Tag: Executive Coach

What Makes Delegation So Difficult?

Posted on by Rachel Burr

The art of delegation has never been more important. Organizations are larger, more complex, and have distributed workforces that span the globe. Individual leaders are not scalable, and that makes delegation essential.  So why is delegation still so challenging?

What gets in the way of delegation?

Three of the biggest challenges to effective delegation are time, trust, and history.

Time – VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) no longer describes only short-term crises, it’s become a reality for doing business. To make effective decisions in a VUCA environment, employees need leaders to invest their time to–

  • Clarify their vision
  • Set expectations
  • Communicate their intent
  • Coach people to learn and adapt

Time is precious and leaders have very little to spare. However, the alternative to taking time is to delegate work by “throwing it over the wall,” without clear expectations or intent. Throwing work over the wall is a recipe for disastrous results, and it reinforces the bias: “It’s faster if I do it myself!” This reactive micromanagement is a great way to lose talented employees who won’t feel valued, and won’t see opportunities to grow.

Trust – Even with clarity, leaders may not trust people to execute to their standards. Ultimately, leaders are accountable for results, and when a leader’s neck is on the line, the impulse to “control” (vs. “coach”) easily rears its ugly head.

History – The old “What got you here, won’t get you there.”  Leaders often started out as talented individual contributors who were rewarded and promoted for their willingness to jump into action and swiftly solve problems. There’s no easy “off switch” for self-reliant behaviors. Just like there’s no easy “on switch” to immediately illuminate the “leadership light” that will refocus someone to coach and motivate others. We tend to hold on to what’s worked for us in the past, even when our role and environment have changed. It takes time, and often coaching, to help leaders make such a significant shift. 

What helps leaders delegate?

Build Trust – Leaders must invest their time and attention if they want to build trust with people.  We start by building a relationship with someone as a person, understanding their values, strengths, talents, and motivations. When we get to know the whole person, and they get to know us, it builds a deeper foundation for everything that follows. 

Invest in People’s Development – Talented people who see no growth path leave for better opportunities. During “The Great Resignation,” droves of talented people left organizations in search of greater purpose, growth opportunities, and a more meaningful connection with company culture.  When a leader invests in development, this investment is key to encouraging talented people to stay, grow, and continue to flourish.

Intentionally Create a Coaching Culture – The word “intentionally” may be overkill. Organizations don’t create a coaching culture “by accident.” Creating a coaching culture requires leaders to let go of “command and control” and, instead, develop their bench. Leaders who truly value a coaching culture require coaching as a core competency when they hire, develop, and promote people into leadership roles.

Keep a Finger on the Pulse – Doctors don’t control the details of how a human body works. They assess overall health and search for early warning signs that indicate problems. In the same vein, leaders don’t micromanage how work gets done, but they keep their finger on the pulse of progress. People will make mistakes as they learn. That’s part of growth. The key is to reinforce positive results and coach people to course-correct while mistakes and problems are small, rather than waiting for issues to build to a crisis.

Delegation is not easy. It’s a dynamic balance of knowing when & how to step in and when & how to step back.  Nevertheless, delegation is a skill that can be learned, and the only way to learn is to practice.

How to Communicate Company Culture

Posted on by Rachel Burr

Fast-growing companies want to quickly hire and onboard people who are not only smart and capable but also a good “culture fit” for the organization. The question is, what does “culture fit” mean, and how do we communicate company culture in a way that is both clear and tangible?

Define the Culture

Company cultures have been described as “the way things get done around here” or “the water in which we swim.” Neither of which are particularly helpful when talking with applicants or onboarding new employees as they dive into the deep end. Leaders must explicitly define and set expectations for the company culture they want to create. 

One of the key ways to communicate company culture is through a company’s vision, mission, and values. Unfortunately, some companies create lengthy vision and mission statements or have a list of core values a mile long. The result?  None of it is useful. These cultural artifacts may be displayed on a website or flashed across a screen during meetings, but often people don’t even know where to find them, let alone how to embody them. Three things must be true to communicate culture effectively: Head-Heart-Hands.  

Head –  Are the vision, mission, and values so clear and concise people can easily explain them off the top of their head? Our brains haven’t changed in thousands of years. We may have a vast amount of storage space, but we have a very small working memory to process and retrieve information. Why is that important? If we can’t easily remember the vision, mission, and values of our company, then it’s unlikely they will influence our behavior.

Heart – Are the vision, mission, and values inspiring? People want to feel motivated by the purpose of the organization and connected to the values. They want to feel energized by the vision for their future and proud to belong to a successful work community.

Hands – Are the vision, mission, and values actionable? Culture is not just an idea. Culture flows through people’s “hands” in the actions they take, the work they do, and the relationships they build. 

We must be able to know the culture in our Head, so it can inspire our Hearts, and be delivered through our Hands. Through this integration we connect with culture as a whole person, and this connection distinguishes true commitment from passive compliance. True commitment means we authentically give our time, attention, and talent to achieve results, and those results are aligned with the company culture we aspire to create. 

