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Coaching Articles
All articles have been written by Darren Cockburn. If you would like to reproduce an article on your own web site or magazine please contact me.
Role Prioritisation - Are You Putting Your Most Important Roles First?
Why Managers Should Coach (May 2008, Personal Success Magazine)
Role Prioritisation - Are You Putting Your Most Important Roles First?
I have coached many people, but I am yet to meet someone whose actual day-to-day priorities are fully aligned with their ideal priorities. This article contains a useful exercise for understanding how you prioritise the various roles in your life and helps you to consider whether you need to make changes. If the day-to-day prioritisation of your roles (actual priority order) aligns with what you know is right (ideal priority order) it creates a feeling of integrity and reduces stress.
Establishing Your Roles
I have prepared some examples below to help you list your various roles. They are in no particular order and do not represent an exhaustive list:
- Relative
- Student
- Father
- Sportsperson
- Girlfriend
- Employee
- Boyfriend
- Home Owner
- Mother
- Manager
- Husband
- Wife
- Charity Worker
- Friend
Take a blank piece of paper and write down your own roles in a list. Feel free to include any roles, which are not listed above. Also include roles that you may want within your life at a later date. E.g. you may not be a home owner right now, but wish to be a home owner in the future.
Prioritising Your Roles
The priority you assign to each role will affect the time you spend on related activities and the focus you apply on a day-to-day basis. Let's move on to understanding your ideal and actual priorities. I often use this exercise during my initial coaching session with clients and it is perfectly normal if your lists differ.
Take a look at the example below:
Ideal Priority Order:
- Health
- Partner
- Daughter
- Work
- Friend
- Home Owner
- Cousin
- Voluntary Worker
Actual Priority Order:
- Work
- Partner
- Friend
- Daughter
- Home Owner
- Cousin
- Voluntary Worker
- Health
Note that the ideal priority order above is not a recommendation. It is one particular view. How you prioritise your roles is down to you and depends on your own personal values.
The mismatch shown above between roles is not uncommon. In this example the woman who completed the exercise had some changes she needed to make. Clearly, work is taking priority over everything else, but this is not what she wants. She feels that her health is most important in her list of desired priorities, but day-to-day it is at the bottom of her list of her priorities and this represents a risk. There are also some minor misalignments across other roles.
If the day-to-day prioritisation of your roles (actual priority order) does not align with what you know is right (desired priority order) this will create inner conflict. For example, the woman in the example above will know that she is not giving priority to her health (this could be happening subconsciously), she will be mindful of this and it will be creating stress. What's more, if she does not take action to get her actual priorities in order there is a significant risk that she will run into health problems that may have been avoidable.
Take a piece of paper and determine your desired and actual priority orders by writing them down. The order does not necessarily have to relate to the amount of time you spend within each role. For example, work should not be at the top just because you spend most of your time there. The order needs to reflect your own feelings about what you put first and your mental focus on each role. Think about times in the past when you have made a decision in terms of your activities when two roles were in competition for your time. Ask yourself the question What do I put first? or What is most important and go with the initial answer you get. You will get the most value out of this exercise if you are honest with yourself.
It is perfectly normal if you find some significant differences across your desired and actual priority lists. If this is the case then see this exercise as a wake up call to take action. These differences represent opportunities for change. What changes do need to make?
If you would like support in making changes then please visit my web site: www.my-life-coach.co.uk where you can sign up for a free coaching session. I also help coaches generate clients and build busy coaching practises.
You will find more of these useful techniques in my Life Tools eBook that can also be purchased and by clicking here..
Why Managers Should Coach (May 2008, Personal Success Magazine)
Darren Cockburn, an established Life and Business Coach, says although many managers do not use or understand coaching, it is one of the most effective management tools. Coaching is a highly effective management tool and yet, I have met only a small number of managers who adopt a coaching style when supporting their staff. The unfortunate truth is that many managers do not understand coaching and have received little or no formal training.
The benefits of coaching in a management context are significant:
- Coaching encourages members of staff to think for themselves, which is empowering. A spin-off benefit for the manager is that if the member of staff finds their own way with minimal advice they will not need to ask the same question next time, which will save time and increase performance. It is a great investment.
- Coaching enables diversity by allowing staff to achieve outcomes in their own ways, which is often more effective than a known route recommended by their manager.
- Coaching allows underlying competency issues to surface. For example, you may ask a member of staff questions and expect them to find solutions to a problem. If they fail to answer a reasonable question you have the option of asking yourself why. Do they need more experience or some personal development to enable them to find the answers?
I find that most managers who are effective coaches are often compromised when under pressure – when running late for meetings or up against deadlines, for exampleIn these situations, many managers will default to telling or advising rather than asking questions. They will use language like ‘Do this…. do that’ or ‘Let me tell you how you should manage this issue.’ Once the pressure lifts the managers may well fall back into a more constructive coaching style, knowing that in the long run using coaching rather than direct advice will benefit both themselves and the member of staff.
It is all a matter of balance and coaching can be counterproductive if over used. I have heard stories about people who are new to coaching and overly keen to practise on people making this mistake. If coaching is the only method used during conversations, it does start to become frustrating for the person being coached, which can be counterproductive. The good news is that the more you practise adopting a coaching style as a manager the easier it is to know when it is appropriate, how to integrate it into conversations and with whom. I consider myself to be a great coach but I find it a challenge not to default to ‘tell’ rather than ‘ask’ when I am under pressure.
Smart managers are conscious of their approach, ask for feedback and recognise that they will always be on a journey of learning when it comes to influencing people. Feedback is a gift and it helps managers learn how others feel about the way that they relate to them. Managers can ask their staff about the balance of questions compared to advice and get some insight into how they are doing.
Managers acting as coaches can also use their skills to work effectively with teams. I have attended project meetings where a team looked to me to provide some direction in the face of a major issue. In most cases, I did not have the answer. I would scratch my head, look confused for a few seconds and then remind myself about the power of coaching. I would then switch into group coaching mode and ask questions like:
- “There must be a way of working through this issue. Does anybody have any ideas?”
- “Does anybody know somebody who might have the answer?”
- “What would have to be true in order for us to achieve this milestone date?”
- “How can we work together to get the desired outcome?”
Questions like these are enormously worthwhile because they encourage team members to think through problems.
Coaching should not be viewed as a panacea when it comes to management as it must always be used in conjunction with other techniques. It is a powerful tool that builds relationships, empowers people, encourages thinking (that can’t be a bad thing) and ultimately helps the manager to achieve results. I would recommend coaching to any manager.
Further Information
Darren Cockburn is an established Life Coach and Business Coach and helps coaches build successful coaching practises specialising in client generation, sales and marketing for telephone/Skype coaching. He received an MBA with distinction from Nottingham University Business School and has a background in IT senior management. To discover more about the services offered through his organisation (My Life Coach) visit his website www.my-life-coach.co.uk.
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