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Time to Man Up to Men Mentoring Women 

When will the tide turn on the impact of #MeToo?

 

We published our research “Cross-Gender Relations in a Post-#MeToo World” in 2018. It was our fervent hope that this would start a conversation about the unintended consequences of the #MeToo movement – namely that men were starting to avoid contact with women in the workplace, most notably, in respect to mentoring. We were hopeful that, with careful recommendations about how co-gender mentoring could be approached, men would lose their fear about developing close working relationships with women and we would start to see men mentoring women once again. 

The media circus circling men mentoring women 

In recent weeks, there has been a flurry of media attention around this.

A panel on a popular Australian TV program featured discussion around men mentoring women as covered by Womens Agenda. This resulted in an outcry against a female politician who claimed she would “discourage men from taking on one-on-one mentoring”. 

In another recent article, associate professor at the University of Texas, Richard Reddick, suggests that men (and women) in leadership have a responsibility to help people in their organisations reach their potential. Opting out of engagement with women in core activities like mentoring “embraces the idea that men are unable to control their behaviour or lack judgment about what constitutes appropriate conduct”.  

 Yet again, following the The World Economic Forum at Davos this article goes on to explain that “#MeToo has become a risk-management issue for men”, and as a result, those men are withholding their professional experience and refusing to mentor women. 

It really is time that men stop allowing fear of accusations of harassment from fulfilling their responsibility to support women and provide them with the same pathways to leadership that men enjoy. Take sensible steps, take care, maintain boundaries, and get on with it. 

No more avoiding. Enough excuses. 

Time to start a mentoring program in your workplace? Let us help you.
Check out our free webinar series. There’s something for everyone with new topics added regularly.

© 2019 Melissa Richardson, Co-founder and Managing Director of Art of Mentoring

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Mentoring People with Autism

Autism is a broadly misunderstood condition.

While severe Autism may be disabling, it’s a mistake to think of all people on the Autism spectrum as disadvantaged. In reality, many autistic people have significant advantages over neurotypical people in general. They are better able to absorb and process large amounts of information, more focused and often highly creative. The price for these abilities is often reduced awareness of social clues, a tendency to take things literally and hypersensitivity. Where neurotypical brains filter out most of what goes on around us, leaving us to concentrate on the conversation we are having with someone in a noisy room, for people on the Autism spectrum, the multiple conversations may create sensory overload. So, while they can be very focused, they may also be easily distracted by other things going on around them, which most people would tune out.

Mentoring people with Autism

In coaching and mentoring someone on the spectrum, it is important to remember that everyone is different, and the way Autism is expressed varies greatly from individual to individual. No two Autistic people are the same. It also helps to remember that Autism is enabling, and to respect the advantages it brings to the client, while at the same time recognising the challenges they face.

Some other helpful guidelines include:

  • Choose places to talk where you can both concentrate fully.
  • Leave longer pauses for them to work through their thinking – they have more data to consider.
  • Don’t be put off by apparent lack of rapport. People on the Autism spectrum tend to watch another speaker’s mouth (where the sound comes from) rather than their eyes.
  • Don’t assume they are not empathetic, or lack emotion – this is almost never true. Do ask them to talk about their emotions in their own way.
  • Capitalise on their ability to notice more than you do. If you ask the question “What do you notice right now?”, allow time for them to consider this. You might be surprised at the detail and insights they will provide.
  • The more information you have, the harder making decisions can be. Share decision-making processes and work through the information in a systematic way.
  • Encourage them to innovate by applying their unique perspective.
  • Explore together the difference between how each of you sees the world and the events they bring to the conversation – take the attitude that you can learn from them, too.
  • Help them develop strategies for dealing with social situations they find difficult. Simple rules can help – but can cause problems if misapplied! A practical method is to illustrate a situation with two or three different stories, each of which requires a different social response; then help them work through the underlying assumptions behind each situation.
  • Let them coach you from time to time, to help them understand your role. If possible, choose topics that they are an expert on.

