Teams

Creating Certainty in an Uncertain World

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Increasingly, coaching conversations with our clients turn to introspection on ‘what can I do about the issues we encounter in the workplace?’ As business coaches working in many different businesses and organisational structures, we pick up trends and flows on the ‘issues’ discussed, and in the post Covid environment, leaders’ uncertainty about how to go about creating a connected workplace seems to be trending high.

In one way, this is not much different to pre-2019 coaching work. Leadership have always been aware of the role they play in connecting teams and engaging the workforce and keen to build on this. Our ‘most in-demand’ workshop is creating an environment for high performance, where teams are willing to have the difficult conversations and commit to one another. So why the uncertainty in leaders now?

Workplaces have a new level of complexity for leadership to contend with. There are additional layers, to how organisations and teams work together:

  • WFH: ‘working-from-home’ for 2 of 5 days, has become a normal part of the working week, which creates a disconnect, both systemically and intra-team – the hybrid workplace, as we now know it.
  • All-change: There is also a significant movement of staff – from one company to another, and/or one team or cohort to another which started when the Covid lockdowns and mandates were introduced but has continued to increase as we return to ‘normal’.
  • Uncertainty: With a changing and unpredictable workplace, the focus has moved to efficiency and covering the gaps – trying to ‘read-the-tea-leaves’ whilst building for tomorrow and keeping a streamlined organisation together.

How leaders manage this is not a simple, one-size fits all answer. There is however a common coaching technique we apply, when the answer isn’t clear or certain – it is called ‘the overview effect’. My business partner Ak Sabbagh introduced me to this concept a while ago. He explains it this way:

“It is about stepping back and taking an unfamiliar perspective. In many ways the role of a business coach is to help business owners and leadership teams gain ‘the overview effect’.  We regularly get comments like “I’ve never seen my business from this angle before.” “It’s like the fog’s been cleared…”

How do we do this? We use a coaching style to help our clients sit above it all and consider the context of their situation – rather than sitting in the situation itself.  We use proven frameworks and tools to engage in discussions that elevate our client’s perspective of their ‘fixed workplace’, or the limitations of the team, to look at processes, leadership and communication styles, people, goals and aspirations.  We are always innovating new approaches to help our clients get the “overview effect”, to see a solution that was there, but they couldn’t see it because they were standing too close to see it.

Why do we do this? Because, regardless of the size or style of their business, we love working with leadership to build resilient relationships and innovative workplaces, that retain staff, get the right people in the right job and connect the passion of the individual to the purpose of the organisation.

~ Margaret Armitage

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An Aha Moment on Winning

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Over the last month or so I have been listening to and discussing what the hidden depth of high performance is and what part winning plays in that. A part of me rejects the desire to grade performance and yet another part recognizes the true value in measuring something to give it meaning. This is the ‘aha’ moment for me – that to feel I have performed well, to get that ‘winning well’ kind of feeling, I need to experience a light bulb moment of clarity about why or how I performed well.

It is a topic that intrigues me – I am curious, in a scientific kind of way, about what other elements and machanitions are there that move us into high performance and create that ‘winning’ feeling, especially in this ‘brave new world’ of post-pandemic business-life.

If performance is a measured thing to make it high or low, then it should be simply a matter of putting all the skills and competencies in the right place and letting them distill into high performance. However, we know it is not as simple as this.There is another side to the high performance coin that comes from the energy and commitment. So one side of high performance could be skills and competencies (tools of the trade) and the other side could be the energy and commitment (inner purpose) we are feeling. What I have noticed when working with teams and high performing indiviudals is that they balance these elements around their closely held values. I am still left wondering what else there is in the formula that turns a performance into a feeling of ‘winning well’.

When I reflect on this, what stands out to me is that it is our feelings that inspires us and our feelings that we use to measure how well we have performed. Whether it is a ‘ho-hum’ performance or quite fulfilling, our feelings are the guide! Hence, my curiosiness has lead me to conclude that as high performers we are searching for an immeasurable measure to confirm our high performance, to give us that ‘winning well’ feeling.

As a leadership coach, I have discovered that a feeling of ‘winning well’ is a very individual thing because the ‘well’ part of the phrase comes from the measure of the individual or the team I am working with. It’s not something that can be arbitrarily applied or externally measured to claim the ‘winning well’ title.

On a personal level, I need to experience an ‘aha moment’ to give me the ‘winnng well’ feeling. My ‘aha moment’ is when there is a sudden understanding of what is behind a knarly issue or the different perspective I can take to unlock the next steps for me or my client. So this is my measure of ‘winning well’. No matter what anyone else tells me or explains to me, unless I experience an ‘aha moment’ I feel like an underperformer.

In William B Irvine’s book Aha!: The Moments of Insight that Shape Our World, he explores the many varieties of ‘aha moments’ that have resulted in significant wins for humankind and the world we live in. The ‘aha moment’ could be a moral revelation or a scientific revelation or simply a small trigger that changes the way we approach something. They don’t all have to change the entire world, but they do have to result in new insight and will make an impact on us. Something we easily remember and recall over and over.

My insight or ‘aha moment’ when pondering on ‘winning well’ and high performance, is that a key element of the formula is to discover something and share it. It can be to reveal a truth that hasn’t seemed relevant, or it can be a new perspective on an old issue, or it can be an awareness of why everything worked well and knowing how we can repeat it.

So the fundamental nature of ‘winning well’ for me is in the sharing of the win to make high performance sustainable – it’s in my response to the experience. What is it for you?  I would love to hear your thoughts.

~ Margaret Armitage

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Stepping aside can be a Winning Move

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In my world as a Business Coach I work with some amazing colleagues in my team at Beckon Business.  Tom Wickham is a 2021 Olympic medalist and is seriously GOOD at his game on and off the hockey field. He helps organisations tighten their game-plan and hone their team performance skills. And the founder of Beckon Business, Ak Sabbagh, would hold an Olympic medal in Business Coaching if it was an Olympic sport. Ak has been coaching for over 20 years and what he doesn’t know about ‘sharpening-the-axe’ in businesses hasn’t been discovered yet.

However, where I see the real medal-winning performers is in our clients.

Like the medical specialist practice owner who began her business coaching journey looking to improve overall performance in an already high-functioning  team of professional practitioners.

Instead of starting with the broader team, we focused on coaching the practice leaders to refine the vision and purpose of the practice and build depth in leadership competence in the executive team.

Building up the leadership team’s bench-strength gave the business owner the freedom to step-aside from her hands-on role of leading the team and sharpen her own vision, do some blue-sky thinking about growing the business and reflect on her personal aspirations. The winning result of this two-year coaching journey culminated in the successful sale of the elite business. Not only did this free the owner to share her specialist knowledge with other professionals outside her practice, but it also expanded the capability of the specialist practice to deliver excellence to a wider community. A big win for the profession and a big win for the specialist practice. More than this, all of this took place while the world oscillated around COVID lockdowns!

Getting clear on the vision, taking regular coaching to sharpen-the-axe and having the courage and strength to look for a new owner in the midst of a pandemic, resulted in bringing cut-thru and delivering a medal winning performance. It was the shift to sharpen-the-axe in the executive team that released this business leader/owner to focus on the opportunity to succeed out of the business – a genuine win-win for everyone.

Improved overall team performance, deeper leadership capability, and time for business owners to get clear on their bigger picture – all in a day’s work at Beckon Business where we love helping our clients to sharpen-the-axe and  uncover the aspiration that brings about winning shifts for our business clients.

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