Explicit communication about mission, vision, and values is important, but it is not sufficient in how we communicate culture. As the old saying goes, people may pay attention to what we say, but they are far more likely to pay attention to what we do.

Live the Culture

Anyone can slap words on a wall and call them values. Organizations have “espoused values” (what they say their values are), and they have “values in practice” (the values they live day in and day out).  How closely aligned an organization’s espoused values are with the values in practice is a measure of cultural integrity, and it is palpable in “the way things get done around here.”

Leaders must actively seek feedback about where organizational values are aligned and where there are gaps. This takes courage and candor, both from the leadership who ask the questions and the people who provide feedback. Creating a culture of courage and candor is the topic for another blog post (and many, many leadership books).  We can start by asking a few simple questions:

  • “What are examples of how we live our values?”
  • “What are examples of how we are not living our values?”
  • “What is at least one thing we could do differently to close that gap?”

If we really want ongoing honest feedback, we must do at least three things:

Create Safety – People must feel safe providing honest feedback. Some leaders have created trust and safety among their teams. However, even more leaders think people feel safe when they don’t. Rather than assume everyone feels safe, assume everyone does not feel safe, and solicit feedback accordingly. One of the easiest ways to solicit “safe” feedback is through a brief, anonymous survey with open-ended questions like the ones above. Surveys are not a perfect mechanism for feedback, but they’re a start.

Acknowledge Input – Acknowledge people’s feedback and summarize the resulting themes. This helps people feel heard and connect the dots between their input and the feedback from the overall team or organization. 

Take Action – The only thing worse than not soliciting feedback is soliciting feedback and not acting on it. Sometimes the actions we need to take are clear. Other times, we may not know how to solve a problem, and we have to ask for help. It’s not about finding a “perfect” solution. It’s about taking action to experiment and try new things, so people see that we genuinely want to live the values we espouse. 

Grow the Company Culture

As companies grow, the culture naturally changes. The core values are still fundamental, but the diversity of perspectives and how those values are lived will grow and expand. Like an acorn that grows into a towering oak tree, values are the seed that will guide authentic growth. So, how do we grow a culture as we scale a company? One of the best ways to grow and keep people connected to the culture is to encourage stories about how people are living the values. 

Human beings are natural storytellers. We have passed on knowledge and understanding through stories for generations, especially knowledge that may be difficult to define, such as culture. Encourage people to tell their stories about how they are living the values, how they see others living the values, and the impact these experiences have on them, both large and small. Integrate a diverse range of voices into what the values mean to different people. Diversity of thinking and perspectives is critical to creating a strong, sustainable culture and overall organization. 

Culture is not just something that happens around us, it is something that connects us and becomes a part of us. As a result, the way a company culture is most effectively communicated is not through slides in a presentation or a list of values on a wall. The most effective way to communicate culture is through the thoughts, actions, and experiences of the people living it. 

Announcing the Launch of Newly Rebranded Catamentum Leadership Coaching!

Posted on by Rachel Burr

I am so excited to announce the launch of my newly rebranded Catamentum Leadership Coaching (formerly known as The Practical Sage, LLC.)

Rebranded Catamentum means we catalyze momentum to unleash potential of leaders, their teams, and their organizations.

Here is our brand new website: https://catamentum.com/

My new business email address: Rachel@Catamentum.com

A huge thank you to Joanne Z. Tan and her team at 10 Plus Brand for all their help throughout a transformational rebranding process.  I could not have done this without you.  Joanne is an expert at helping you tap into the fundamental building blocks of your brand DNA to clearly express who you are at your core and the unique value you bring. Thank you, Joanne!

Please follow us on our new social media company pages: 

Linkedin:

https://www.linkedin.com/company/catamentum-leadership-coaching-llc/

Instagram:

https://www.instagram.com/catamentum/

Twitter:

https://twitter.com/catamentum

Facebook:

https://www.facebook.com/Catamentum-Leadership-Coaching-103683172004444

To Build Your Path, Start with You

Posted on by Rachel Burr

“Where do I even start?” Have you ever uttered those words when you thought about changing roles, shifting your career, or even just escaping the job you currently have?  I know I have.  My client, Jane (not her real name), felt frustrated and exhausted, like so many clients before her. She knew she wasn’t happy in her current role, but she also didn’t know what else she might do or how she would figure it out.  How do you build your path?

“There are things about this job I really enjoy,” Jane said. “I believe in the products, and I love working with my team. The people are wonderful.” Jane had interviewed with other companies in the area, but they all had their issues. “Any job or company is going to have drawbacks,” she rationalized. “How do I know any of them would be any better?” 

“So, you’re going to stick with ‘the devil you know,’” I said. It was a statement more than a question.

“I guess so,” she conceded. “Plus, the money is really good.”

“They wouldn’t call them golden handcuffs if it was easy to walk away,” I smiled. 