People who coach or mentor those on the Autism spectrum – and who are genuinely open to learning – experience insights and challenges to their basic assumptions that carry through into their more regular coaching or mentoring conversations. (For example, in what it means to hold a person-centred dialogue.) Indeed, it could be argued that everyone training to become a professional coach or mentor should have this experience as part of their basic education!

At Art of Mentoring, we support understanding, engaging & celebrating the strengths, interests & aspirations of people on the Autism spectrum. Celebrate World Autism Awareness Day with us on 2 April.

Professor David Clutterbuck is a regular guest of our free webinar series.

© David Clutterbuck, 2019. Updated 2022.

Mentoring and Menopause in the Workplace

Menopause in the Workplace: The Missing Life Stage in our Conversations.

“I feel ripped off that no one talked to me about it.” [1]

 “I’m 46 and I felt so unprepared and shocked when it happened.”

 “The silence – it’s the worst thing, especially when you get to the top of organisations where the percentage of women is low.”

These comments, which emerged from interviews I conducted late last year with 25 Australian working women, made me realise I had stumbled upon a workplace taboo that no-one was talking about, aside from jokes and euphemisms.

The topic? Women’s experience of transitioning through menopause in the workplace. My interviews were with women who said they felt challenged by the symptoms to some degree.

‘Embarrassing’ and ‘isolating’ were the most commonly used words to describe the experience, and the worst aspect was ‘having to carry on working regardless of how severe the symptoms were”, “behaving as if there’s nothing to see, nothing to hear.”

Why aren’t we talking about this natural life stage that half of humanity experiences?

“I don’t feel it’s something I can talk about openly without experiencing discrimination.”

As a workplace wellbeing advisor, with 25 years’ experience in health promotion, I know that discrimination and isolation have devastating impacts on wellbeing. In contrast, supportive relationships are the number one determinant of wellbeing, according to the Australian Unity Wellbeing Index, and in the workplace, they are one of the most potent buffers against workplace stress.

The relationship between mentor and mentee is all about support. If workplace mentors were educated about menopause, might this not only enhance women’s wellbeing, but also advance the practice of mentoring itself?

Here are some possible ways it could:

Reduce stigma

On the whole, ageism and sexism are alive and well in workplaces and our culture at large, and menopause brings associated negative stereotypes to the fore.

“There is an unconscious bias that menopause means you are going into the last stage of your career.”

“There is a perception in society that you have done your time, you are used up, not fertile, not young, so your value diminishes.”

If male and female mentors examined their unconscious bias related to mid-life women, this would help liberate mentor and mentee alike.

Better understand your mentee

Menopause in the workplace is likely to affect many mentees at some stage, to some degree. Seventy eight per cent of Australian women aged 45 to 60 are in the workforce. Menopause typically occurs between the ages of 45 and 55. About 50 per cent of working women say menopausal symptoms make work more difficult, so menopause could be directly impacting your mentee’s ability to achieve her potential.

Enable early intervention and support

As in the case of mental health, well trained coaches and mentors learn how to pick up the signs of mental illness and refer on for help if needed. They are trained, not to diagnose, but to feedback the changes they are noticing, and ask the person if they are ok. The same could apply to menopause, should symptoms interfere with a mentee’s workplace performance.

Alert you to a window of opportunity

While this life-stage can be disruptive, it also presents a rich opportunity for sifting, sorting and clarifying what needs to change in a woman’s life. Some women also talk about a growing steadiness, authority and sense of liberation as they grow into their more mature selves. These gifts don’t necessarily come automatically, but can be reaped from consciously exploring this life stage, rather than burying it under the guise of ‘performance as usual.’

 “It was a time when I needed to crystallise what I was doing and get clear about – what do I want to carry forward? What’s important to me?”

Finally, it’s what women want

There is debate about this. Some women say they don’t want the issue raised in workplace contexts, not just because of the personal nature of the topic, but also because they fear it will feed more discrimination against women. However, when I asked my interviewees, ‘What would make the biggest positive difference to your experience as a working woman?’, resoundingly, every woman said: To normalise menopause in the workplace! Talk about it. Bring it into the mainstream.

