Roy Martin
Lesley Brown
Paul Gardner
Karen Bossin
Sandy McIntosh
Lorna Edmonstone
Phil Harmuth
Serge De Iure
Erin Lee
Gail Bonner
Mark Prestwich
Dana Mahon
Lesley Brown
Coaching up: going to the scary place
I was just in Montreal presenting my leadership program to medical researchers. One of the topics that really got their attention was coaching up, or giving feedback to your superior. In their cases their superior is a professor or medical doctor that they report to and might get funding from. How tricky is this?
On one hand the examples they shared (leadership that is overly demanding, insensitive, aloof, indecisive) where certainly worthy of feedback. On the other hand, I can appreciate their hesitation, given that they are still students (many have Ph.D’s and were doing their post-doctorate work or were working on a master’s thesis) and their career options could easily be influenced by these more senior practitioners. So what to do?
My advice was bite the bullet and do it anyways. Of course, easy for me to say, but I feel strongly that when we are not honest in a relationship, both people lose.
In this case the student is constantly frustrated trying to appease a demanding boss and the boss loses because they are operating blindly without really knowing about the relationship they are influencing.
Just think about Enron, Worldcom, Arthur Anderson and other mega-corps that all imploded in the last 10 years. How many senior managers kept their mouths closed about obvious digressions and ended up going down with the ship?
Here are some practical tips on how to do this.
State your intention. One simple, well thought-out sentence can create a positive context before you jump in. For example “It’s important to me that we have a positive, honest working relationship.”, or “I want to talk with you about our current workload so I know more about what is expected of me.” When you are clear about your intention you can help to put the other person at ease and have an anchor for the conversation. In other words, if they throw in some other topic, bring the conversation back on topic by reminding them of what you wanted to talk about.
Start with one recent observed behaviour that didn’t work for you. Avoid generalizations, talking about history, personal attacks or vague descriptions about your feelings. What always works best is to simply describe one recent example of behaviour that didn’t work for you. For example “This morning you asked me to visit three patients when I was already working on an urgent deadline for you.” Like a good salesperson, you want to always start with a ‘yes’ – that they have to agree with the facts you have described.
Own the impact. Use an ‘I’ statement to describe the impact their behaviour has had on you. Let them clearly know that there was an impact on you, but don’t mention anyone else that might have been impacted or blame them for knowingly doing something to inconvenience you. For example “When that happened, I felt really frustrated. I wanted to do what you were asking, but it seemed to be a conflicting priorities.”
As we say in our course “Facing the Tiger” “there are no guarantees, but it always gets better.” You can’t go wrong if your intention is to improve the relationship.
Face the fear and do it anyways!
Tags: culver
Thanks for some quality points there. I am kind of new to online , so I printed this off to put in my file, any better way to go about keeping track of it then printing?
Hi Hugh, love the blog, love the tips, keep up the great work!
Nicely Done Hugh!
Hi Hugh.
Just decided to check in on your blog. I really appreciate the difference you are making in the world of business, and in the lives of people who work in the world of business. There is something very authentic about you and your approach that has been getting my attention.