How a coach helps a team leader

I have worked with some amazing and some really challenging teams.

What made them amazing? They worked together, listened to each other, helped each other out at difficult times, shared their experiences. A challenging team was when a team member would not work with the others, saw themselves as above their team members, the team did not have all the relevant skills required to complete the workload, or there was no agreed set of team behaviours or a team charter to follow.

Tips for Leading a Team

You are a team leader, looking to have the best team that works together, delivers quality results, believes in themselves as a team, understands / respects / supports each other, are able to get on with their daily activities, is respected by senior management and other teams.
Where do you start to create such a team?

Developing your teams skills set

How well do you understand your teams’ skills and career growth path?
Understanding each other’s skills, experience, achievements contribute to a team being high -performance team. Without this knowledge it is difficult know:

If the team is able to perform to the require level
Who is best for each task
Who to call upon to resolve challenging task
What skills are lacking within the team
Have a competency growth path for the team members.

Creating a High-Performing Team with agreed behaviours

Are you looking to have a high-performing team with well-defined behaviours?

No matter what size your team is, the more they understand each other’s skills, experience, and values, and ways they like to work, the better they function and deliver the required results.

When I was a team member, I liked to feel valued, have my opinion asked & respected, given an opportunity to learn from others and share my knowledge and experience.

How a Coach can help you perform better at work

There are times when we struggle to perform a role at work, or have a challenging manager, or difficult team member. This can lead to a lack of motivation, feeling demoralised, poor performance, not feeling “one of the team”.

A coach will dedicate time to listen to you, hear what you are saying, and understand more about what is happening for you. This is your time to talk about what is happening in the work place, what your challenges are, what you would like the outcome to be.

Struggling with vague emails – The 5 Cs tip

I have found that the work place has turned into a place of “Death by Email, Yammer, Teams Chats” (other formats are available). Constant barrage of requests, questions, asks for help. Due to technology, we are expected to be able to respond immediately to everything, at any time, from anywhere.

STOP – this is not sustainable. Take a deep breath. You are not a robot!

I used to work in an environment where I would get short, sharp, demanding emails that wanted a response – well they didn’t say it was always presumed I know they wanted the answer NOW!

Providing feedback to a struggling team member

You’re a manager of a team. One person keeps missing deadlines and the quality of their work is poor. You don’t think you can trust them to perform the role.

Unfortunately, sometimes as managers, we come across this situation. The trick is to understand why the person is not performing as required and identify the relevant actions to be taken. What is important is not to judge a person instead to understanding the whole situation.

I am struggling at work

Throughout my working life in the corporate world, I performed a range of tasks, some of which I did well, and some not so well. This did not mean I failed at my job; it meant I was struggling with that particular task.
All too often we think that, because we did not do a task well, we are not good at our jobs. There are a range of reasons to consider as to why the task did not deliver as expected.

How a coach can help you identify your skills, values, achievement

I had a client who said to me she had no idea that she could do what she could do. And yet I heard her say she was doing it when we were chatting about her job and what she did. So often we are too close to what we are doing and saying that we miss the little things that can really take us forward. Or we are so focused and determined about what we know that we miss the bigger, picture. Likewise, we can be thinking so broadly that we forget to look a little deeper and see what it is we are really capable of doing.

A coach is someone who dedicates time to listen to you and will hear what you are saying but do not realise you are saying. You could be having a conversation about your last job. What you did, what you liked or hated about it. What problems you identified and sorted. How you helped other people or maybe kept to yourself. Your coach will hear what you liked and did not like, what you found annoying, what you don’t want to do again, what skills and experience you have, your achievements.

A coach will ask you to explain a little bit more, look at different ways of expressing what you are saying.

When looking for a promotion or a career change, or to be better at what we do, we tend to focus and what we have just done. We look at the last role we performed or the last job we did.

Most people have had more than one job and completed more than one role. Working with your coach to look at all your roles and jobs and what you liked about them, what you did not like about them, what you have achieved and how you achieved it, you will get a really long list of skills and experience. Your coach will ask probing questions to help you remember more, understand more. Life time achievements are also taken into consideration, like running 5k (determination), getting a qualification (focus), participating in a team sport (team player).

With all these facts you are then able to look at what role you want, what skills you need and what you already have. You don’t lose a skill. It might become a little rusty. With a bit of effort, refresh it will come back.

Reach out, let’s build that picture of you as a skilled experienced person ready to go forward towards your desired outcome.

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