“If we could normalise this life stage, and see it as utterly part of the cyclical nature of life, then women could feel much more empowered, more able to claim all parts of us.”

Thea O’Connor is a wellbeing and productivity advisor to workplace leaders and teams. She is creator of The Change – a confidential online program, empowering working women through menopause.


[1] * all italicised quotes come from women interviewed by Thea for her Women, work & menopause research.

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When a Mentee is Unhappy at Work

Unhappy at work?

Everyone has times, when their job just doesn’t seem to give them the same satisfaction. These feelings of being unhappy at work don’t always last – simple shifts in role or responsibility can make a radical difference, for example – but when ennui sets in, the potential for disengagement and quitting rise.

Coaches and mentors can help with thinking through tactics for moving on, inside or outside of the same organisation. But this instinctive response leaves out another, equally important perspective – what the person might do to make their current job more fulfilling.

Whether the coachee/mentee is minded to move on, or not, the starting point for the conversation is “What would your ideal job role be?”. This gives a pragmatic basis for comparison — “What is it that you are not getting from your current role?” Generally, the answer to this question comes down to two or three issues, such as “not enough challenge” or “too little support”.

Now we can shift perspective again, asking: “What could you do to change your current job role, so it gives you more of what you need?”

Subsidiary questions include:

• What would your current job look like, if you were able to adjust it, so that it fulfilled your needs?
• What can you change yourself, without permission, and what needs negotiation with others?
• What conversations could you have to make others aware of your needs from your role?
• What trade-offs could you make, to take on new responsibilities outside your current role, and shuck off old ones that don’t engage you anymore?

The conversation can also explore how what kind of new roles would be fulfilling, if they do move on. What evidence do they have (or do they want to gather) about what those roles are really like? It is very easy, especially when you are dissatisfied with the status quo, to assume that the grass will be greener elsewhere – but will it be? And what would they lose by moving on? For example, it is common for people to accept a longer commute in return for a bigger salary, and to regret the decision later.

Overall, the responsibility of the coach/mentor is to help them think through more clearly what they do and don’t want (and why); and to support them in whichever route they decide to take. That may be pursuing both the stay and leave options simultaneously. The coach/mentor role is NOT to persuade them to remain in a job that no longer energises them or meets their needs.

Wanting to improve your mentoring skills? We provide online mentor training so you can help your mentee gain the most from the relationship.
Check out our free webinar series. There’s something for everyone with new topics added regularly.

© David Clutterbuck, 2018

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Negotiating the Balance of Power Between the Team Leader and the Team

Power struggles in team performance

One of the biggest impediments to team performance occurs when there is a mismatch between the leadership style and behaviours the team needs and those that the leader and the team default to. The word “default” is appropriate because there is usually an unconscious process of adaptation, which may be driven by:

  • The organisational climate and the expectations of the organisational culture with regard to the respective roles and behaviours of leaders and followers
  • The leader’s personality, competence and sense of security — for example, the balance between having the curiosity to experiment and unwillingness to take risks
  • The willingness and ability of the team members to share responsibility and accountability for leadership functions.

A spectrum of leadership styles

Having a language to address these issues – as in the framework below — is a good starting point for a dialogue that explores the kind of leadership and followership that will best deliver the team’s purpose.

  • Dictate – the ultimate in command and control. A dictatorial style draws all power and decision making to the top
  • Control – demands fixed processes and severely limits the ability of team members to take initiative
  • Superficially delegate – gives team members accountability/responsibility, but not authority
  • Influence – permits autonomy only when team members do what the leader would have done in the same position
  • Delegate – accountability/responsibility with authority
  • Empower – authority to redefine the task, as long as it fits within the team purpose
  • Abdicate – ceding authority and responsibility entirely to the team; not even monitoring in a meaningful sense

The leader and the team may have different perceptions about the predominant style – exploring these can provide a lively dialogue! Even if there is a consensus on the style of leadership needed, this may be so far away from what exists that an immediate shift appears impossible, so the team and the leader may need to agree to intermediate, small steps. If there is no consensus, then the small step approach may still be the best option for achieving progress.

