The last nine weeks have been a challenging time of uncertainty, isolation and anxiety. We have all had to adjust to new ways of living and working without knowing when this will all end and what life post-coronavirus will look like. 

For a lot of people, this means now working from home. This brings a different set of challenges, and we were curious about how people have experienced this situation and keen to understand how to best shape our coaching and support to help. A couple of weeks ago we asked people to tell us about their experience of working at home during the pandemic. 

What we found most interesting in the responses was that people were not overly challenged by technology or the logistics of working from home. What they did find particularly challenging were the more emotional aspects. We asked what respondents found to be the top 3 biggest challenges in working from home. Just 9% included poor internet connectivity as a problem. The top challenges were:
            1: general anxiety about the impact of coronavirus on my life (54% mentioned this)
            2: difficulties communicating with co-workers (45%)
          =3: social isolation (36%)
          =3: being motivated to keep a regular schedule (36%)

Others included:

• too many distractions at home
• childcare
• fear of the return to work

Interestingly, despite these being listed as common challenges, 91% of people considered that they could continue comfortably working from home with their current arrangements for three months or more. Given that the most commonly given concerns were job security, redundancy and the return to work, this is a curious finding. One possible interpretation is that the current lockdown situation has created a sense of psychological safety for people which might, for some, postpone having to confront the reality of the post-coronavirus world.  This is an area we'll be looking at further.

These have been fascinating insights for us to consider as we continue to develop our programmes to support people in the workplace. Specifically, we have shaped a new resilience programme to incorporate these findings, which we are particularly excited about.  The new programme will help people find strategies to bolster social connection, develop their realistic optimism responses and manage effective transitions to the world, post-coronavirus.
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You can see the results of our survey here.

​Managing Change provide specialist coaching and development programmes in resilience and well-being throughout the UK. For more information about how we can help you support your people, do get in touch - e: enquiries@managingchange.org.uk or call us.

​If you would like to take part in the ongoing survey series or wish to share it, the link is here.  And we're always interested in your experiences, so please do leave your comments below.

In much of our coaching work, newly promoted or emerging leaders tell us that they have been asked to "develop their strategic thinking skills", or to "think more strategically", etc. Once they have recognised the need to make time to think (see our earlier #NewLeaders article Making Time For Leadership) many get stuck knowing what this really means and how to approach it. If this applies to you too these five points might be helpful: 

1. Be clear about what strategic thinking is. It involves developing a long term vision about where you want your organisation/department/team to be. This is not simply a creative, wishful thinking exercise. You need to take into account future trends, opportunities, challenges, etc that you know about or can forecast. The strategic thinking process involves steps to analyse and consider each of these aspects. It also requires you to assess where your organisation or department is now in order that you can define the best path to take to realise that future vision and define the steps required to achieve it.

2. Create space and time in which to think and plan. This should be a priority activity and to ensure it happens should be allocated diary time. Ideally this time should blocked out on a regular basis (e.g. fortnightly). See our earlier article Making Time for Leadership.

3. Assess and Appraise: As an initial strategic thinking activity it can be helpful to take stock and ask questions which will refresh/renew your knowledge of your organisation/department/team. For example:

• How does the work really get done around here?
• What works well? Why?
• What doesn't work well? Why?
• Do we know what our colleagues/partners/clients (etc) really think about us?
• What values are displayed most often? How do these reflect our intentions?
• Do staff/the team understand our goals/mission/strategic priorities and connect them meaningfully to what they do?

To do this you can observe, join meetings, walk around and talk to people, and listen. It is useful to detach yourself and attempt to see the organisation/department objectively, as if it is new to you. It can be helpful to consider three main areas - people, process, tools/technology.

Get different ideas, views and perspectives and allow these to challenge your views. Expand your horizons and your networks and try to stay curious and questioning. For example:

• What else is possible here?
• What does success look like in year #? and year #?
• What needs to happen to achieve that? (who? when? how? where?)
• What might get in the way?
• What will early signs of success and failure look like?
• What does the team need to know and what resources will be required to support this?
• Would the achievement of this support the organisation's wider goals?
• What's my core purpose and agenda here?
• How should I/am I communicating that?
• How might I improve that?

