creativity’ was entirely different from his colleagues’.
And the point of all this is…?
Bob made two discoveries: he was offered an updated definition for the strength of creativity, which included problem solving. He also found out how his team perceived him in this respect, adding a new insight into his leadership. Both of these revelations were important to him.
Working with strengths, whether in a 1:1 coaching session or in a team setting, is a positive way of exploring how others perceive you. You are very likely to discover that something you do and have been taking for granted yourself is a major contribution to team life in the eyes of co-workers.
Truly, what’s not to like?
Go on your own strengths discovery
Curious? Want some yourself? Well, here are a few tips to get you going.
- Do a free online strengths profile here (registration is required; free). Tip: write down your strengths before closing the window!
- Read some more about strengths to deepen your understanding of your strengths profile, here.
- Buy your own set of strengths cards, here. They can be used at work as well as with family! In fact, they have been known to open up the least talkative of teenagers to a good conversation.
- 10 tips to use Strengths Cards can be found here: Strenghts based cards 10_tips
- Drop me an email or a line to find out what I might be able to do for you or your team!
* Not his real name
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Engagement
The other day I was reading an article in The Marketer, the magazine of the Chartered Institute of Marketing. It’s an accessible publication, and pretty low on jargon too for a professional magazine. I am rather desensitised to marketingspeak in any case, so I probably have some blind spots when it comes to marketing jargon.
Nevertheless, when I came across an article on ‘growth hacking’ on page seven, I instantly felt annoyed. It said:
A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.
Apart from the fact that the above sentence says absolutely nothing (growth of what? Trees? Debt? Turnover?) it’s full of distracting language.
‘Hacking’ seems to be the latest term for what was once called going for ‘low hanging fruit’ or ‘quick wins’. It sounds cleverer because it has a whiff of the nerdy rather than managerial to it. A growth hacker then would be someone who cleverly starts by doing the things which need doing first to make sure they grow their success quickly and immediately. Old wine in new bottles?
‘True north’? Yep, this term is filed under T in The Ridiculous Business Jargon Dictionary. It means business direction that leads to success.
Let’s translate that silly sentence then:
A growth hacker is someone who starts with the most important tasks first to achieve quick growth and whose business sense is one that leads to success.
Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it somehow. Perhaps jargon does serve a legitimate purpose, so let’s examine it a bit more closely.
Jargon is an exclusive language
Exclusive means keeping some people in and others out of the conversation. Using language that not all people in your audience understand filters out participants. This can be entirely acceptable, for example while testing someone’s knowledge during a formal exam or an interview.
However, if you need to take your audience with you, find out what language would be considered jargon and explain it along the way. You may be surprised what is and isn’t considered jargon! It is a great way to build trust and rapport with your audience even if you feel self-conscious doing it at first.
Using jargon is a bit like swearing
I can get very distracted by jargon which needs interpreting. Sometimes I suspect a presenter resorts to jargon because they need the security blanket of clever-sounding terminology to bolster their talk. Sometimes I think they just don’t have the words to explain what they really mean. When this happens jargon takes on the character and function of swearing: for a lack of language to express what we are really saying or because we are trying to hide something, we employ specialist language to throw our audience off the scent.
Jargon saves time
If its use doesn’t annoy the audience it can be elegant to use jargon. As the growth hacking example above illustrates, jargon can save time by cutting to the chase with a few well-chosen words. Very handy in the age of that 140-character microblog post, the noble tweet. Air traffic control jargon saves millions of lives each day because seconds really do count.
Jargon is creative use of language
Like swearing the use of jargon can be pretty creative and even funny at times. Some terms simply sum up what we think so imaginatively they can lighten up a situation. My personal favourite is the snottogram: the condescending missive sent via email because sender couldn’t possibly say what they had to say to the recipient’s face.
Now, what use of jargon are you ready to confess to? Entertain us in the comments box below.
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Engagement, Leadership, Teams
Conversation is an umbrella term referring to the many ways people talk with each other:
Conversation con•ver•sa•tion [kon-ver-sey–shuhn] noun
The interchange of thoughts, information etc. by spoken words; oral communication; talk.
A deliberately transactional and neutral definition such as the above doesn’t quite cover the subtleties and different purposes of conversation however.
Three different conversations, three purposes
Imagine a sliding scale of conversation from adversarial and confrontational to a form of communication focused on mutual understanding. At one end we find debate, at the other dialogue, and somewhere in the middle we can see discussion.
Conversation type 1: debate
What comes to mind when you think of the word debate? Jeering MPs in the House of Commons? Memories of school debates and being asked to defend an impossible standpoint?