What does the leader actually do? 

Another option is to clarify what the leadership tasks are for this team and explore how some of these may be redistributed to improve team performance. The process begins with the question “What does the leader actually do?” To take away some of the threat from this question, it can be put in the context of “What do we need to know about your role in order to understand your priorities and support you in making things happen?”

Some examples of responses include:

  • Co-ordinate the work between individuals
  • Ensure everyone understands goals, roles and priorities
  • Represent the team to the outside world
  • Manage the team’s reputation
  • Motivate and energise
  • Make the tough decisions
  • Decide on new hires
  • Evaluate and manage individual performance
  • Support the development and learning of team members
  • Find solutions to problems that have both an internal and external dimension
  • Align the goals of the team with the goals of the organisation
  • Find resources
  • Manage conflict
  • Be a role model

Having identified these tasks, the team and the leader can explore together:

  • How much of each does the leader really need to do?
  • How much could be shared or delegated with the team now?
  • How much could be shared or delegated, with time and some training?
  • What would be the benefit to the leader of freeing up time from doing some of these tasks?
  • What would be the benefit in building a reputation as a team, where people have lots of opportunities to grow and be stretched?
  • What experiments could we safely attempt?

The role of the team coach

A team coach can support this tricky conversation by making it as safe as possible for both the leader and the team. Part of this may be to bring into the open hidden fears, so that the team and the leader can re-assure each other. For example, the leader may secretly fear that “giving away” parts of his or her job will make it appear that they have too little to do, putting their role under threat. Focusing instead on hitherto neglected projects and tasks, to which they can now apply their attention, relieves that anxiety and allows them to become excited about the new tasks.

What’s more, simply going through this dialogue sets up the team for further team coaching sessions. After all, few other conversations are likely to address such emotion-laden issues with so much at stake for everyone. And conversely, not addressing this issue early on in a team coaching assignment may mean that the power issues between the leader and the team remain silent disruptors of the honest conversations needed to make significant, lasting improvements in team performance.

Professor David Clutterbuck is a regular guest of our free webinar series The Art of Best Practice Mentoring

© David Clutterbuck, 2018

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Does the Advance of Technology Mean we are Forgetting how to be Human at Work?

How to be human at work… what the?

A recent trip afforded me the rare luxury of time to read and catch up on recent TED Talks. It struck me that there was a consistent message underlying many of these – that as technology gradually infiltrates more and more of what we do, we are at risk of losing our humanity, of how to be human.

Dominant themes in the latest articles and opinion pieces include: whose jobs will be lost to AI, how to compete for jobs with robots, how to be more ‘human’, and how to foster deeper connections with our colleagues.

Even the very notion of what work means is changing thanks to AI. During the Industrial Age, work became characterised as a series of tasks. Now, if the sequence of such tasks can be adequately described, they theoretically can be performed by artificial intelligence.

And much is being written and discussed about the consequences of such technological change on workers and the workplace – and top of the list is dislocation. Jobs will alter; some will no longer exist. In one TED talk[i] , computer scientist Kai-Fu Lee notes that in future the only thing that will distinguish us from AI, will be our humanness. Not our intelligence, but the emotional advantages – such as compassion – as well as the warts-and-all shortcomings of being, well… human.

 

An odd reminder

Yesterday, a message arrived in my email inbox with the subject line “How to be human at work”. It was selling a suite of books on emotional intelligence. I found this sell-line somewhat troubling. Have we become so disconnected from each other in this age of chat technologies and virtual working, that we actually need to be reminded of something as fundamental as ‘being human’? It reminded me of a similar expression I’ve heard: “Bring your whole self to work”. As if we have the option of leaving some of our “self” at home?

 

Connection

At the core of what makes us human is our need for connection with other people, as well as our skills to make those connections. Another TED speaker, the German-American author and Silicon Valley entrepreneur Tim Leberecht[ii], spoke of our need for “intimacy” in our work relationships – and for these to have a real depth of relationship and trust. It’s not the quantity but the quality of connection that counts, he said.