I would say I was surprised by the number of people with whom I have had this conversation, if I hadn’t also had this conversation with myself too many times to count.  How is it possible that so many of us are this frustrated or unhappy about our jobs, especially when we spend so much of our lives at work?

Tailor the Job to Fit You (Not the Other Way Around)

Maybe being unhappy at work is just the reality we’ve come to expect.  As humans, we adapt to our environments. The process is called “habituation.” The word sounds ominous, but it really means that we just stop noticing or even expecting something different when we experience the same thing over and over and over again.  (Come to think of it, that sounds more depressing than ominous.)  In some situations, adapting is a good thing. For example, when we’re in a noisy office environment (even if now that’s mostly our “home office”), we learn to tune out a lot of the repetitive ambient noise to concentrate on our work.  But what happens when we just continue to adapt to a situation or environment that really isn’t a good fit?  Why don’t more of us take the leap to get out of jobs or environments that aren’t working for us? 

One of the biggest problems is we’re going about the process all wrong. We start looking at the macro level of the situation and work from the outside in. We look at the companies and the job postings, and we try to determine our fit with what we see available. Then, we tailor ourselves (e.g., talents, skills, and experiences) to fit what we think the employers want. But before we start rearranging our resume and LinkedIn profile to look like the “perfect candidate” for 100 different roles, how do we know what we want and what would be a great fit for who we are?1 

We need to take a different approach and start at the micro level and focus on the inside first. We need to start by understanding our fundamental building blocks: values, strengths, interests, and motivations. Once we have better insight and understanding into who we are, what we’re good at, and what’s important to us, then you can use that information to build your path forward. Rather than the job becoming “the goal,” the job becomes the next step as part of our individual journey.

Start with What You Know

Sounds great, but (again), “Where do I even start?” How do we figure out our building blocks? There are great assessments to help us identify our strengths, weaknesses, values, etc. Whether we’re looking at our leadership style, individual strengths, or even how we operate as a team, I have used a number of tools with my clients based on their specific objectives. But even before we look at more formal assessments, take some time to really stop, reflect, and debrief, and focus first on what you already know about yourself. Try this exercise I call, “Best, Worst, & Better.”

Best, Worst, & Better

Take time to reflect on the following, and write down your answers:

Step 1 – Break Down Your Best: Think of at least 2-3 times when you felt the most engaged, energized, and excited about work you were doing. Maybe you were at your job, or maybe you were working in another area of your life (e.g., working around the house, coaching your kids’ game, engaging in a hobby, etc.). In each of these situations start to dig down into the building blocks of what made the experience so great. Ask yourself questions like the following:

  • What did I love most about what I was doing, and why?
  • What was important to me about what I was doing?
  • What strengths, skills, and talents did I use in the process?
  • What interested or motivated me most about what I was doing?
  • What was most satisfying to me about the work, the process, and/or the results?

Step 2 – Break Down Your Worst: Now think of at least 2-3 times when you felt the most miserable, disengaged, and/or deflated about work you were doing.  Again, break it down into the individual building blocks of what made it such a negative experience.  Ask yourself questions to look at the opposite of how you looked at your “Best” moments:

  • What did I hate most about what I was doing, and why?
  • What stood out as the most negative part of this experience? 
  • How did this work tap into my weaknesses (rather than my strengths)?
  • What was most boring, frustrating, and/or discouraging to me about this work?

Step 3- Break Down Your Better: Finally, take a look at your “Worst” list and now flip it 180 degrees by asking, “What would have made this better?” 

  • For example, let’s say you love working with numbers and solving problems from the ground up, but you were given a project with limited information.  As a result, you struggled to understand the objectives, and how the different parts of the project fit together to create a solution. If you ask yourself, “What would have made this better?”, you might come up with things like, “Having a clear high-level view of the problem, understanding how my work fit into the broader context, knowing the different stakeholders who were involved, and clearly understanding the objectives we needed to achieve.” 

The question, “What would have made this better?” may unearth some of the same factors that contributed to your “Best” situations, but it also may unearth new and important pieces that didn’t show up the first time around.

Step 4 – Find Your Themes. Once you’ve written out your answers, take a step back and start to look for themes:

  • When are you at your best?
  • What’s most important to you?
  • What are things you won’t tolerate?

Maybe you find you’re at your best when you’re working with people, or maybe you prefer to work with numbers.  Maybe you find you don’t like to work in isolation, or maybe you’re highly intolerant of too many interruptions. Maybe you prefer being strategic, hands-on, or some combination of the two. There are no right or wrong answers. There’s just you: who you are, what’s important to you, and what you really want.

Step 5 – Pile Up Your Building Blocks. Finally, create two columns on a document or a spreadsheet. The header of the first column is, “What I want.” The header of the second column is, “What I don’t want.” Congratulations! You’ve begun to identify your building blocks to build your path forward. 

This is not the end. In fact, it’s just the beginning, but you have answered the first very important question: “Where do I even start?” You start here. You start with what you know. You start with You.