Be sure to recognise - and accept - what you don't know as well as what you do. What are the questions you need to ask? A useful technique can be to connect what you know with what you need to know, for example:

"I know....                           I'd like to know...               Therefore my strategy = I need to..."
 
4. Thinking Tools: There are numerous tools and techniques that will help you to structure your strategic thinking. The following three are readily accessible and straightforward:

• Zoom In/Zoom Out: Developed by Rosabeth Moss Kanter this is based on alternate use of divergent and convergent thinking. See the HBR summary here.

 

• Develop your 'T': based upon the notion that rounded and well developed leaders are well developed along both the vertical line (|) i.e. they have a depth of understanding and expertise in a particular business area, and along the horizontal line ( ¯ ) i.e. indicating breadth of understanding across the organisation or business. "The whole “T” represents both deep functional expertise and broad business knowledge and acumen. To be more strategic, ask, “What other experiences/perspectives do I need to be more T-shaped?” By developing the top of your “T” the opportunity and ability to borrow and mash ideas increases, resulting in new strategies" (Tawny Lees, CEO.com).

 

• SWOT analysis: a widely known and used technique (see here for further guidance)

 
5. Ensure you continually Plan, Monitor and Evaluate your progress

When you are faced with a chunk of time newly carved out in your calendar, it can help prompt your thinking and shape the time, if you develop a framework to work to, or even a light 'agenda' that will guide your thinking time and define outcomes. The more productive you become with the time and the more value you derive from it, the easier it becomes for this to become a key habit in your leadership career.

In a future article in this series we'll look at how you can create the mindset or head-space with which to be most creative and effective with your thinking time. 

#NewLeaders
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If you'd like to discuss our work in executive coaching and leadership development, get in touch - enquiries@managingchange.org.uk or call 01223 655667.

Leadership development is notoriously difficult to get right. For years consultants, business school gurus and other experts have created new trends as they have attempted to define what makes a good leader and how those characteristics can be developed. 

These trends have included authentic leadership, transformational leadership and emotionally intelligent leadership among others. Whilst it is likely that there is value in all of these there is no evidence at all to suggest that high authenticity or emotional intelligence for example, will cause a person to be a better leader. (Most of us probably know poor leaders who are very authentic or highly emotionally intelligent. If we are very unlucky we have also worked for one!) 

John Antonakis*, Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the University of Lausanne, describes this as the classic problem when experts mix up correlation with causation. Most experts examine the top performing companies and then look to see what their CEOs have in common. They then determine that these are the essential characteristics of success and go on to promote developing those features in others.  Antonakis illustrates the problem: "it’s like studying the top CEOs in Switzerland and saying their names are Hans, Ulrich, Juergen, Joerg, and what have you. What do they have in common? They’re male. If the top 10 performing companies have a male with a Germanic name as CEO, does it mean that you need to have a Swiss German male to run a top performing company? No. Because the bottom performing companies probably also have Swiss German male CEOs running them". 

A very firm advocate of evidence-based practice, Antonakis outlines what the characteristics known to be important in good leaders are:

• personality traits such as emotional stability, extraversion, conscientiousness and open-mindedness
• intelligence - to be effective a leader must be smarter than the average in the group BUT not too much smarter as that risks the group not understanding or being left behind
• task-oriented leadership - having a good grasp of the system, the organisation and the strategy 

Once these essentials are in place, people and communication skills come to the fore (but without these essentials will remain ineffective). Other characteristics may well prove to be important, but the evidence isn't there yet. 

Good, effective assessments for these characteristics are readily available and can form a robust basis for selection and promotion decisions as well as underpinning leadership development programmes.  

To discuss how we can help you with these approaches for development and assessment, or our leadership development programmes generally, do get in touch.

The challenge for all businesses to be able to attract and retain the best people they can is well known and much talked about. Many firms turn to their relatively low staff turnover or the number of applicants to their recruitment initiatives and conclude that all is well. But is this right?