One of the most important work relationships is the one we have with our boss. I have noticed a barrage of articles and research studies recently about the stress impact of toxic managers and even just downright inept managers[iii].

So, having good quality relationships at work is important but, in this fast-moving tech era, they are becoming increasingly challenging for us to maintain. We are all struggling to find time for true human connection and perhaps we are even losing the art of conversation. Just observe in any cafe or restaurant how many of us are disengaged from our companions, lost in our mobile phones instead. Even within our company, team-mates prefer to connect via chat messaging apps rather than actually speaking to each other.

 

Meaningful conversation

In one of our recent blogs, we warned that “flash”, “just in time” and “speed” mentoring are all valid and perhaps useful methods of transferring knowledge from one person to another, but they are not true mentoring. True mentoring occurs within relationships. Not in a 10-minute speed mentoring merry-go-round session, or in an online “ask a mentor” Q&A exchange. And at the heart of a mentoring relationship – indeed, any effective relationship – is meaningful conversation. It worries me that we are losing the art of conversation, something that is so fundamental to being human. And we are not giving ourselves the time for the deep reflection that can happen during developmental dialogue.

 

How to be human 

If we are to safeguard our employees’ wellbeing and maintain flourishing organisations, as business leaders it is up to us to ensure that we don’t lose our humanity. That we work hard to create work environments in which true human connectedness is encouraged and rewarded.

As I think about what that might mean in the next year for Art of Mentoring, I am looking for ways to bring our whole team together in a more meaningful way. This is so that we can share ideas, learn from one another, but even more importantly, so that we can have better dialogue, and connect at a deeper level with members of our geographically dispersed team. I am even, dare I say, thinking of banning our chat technology. But that might cause a rebellion.

 

Running a mentoring program with those that have forgotten to be “human”?
Our online mentor and mentee training guides and coaches the distinctly ‘human’ aspects of conversation and questioning so you get the most out of your investment

 

© Melissa Richardson 2018

[i] https://www.ted.com/talks/kai_fu_lee_how_ai_can_save_our_humanity#t-345940

[ii] https://www.ted.com/talks/tim_leberecht_4_ways_to_build_a_human_company_in_the_age_of_machines/transcript?language=en

[iii] https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/is-your-boss-making-you-sick/2014/10/20/60cd5d44-2953-11e4-8593-da634b334390_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.6128fadccf52

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Millennial Mentoring

Millennial Mentoring.
Rewarding relationships = retention.

Growing the next generation of talented workers and business leaders is always a challenge, now perhaps more so than ever. What has become clear over the past few years is that the millennial generation (those people born between 1984 and 2012) has a markedly different outlook on work than previous generations. Rather than being motivated by the traditional inducements of an increased salary, job stability or management responsibilities, studies show that millennials tend to be motivated by a working culture they feel at home in, increased flexibility in their working life and positive mentoring in order to assist their progress. Despite the value of mentoring being widely recognised as a tool to increase engagement and promote retention in the workplace, initial consideration suggests that effective mentoring, and particularly millennial mentoring, is still a piecemeal employment practice.

Mentor meaning remains confusing

The mentor/mentee relationship is clearly critical to the success of the process, but exactly what form this should take continues to be a matter for debate. Although as a generation millennials aspire towards self-employment and increased freedom to tackle projects in their own way (a recent study by the Intelligence Group (part of the Creative Artist Agency) suggests that nearly three-quarters of millennials want to be their own boss) and nearly nine in ten prefer to work collaboratively rather than competitively), this desire for autonomy doesn’t always translate well into the corporate culture. There is a risk that mentors remain confused regarding what is required of them, potentially not supporting younger workers in the way they would most value.

Investing in staff boosts retention

Those companies who are seeing the most benefits from their millennial mentoring are normally those who have a culture of investing in their staff, embracing ways of working which put people first. Goldman Sachs, for example, took out a front page advert in the Wall Street Journal recently, where they outlined how they were going to do things differently in order to encourage their millennial workforce to stay. The measures mentioned included not only mentoring but also guarantees of regular time off, enhanced opportunities for experience in lateral roles and similar attractive changes. Millennials expect to enjoy a corporate culture that works for them, otherwise, they tend to move elsewhere.