Debate can be described as a contention in argument or a dispute. The conversationalists in a debate take a position with a view to defend it. It is an adversarial conversation, and opponents make representations to support their argument, aiming to come out on top at the expense of the other.
Conversation type 2: discussion
At first glance discussion looks strikingly similar to a debate: it is a consideration by argument. All parties have a position and offer comments to convince others of its merits. However, there is an important difference. Where the aim of a debate is to win it, the goal of a discussion is to explore and find a solution.
Conversation type 3: dialogue
At the other end of the conversation scale we find dialogue. Dialogue is described by the famous psychologist Edgar Schein as:
a basic process for building common understanding, in that it allows one to see the hidden meanings of words, first by seeing such hidden meanings in our own communication.
This type of conversation does not start with the defense of our own standpoint, but with a readiness to examine it and how exactly we converse. Schein continues:
By letting disagreement go, meanings become clearer, and the group gradually builds a shared set of meanings that make much higher levels of mutual understanding and creative thinking possible. […] In this process, we do not convince each other, but build a common experience base that allows us to learn collectively.
Edgar Schein, On Dialogue, Culture and Organizational Learning, 1993
What Schein is getting at is that by being prepared to let go of our closely held positions we can create a safe space to learn together and find solutions to our problems. To build trust first we have to be aware of our own assumptions and how these shape the way we consider others’ standpoints. The next step is to bravely share what these assumptions are, so that in this conversation we can start going beyond debate and discussion and find sustainable solutions.
Upgrade your conversations
Now, what can you do with all this lovely theory?
Next time when you are talking with someone, listen for the purpose of the conversation for them. Perhaps they will not be moved from their position whatever you have to offer in argument, and the purpose is to ‘beat’ you. If this is not a useful conversation for you, end it, or try to upgrade it.
If the other is more interested in your argument, you have a discussion on your hands. Talk the language of solutions, and you may end up with more than a scoreboard.
If you are ready to take it a step further, share some of your own assumptions and see where the conversation takes you next. Genuine collaboration is a great starting point for innovation.
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Coaching, Development
One of the comments I hear most often from coaching clients, is how welcome the sessions are in a working environment where the most time you might get with someone to explore an idea is five minutes. Of all the things they value the most about coaching, the thinking space a session provides – the opportunity to really delve into an idea or thought – must be in the top three.
The problem with the problem of time
For the last seven or so years I have worked in and with environments which have been hit particularly hard by the recession: local government, not-for-profits, education. I have witnessed how this has resulted in people wearing more than one hat and working with fewer resources than ever before.
At the same time, expectations of people’s availability and ability to keep up with developments also appears to have taken quite a flight. Most of us are now used to carrying laptops and smartphones around as we go about our business, and whether it is your personal preference or not, many of us feel we are expected to see emails and answer calls as soon as they come in.
No wonder nobody has time to hear out an idea anymore.
Where do all the ideas go?
So, while the pace has picked up and we’re all connected to everyone and everything all our waking hours if we so choose, what about those ideas? Pin them in Pinterest for later? Translate them into a tweetable 140 characters? Post them on LinkedIn for your boss to ‘discover’?
The art of conversation is fast becoming an endangered skill. Have a look around the table at the next meeting you attend: how many mid-conversation furtive glances on BlackBerry screens do you clock around you? How present are we in meetings when we have one eye on the time, and the other on our smartphone?
Coaching as a retro conversation
In my coaching practice I have noticed that all clients take delight in switching the phone off and tucking it away for the duration. I ensure sessions take place off-site or on a different floor, away from distractions and interruptions. It also helps them to physically distance themselves from the day job.
The next hour or ninety minutes are spent boldly going where the client hasn’t gone before, simply because the opportunities have all but ceased to exist in their normal work routine.
The effects on the client of having an in-depth coaching conversation about an idea or thought can be astonishing. Talking through an idea out loud to someone who isn’t going to judge it or have an agenda does wonders for creativity. I have lost count of the number of times a client almost skipped out the door because they finally cracked how to have that difficult conversation with their boss. All it took was an hour or so of being able to explore it without interruptions.
We seem to have lost the ability to invest in ideas when we lost our habit to converse. It seems strange for a coach to complain about this… For am I not making a living out of this problem?
I guess I wonder at the feelings of nostalgia I perceive in some of my clients when they remark how wonderful it is to have a proper dialogue. The benefits of having focused conversations are well-known in coaching.
Perhaps what we need above all is to relearn the art of conversation, this time sanstechnology.
Gosh Flo, I wish I’d driven over my BlackBerry ages ago!
