Walking the tight rope connecting strategy and relationship.
especially during a pandemic
Our recent research found that more than 80% of people report the need to have someone to talk to who will listen, not advise, or solve their problems. Just listen and ask powerful questions.
Use of the skills of Coaching is the fastest way to help another person get out of the weeds and into clear air. To gain clarity to carve a path forward, thus having positive impacts on mental health, wellbeing and overall performance. yet many of us are unskilled in that area and avoid the conversations that arguably, matter the most.
Many of us avoid the conversations that matter the most.
The ability to bring coaching skills and strategies to leadership is the number one way to build the relationship and create growth in the people around you who do the Mahi.
Walking alongside people to enable them to bring their number one game to the table is what great leaders do. Yet, having those conversations can be challenging, time-consuming and often emotionally charged. Where there is high negative emotion, leaders tend to shy away. We need to learn to be present in conversations with others' emotions without reacting, fixing or responding judgementally. Learning to be comfortable in conversation is a collaborative, personalised process that facilitates new thinking to cause positive change.
Neuroscience gives us some insight into why we - as leaders - find it so hard.
The Neuroscience of hard Cconversations
The brain network involved in holding information, planning, strategising, and problem-solving (AKA strategy) tends to be on the brain's lateral, or outer, portions. The brain networks involved in self-awareness, social cognition, mindfulness, social intelligence and empathy (AKA relational) are located in regions more involved in the midline or central areas. Often we see leaders excel at one aspect and fall short in the other. Relational and Strategic are at either end of the tight rope that leaders walk, and finding a balance is the constant challenge leaders face.
Interestingly, the strategy and relational networks are inversely correlated. For example, one tends to be deactivated when one is active, suggesting that there is something inversely correlated between social and non-social abilities, - This makes sense when you understand the networks you pay attention to are the ones that grow.
If you spend a lot of time on cognitive tasks, your ability to have empathy with people reduces simply because that circuitry doesn't get used much and vice versa.
How do we serve the strategy while leaning into the relational?
The step between recognising an opportunity for personal change and doing something about it can be significant.
Most of us have many areas of knowledge, behaviour or skill where we can see potential benefits from improving our performance. Whether we will seriously engage in making those changes and sustaining them relates to:
The value we attach to achieving the change and the expected benefits that will flow from it.
The degree of confidence we feel in our ability to change and the likelihood of achieving the change.
The amount of effort we expect to put into making the change.
To create the space for high degrees of motivation to learn and the ability to change, leaders need to adapt their approach to conversations.
The adaptive mentoring model created by Ralph and Walker identifies differentiated approaches leaders can take in conversations such that they become a collaborative, personalised process that facilitates new thinking to cause positive change. The adaptive mentoring model replaces a “one-size-fits-all” approach by allowing mentors to vary their adaptive behaviour according to the developmental needs of the person they are mentoring.
Let's take a walk through the model.
The X and Y axis on the model represents a continuum from low to high of the relative ability - competence and certainty of their ability to carry out the work - confidence.
At the centre of the model are the approaches leaders can take to meet the needs of the staff member they are supporting. These actions are defined as either support orientated or task orientated forms of support.
A powerful way to use this model is to gain a shared understanding of the model and the person's position on the model relative to the different aspects of the job you are supporting them in. The staff member/leader pair ascertains the existing development level of the staff member to perform a specific skill-set being learned at the time. His/her competence and confidence levels to perform the task. We all have areas of strength and areas of weakness. Therefore, it is essential as leaders to adapt our approach to move towards and meet the need of those we are supporting.
Support - The psycho-emotional aspects of encouragement, reinforcement, and praise through coaching using questioning to facilitate insight to bolster the staff member as they attempt to develop their particular skill-set. Support consists of genuinely positive words and actions and varies along a continuum.
Task - The mentor's directive toward the staff member regarding their technical or mechanical prowess in the task through scaffolding, advising, and modelling across a range of telling, demonstrating, suggesting, questioning, or delegating concerning the skill-specific technique.
Let's take a walk through the model.
The adaptive approaches to conversations are:
Where there is high competence and confidence, the leader takes on the role of a coach and offers low support and low Task.
In this scenario, the leader uses powerful questions to support insight and growth.
Where high competence and low confidence exist, the leader takes on the coach's role, offers increased support, and decreases tasks.
In this scenario, the leader supports using genuinely positive words and actions.
Where there is low competence and high confidence, the leader takes on the role of a blend of mentor and coach, offering low support and increased Task. In this scenario, the leader scaffolds and advises.
Where there is low competence and low confidence, the leader takes on the role of a mentor, offering high support and high Task. In this scenario, the leader offers advice, models and scaffolds.
Based on the Adaptive Mentoring Model - Ralph and Walker - (Ralph, 1998; Ralph & Walker, 2011a, 2012
The higher the level of dialogue, the deeper will be the impact on the individual. The conversation needs to be adaptive; thus, the leader needs to be adaptive.
The normal transactional conversation dominates most work-based interactions outside of the more coach-like dialogue. Transactional conversations do not seek shared meaning; they occur to facilitate instruction (in both senses of the word) and monitoring. Such exchanges are essential and valuable, but they have little or no positive impact on the way people think or the attitudes they display. (There is also a 'hygiene' effect because peremptory instructions can breed resentment and passive resistance.)
Here are a few simple adjustments you can make to your communication style that will connect at a greater level to meet the staff member's needs.
Coaching Principles you can bring to your conversations:
Ask - questions that evoke discovery, insight, commitment or action(e.g., those that challenge assumptions).
Listen - Listening for understanding. Expect to have assumptions and customary views challenged and changed as listening goes deeper.
Encourage Reasoning - Encouraging others to share about how their reasoning links up and testing the assumptions that arise on the way.
Articulate - Reframe to help clients understand what they want or are uncertain about from another perspective.
Pay attention - Bring forth understanding for others by expressing insights in practical and meaningful ways. Accesses own intuition - trust your inner knowing —" goes with the gut." Be open to not knowing and staying curious
Encourage stretch - Challenging by being open and frank and encouraging the other person to do the same; respecting what they say when they take up the challenge.
Demonstrate willingness - Being willing to own one's view and evoking the other person's; being indifferent to which view the other adopts.
Until next time
Be courageous and try something new.
You are doing great.
Tab
References
Adaptive Mentoring Research - https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-Adaptive-Mentorship-C-model-The-mentor-synchronizes-his-her-adaptive-response_fig1_269792708