Building mentor tasks into the fabric of the company

It appears that mentoring stands the best chance of being implemented successfully and achieving its outcomes when the mentoring concept is firmly embedded in an organisation from the top down. If mentoring forms part of job specifications, KIs, performance reviews and similar, it assists both mentors and mentees to prioritise their relationship and work together in order to achieve their intended outcomes. Clearly, this type of model requires resources, but ultimately the cost of successful mentoring needs to be balanced against recruitment and training costs should millennial retention continue to be an issue.

My mentor – millennials value relationships

Perhaps more so than any other generation, millennials value workplace relationships and place them at the heart of their decision-making when it comes to a career path. Positive relationships, including mentoring, which help workers to feel valued and that their contribution is of work, can be major influencers in persuading millennials to stay put!

Across the board, the message about the importance of millennial mentoring is certainly getting through to companies in all sectors. The challenges lie in converting this message into positive action which achieves the intended results. Although progress is being made, the complexity of mentoring and the wide variety of styles and outcomes which can occur mean that considerable work is needed to ensure every industry and company is able to take advantage of the benefits which high-grade mentoring can bring.

Time to start a mentoring program in your workplace? Let us help you.
Check out our free webinar series. There’s something for everyone with new topics added regularly.

© Art of Mentoring 2018

Image credit: Designed by Rawpixel.com

Career Advice: What to do when the Mentee has No Clear Career Goals?

The “sweet spot” on career advice

When it comes to career advice, it makes mentoring a lot easier, when the mentee knows exactly where they want to go in their career. The trouble is, many mentees – particularly those in the early stages of their careers – have only a general sense of direction (if that). They may see many different possibilities and may or may not yet be ready to choose between them. The mentor’s role is not to push them towards making choices. Rather, it is to help them clarify how they will identify, how they will ensure opportunities come their way and how they will evaluate choices as they arise.

What’s more, having a very clear sense of your next career steps isn’t necessarily a good thing, because it blinkers you to other opportunities. People with too narrow a career vision often progress more slowly than people, who have no career vision at all. The “sweet spot” is somewhere in between – having clarity about general direction and what you want from a job in terms of how it builds on your strengths, how it allows you to grow and how it aligns with your own values and sense of life purpose.

One of the outcomes of great mentoring is that the mentee gains a deeper understanding of their identity and values. This may also have an impact on career choices – another good reason for holding back on “fixing” career goals.

Helping the mentee create opportunities for experimenting and broadening their career horizons.

We all tend to see our strengths within the context of roles and structures we are familiar with. Yet, they can often be applied in many other situations. Widening horizons requires imagination, but can also be helped by having conversations with people from different worlds of work. The mentor can help the mentee create wider networks of people, who can provide unexpected insights and perspectives.

Clarifying contribution.

Once they get beyond the basics of income and using existing strengths and skills, the mentee will benefit from considering what they want to give. Most people have a strong altruistic side, which is part of how they create meaning for their lives. Contribution has two core components: near-term and long-term. Long-term is about the difference you want to make to the world, or to a cause you feel passionate about. Near-term is about the unique contribution you want to make in your current or next role.

Learning from previous career

Career pathing is a simple technique to support this. Starting with early career decision points, mentor and mentee explore:

  • Was the route taken the result of considered choice, or did it just happen to them?
  • What consideration did the mentee give to alternatives? (Did they consciously generate alternatives?)
  • Did it open up lots of future opportunities, or was it a dead end?
  • What learning opportunities did it provide?
  • Whose advice did they seek? In retrospect, was that advice good or poor? Did they follow or ignore it?
  • What could they do differently in preparing for the next career transition point?

Redefining progress.