Not infrequently we work with people on development programmes and workshops who, to put it charitably, are not exactly 'on fire' with enthusiasm for their job or their firm. Most of them are not doing a poor job but they are not performing anywhere near as well as they could be - meaning that both firm and lawyer suffer. They frequently feel stuck and undervalued in the role and would prefer to be doing something different – or differently. This is not where optimal performance or job satisfaction comes from. From the wider business perspective this also creates vulnerability; the risk of good people being poached by other firms - always a concern - becomes greater.
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What does it take to attract and retain good people who are committed and perform well? 

​A couple of weeks ago (10 October) the first female chairman of the Institute of Directors, Lady Judge, caused controversy when she said that mothers risk losing their jobs if they take long maternity breaks. She argued that the American system, which entitles new mothers to 12 weeks of unpaid leave, was better than its UK counterpart because it ensured that women's careers did not "come off the tracks".

​The global leadership selection and consultancy firm Borderless has just published its global survey of 1,000 senior executives on leadership development.

Using the respondents' definition of leadership ("the act of taking ownership for business results delivered by people"), the report "supports a call for a more balanced approach to leadership development, which stands on two pillars: the development of skills to visualize, plan and monitor business results, and the development of interpersonal (‘people’) skills to deliver them".  

​Accordingly the survey asks respondents to assess the effectiveness with which these skills and attributes are developed in organisations. The findings present a mixed, and in parts troubling, picture.

Respondents were asked to list their top three leadership challenges of 2016. The most common were:

1. Managing change and innovation (31%)
2. Ensuring people take personal accountability and ownership (27%)
3. Addressing a silo mentality (17%)

In response to these, the top 6 leadership skills they considered to be required to lead organisations and meet these challenges effectively were:

1. Strategic thinking (53%)
2. Communication (49%)
3. Decision-making (36%)
4. Motivating others (33%)
5. Emotional intelligence (32%)
6. Coaching and mentoring (25%)

These are all, so-called, soft skills.

They all relate to inter-personal effectiveness and the balance required to be struck between these soft skills and business acumen. To be effective leaders, these skills need to be developed and given the opportunity to be practiced and fine-tuned.

However, many respondents considered that their organisations lacked a focus on leadership development and considered it merely as "nice to have" rather than a strategic imperative. They reported that their organisations tended to hire in leadership skills in senior executives from outside rather than growing and advancing these skills from within the organisation. This over reliance on 'hiring in' can be significantly demotivating to those with leadership potential who may see the lack of promotion opportunity as compounding the lack of development provision. 

Of those organisations providing leadership development, two-thirds of leadership development participation is optional. In few other professions would it be considered acceptable that people may occupy senior positions in organisations - responsible for profitability, growth and jobs - without the skills development that accompany them. 

​So what do these senior executives consider is necessary for effective leadership development?

In the first place, and consistent with other surveys of this type in recent years, the majority (56%) consider that support from top management is a critical success factor in effective leadership development in organisations. Importantly they comment that this should not just be "parked in HR". Supporting this they consider that there should be an organisational focus on people and talent management in the organisation and sufficient resources allocated to it. 

80% of those surveyed report that coaching is effective in leadership development but that there is room for improvement. Nearly a third of organisations had no coaching or mentoring support in place at all for leadership development and surprisingly only 36% used external coaches or a mix of internal and external coaches for this work. The need to use better qualified and more experienced coaches was identified. In particular, in order to enhance the quality of tomorrow's leaders, leadership development programmes should be grounded in real-life work (and should not just comprise additional tasks for busy executives to complete). 
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The Borderless report, 2016 Survey of Leadership Development, is available in full here.

A couple of weeks ago during a busy coaching week I met with a number of new as well as existing clients. I was struck by the fact that a significant proportion of them had recently experienced extremely difficult life events or were in the process of doing so. They variously described experiencing a miscarriage, the loss of a parent, diagnosis of a seriously debilitating illness, discovering that their teenager was self-harming, the death of a child, a partner's infidelity. Hearing about these events in such quick succession and in a short space of time was striking. It brought home to me just how commonplace these very difficult, often tragic, life events are. 

This is the kind of stuff that we deal with throughout our lives. If we are lucky, we  may escape many of them but most of us will certainly experience "bad stuff" at some time or other. What was striking to me was that all of these people were quietly struggling with these events whilst trying to keep everything else going - including work.