The traditional model of continuous upward progress, while not dead, is clearly morbid. Hierarchical titles are increasingly less important than roles and reputation. Experience in highly developmental roles, particularly in high profile project teams, is critical in building a reputation as a talent to watch. Often these roles are in addition to the person’s formal, title-bearing role. A systemic perspective on career progress has two dimensions: reputational and integral. Reputational is about how others see you; integral is about how you measure you own progress. Among the most common measures mentees generate are:

  • Income (of course)
  • Pace of learning
  • Scope of projects they are given to manage
  • How they progress through the stages of the leadership pipeline[1]
  • Job satisfaction

The key is that the mentee defines their own measures of progress, which meet their own aspirations. This in turn helps to free them from the curse of social comparison. People often dragoon themselves into unsuitable job moves to try to maintain parity with perceived peers. Having a personalised concept of career progression allows us to step back from such comparisons.

It also allows us to see the potential in horizontal progression. In a study of career self-management more than 20 years ago[2], we learned that many successful careers involved moving backwards and forwards between generalist, specialist and consultancy (internal or external) roles. In terms of learning and reputation building, vertical moves within a silo are not always the most effective.

  • Reviewing progress. Having defined what progress looks like, mentor and mentee can review regularly whether things are moving in the right direction and fast enough. A great mentoring question is: “What did you achieve today (or this week, or this month) that took you towards your career direction?”
  • Reviewing what value the mentee can still extract from their current role. It’s not necessarily that people move on from one job role to another too soon, more that they don’t recognise or plan for the learning opportunities within it.
  • Building a ladder of legacies. What do they want to leave behind in their current role, when they move on? Planning an orderly withdrawal demonstrates both responsibility and competence. Doing this in successive roles builds a reputation for reliability.

The analogy for modern careers is not a train on the tracks to a terminus, but a sailing boat setting out on a voyage of discovery. We are all at whim of the winds and tides, tacking and adjusting the sails continuously to take the greatest advantage of them. The role of the mentor in relation to career advice is to raise the mentee’s awareness and help them make better choices.

If you are a mentee seeking career advice, visit the Australian HR Institute to find out more about their mentoring program or try your industry association.

Looking for training to become a better mentor? Our online training program offers expert-designed resources and demonstrational video content to guide you into becoming a masterful mentor.

© David Clutterbuck, 2018

[1] Managing self, managing others, managing managers, managing functions and so on

[2] Clutterbuck, D & Dearlove, D (1995) Routes to the Top, Kinsley Lord, London

What Does Great Developmental Conversation Look Like?

What does a great developmental conversation look like between line manager and direct report?

 

The weight of evidence in recent years with regard to traditional performance appraisal and developmental conversation between line managers and direct reports presents a clear picture – not only do they not motivate higher performance, but they often reduce motivation and performance.

 

To reshape these conversations to make them positive and useful, we can go back to the question: What are they intended to achieve? To which the answer is:

  • To help both the manager and the direct report to understand how and what the direct report is contributing and compare this with a standard of performance both see as appropriate and achievable
  • To support the direct report in self-motivating (note not for the line manager to motivate them) to work closer to their potential
  • To identify learning needs
  • To explore the systems affecting the direct report and how these can be adjusted, if required, to enhance their performance and continued growth (including how the manager is enabling or obstructing the direct report’s performance).

 

To achieve these outcomes, the process must be jointly owned, so the direct report doesn’t feel it is being done to them. It also needs to balance:

  • Individual contribution versus contribution to collective contribution
  • Task delivery versus learning acquisition (both the individual and the team need to be paying attention simultaneously to performance now and creating capability for future performance).

 

Here is a simple framework – based on global good practice — for getting back to the real purpose of these conversations:

 

  1. Every quarter, each employee gathers feedback from several peers they select, whose opinion they value. (Although people may initially choose only people they think have a good opinion of them, most gradually gain the confidence to select a more balanced set of feedback-givers.) They ask for very simple feedback:
    • What have you observed in my work and behaviour that has contributed to the team task?
    • What would you like me to do more of or differently?
    • What suggestions would you like to make, if any, about where I might focus my performance and learning goals?
  2. They reflect on this feedback and draw their own conclusions, drafting a brief report, with the headings:
    • What’s gone well
    • What hasn’t gone as planned
    • What I’ve learned
    • How I am going to use that knowledge to improve my task performance and learning in the next three months
    • Targets I want to achieve – both task performance and learning goals
    • How I will measure my progress towards them
    • What support I need from my manager and others
  3. The direct report shares this report with their manager. It is at the employee’s discretion whether to share the full feedback from peers.
  4. The manager and the direct report review the report together, with the manager offering his or her own observations. Together they add to the report comments on:
    • How genuinely motivated are you by these goals?
    • What will it look like to meet these goals?
    • What would it look like to exceed them?
    • How will achieve these goals contribute to the collective Team Development Plan?
    • What support will the manager commit to?
    • What are the potential derailers and how will the manager and the direct report collaborate to prevent these occurring?
  5. Each month in-between, the manager and direct report have a brief check-in, to identify actual or potential derailers
  6. Once a year, the team as a whole reviews the process with the manager, based on the questions:
    • Is it delivering what was intended?
    • How can we make it even more open and effective?

 

© David Clutterbuck, 2018

 

 

Procrastinating and How to Stop It!

Procrastinating or procrastination, is typically a repeating cycle with four stages:

  • Putting off something we aren’t positively motivated (energised) to do
  • Feeling guilty
  • Reduced self-esteem and self-efficacy
  • Reduced energy, which makes us more likely to put things off

Coaches and mentors can help clients break the vicious cycle of procrastinating by firstly helping them to recognise it, then to develop strategies for addressing each stage. When people fail to break the cycle, it is often because they address only part of it – so the process continues as before.

Here are some practical approaches for addressing each stage:

Putting things off

Useful questions:

  • What are the common characteristics of things you put off?
  • What are your emotional responses when you are faced with such a task?

Useful strategies:

  • Having a process for recognising and acknowledging tasks you are likely to put off
  • Alongside the traditional To Do list, create a Procrastination list, with three columns:
    • What I’m likely to procrastinate about
    • The consequences (which may be a mixture of positive and negative)
    • My tactics for getting this task done
  • The “quick peep” strategy – saying to yourself “I know I don’t want to do this, but I’ll take a look at it now, to see what’s involved”. Much of the time, it proves to be less difficult and less discomforting than you thought, so you get on with it anyway.
  • Saving up all the tasks you have low energy for and tackling them in one blitz on a Friday morning. Many people find that they are energised by the fact that they won’t have these things worrying them over the weekend. When this tactic becomes a habit, people typically find that they are also motivated by the reward of having Friday afternoon to concentrate more fully on tasks they particularly enjoy.

Feeling guilty

Useful questions:

  • How would you like to feel?
  • What small shift could make that happen?

Useful strategies:

  • Identifying the emotional triggers that make you feel guilty, and reframing these
  • When I do get round to doing this, what can I add to improve the output, so that other people feel it was worth waiting for? (Envisioning positive reactions from others can help to motivate, too.)

Reduced self-esteem

Useful questions:

  • How will you feel about yourself once you’ve done this?
  • Who can you call upon for support and encouragement?

Useful strategies:

  • Analyse how the task plays to your strengths and weaknesses. Explore how applying your strengths to it could result in a better outcome
  • Practice self-forgiveness. Tell yourself you are sorry and agree what you are going to do to re-establish the balance of your self-respect

Reduced energy

Useful questions:

  • How do you recharge your batteries in other circumstances?

Useful strategies:

  • Taking a brisk walk or doing some other exercise (physical exercise increases the flow of blood sugars to the brain and so makes us mentally energised)
  • Cultivate curiosity: What could I learn from doing tackling this in a different way from normal?
  • Link the task with a reward
  • Do something that makes you laugh. Laughter produces endorphins, which give you an immediate energy “fix”
  • Choose your time of day to tackle tasks you are likely to procrastinate about. We all have more energy at some times of the day than others, so adapting to your energy cycle makes sense.

When procrastinating becomes habitual, it’s not easy to overcome. However, addressing each stage of the cycle makes the odds a lot better.

Check out our free webinar series on all things mentoring. There’s something for everyone with new topics added regularly.

© David Clutterbuck, 2018