Team Building Archives - Prior Consulting

Peer Coaching: The New Buddy System at Work

September 13, 2018

Recently, I took the plunge and started taking lessons toward scuba certification. That’s where I met Carmen Shultz, scuba instructor #8765432. Carmen proudly bares sun-damage spots and jelly-fish scars like war medals. Whether our group was in the classroom or in “confined waters” the right answers to Carmen’s quiz questions was, “the buddy system.”

Run out of air? Turn to your buddy.

Tangled in kelp? Signal your buddy.

Encounter a great white in the Boston Harbor? Stay close to your buddy.

Back up on the surface, organizational life has become a lot like the unpredictable waters below. The changing work of the future is here now and the waters are choppy.

For example, we’ve come to accept that 70% of the workforce is disengaged. One of the big reasons, studies show, is that people feel they don’t have a manager who cares or a buddy who has their back. This matters because we need an engaged workforce to deliver results.

IDEA IN BRIEF: PEER COACHING

Peer coaching involves peers of equal status who support each other’s journey and goals.
For success, you must implement peer coaching correctly.
Use these three research-based steps to implement peer coaching in your organization.

Does organizational life need a buddy-system?

Yes! But the old “mentoring” programs, when a wise sage imparted knowledge to a fledgling executive, don’t meet today’s needs. Instead, peer coaching has surfaced within the last ten years as a crucial and possibly more outcome-oriented alternative.

What is peer coaching? Is it different from mentoring?

Peer coaching is a “focused relationship between individuals of equal status who support each other’s personal and professional goals,” say my colleagues Polly Parker, Douglas Hall, Kathy Kram and Ilene Wasserman, in their latest book, “Peer Coaching at Work: Principles and Practices.” Through decades of research, these experts in the field of mentoring and peer coaching have pinpointed the critical success factors that make peer coaching work.

Peer coaching is for everyone. In a world where no single person has the answers, we need to make the workplace safe for people to admit when they don’t have knowledge or skills and make it easy for them to seek advice and support. This will lead to greater organizational efficiency and ease in accomplishing the audacious goals organizations—and individuals—need to achieve to survive.

Why seek a peer coach or implement a peer coaching approach for your organization?

Peer coaching delivers what many people seek—opportunities to grow and develop, to feel connected. In their research, Parker, Hall, Kram and Wasserman found the surprising benefits of peer coaching include greater “zest, empowered action, new knowledge and skills, enhanced self-awareness and a desire for more connection.” All of the benefits are well-accepted components of employee engagement.

Learning is a social process: cognitive scientists tell us that we learn and retain more when in relation with other people, a common trait of both mentoring and coaching. But I find peer coaching to be different from mentoring for several reasons:

Mutual goal-setting. Mentoring assumes that the mentor has knowledge to impart. The peer coaching process requires each learner to set goals and help the other move toward achieving those goals.
Method. Mentoring is often informal. Peer coaching uses a proven method – evidence-based approaches and tools which elicit insights and meaning and translate them into action.
Accountability. Mentors do not hold mentees accountable for outcomes. Peer coaching processes build-in accountability mechanisms.
Assumptions. Mentors may or may not be skilled in challenging mentees to face and challenge the assumptions that drive their behaviors. Peer coaching is a skilled process for surfacing assumptions.
Feedback and Feedforward. Mentors may pull punches or not. Peer coaches hold a mirror for one another and aren’t afraid to offer a picture of their colleague’s behavior and impact, or to offer advice for future success.

How can you successfully implement peer coaching in your organization?

Parker, Hall, Kram and Wasserman outline three, evidenced-based steps for seeking a peer coach or for implementing an approach for your organization:

Create a strong foundation for the peer coaching relationship.
Create success through method, skills and self-awareness.
Make peer coaching a habit, for yourself and for your organization.

In each of the next three newsletters, we’ll take a deeper dive into each of these steps, so you have a roadmap for implementing this new-economy way of generating knowledge, innovation, insight, engagement and connection, for yourself and for others.

What impressed me most about Carmen, scuba instructor #8765432, was her forceful yet caring way of ensuring that we each did what was needed to survive the unexpected while underwater. When it comes to scuba diving, I can’t imagine going to any depth without a buddy.

Like Carmen, all scuba instructors are required to have a number. People have come to feel like numbers in organizational life. Peer coaching is an important solution to creating a more human workplace, with greater depth of connection and learning.

But buyer beware: peer coaching isn’t just getting together for tea or happy hour. Success is a matter of being intentional. Before you take the plunge into peer coaching, make sure you have a plan.

The Secret to Leading Effectively in the New Way of Work

May 11, 2018

It’s not your grandfather’s world of work, when everything was connected, from the factory town to lunch breaks at Mom and Pop’s on Main street.

What’s the secret to bringing people together to work with passion toward a common purpose, vision and goals in the new way of work?

The answer: Depth of Connection.

I’ve been speaking about Depth of Connection in my talk, Who Dunit? How Hollywood is Killing HR from stages in Pittsburgh, Dallas and Charlotte. I even opened one night in front of a Comedy Improv audience in Dallas, which is hilarious because you, my friends and colleagues, all know that I’m not actually funny.

What is Depth of Connection?

It’s the human glue that brings effective teams together—when people find the win-win in the NeXus between the needs of the organization and the person. Communities fit in there too, but we’ll talk about that another day.

You—the leader—create Depth of Connection in the workplace when you create the conditions for people to find the three things they crave most from the work experience:

Purpose: For some, this means a project or task that is personally meaningful; for others, it’s a paycheck they can live on.
Relationships: Everyone wants a boss who has their back; colleagues who care. Everyone.
Development: In a world changing at a pace 300 times faster than any point in human history, professional development enables people of all levels to take charge of their lives by taking charge of their careers.

How can you, the leader, create Depth of Connection?

Use my 4-EQ’s. To bring more Depth of Connection into your team, ask people to share their answers to my 4 Easy Questions, which I shared when I keynoted at this year’s Mass Bay Project Management Institute 40th Anniversary Conference:

1. Which role do I tend to play on teams?
2. How do I prefer to contribute and be included?
3. What is something I would like to learn or experience as a result of being part of this team?
4. What do I need from this team to be successful

The Remaining Secrets of Great Teams

July 21, 2017

Before my new book on career development, Take Charge of Your VIEW, launched last month, I was writing to you about the five key ingredients in the secret sauce that makes great teams. I took a break from this to let everyone know about my book release, but am now returning to let you know the remaining ingredients that lead to success.

A quick reminder, the first three ingredients are the need to inspire purpose, establish team norms and support each other.

Here are the final two ingredients:

Ingredient #4: Ownership

What I believe: when it comes to work, quality is love. My Nana’s sauce was delicious because she sweated the details: she hovered over the bubbling red liquid to ensure it simmered at just the right temperature, protected it from high heat, and focused her attention as she added salt or oregano.

Your work quality is your love. It reflects the time and energy you are willing to allocate to provide great service, produce a great product, be a great Manager/Leader.

Crucial to ownership is understanding that group quality is every individual team member’s job. Each team member is the one person ultimately responsible for their own tasks and when each individual achieves, the team as a whole achieves.

Tips you can use: In your next team meeting, ask each team member to describe what quality means to them. Tell them about why you are passionate about your work. What do you love? How can the team help one another demonstrate ownership for what you achieve together?

Ingredient #5: Trustworthiness

What’s the most important ingredient in the relationship between team members? Trust, you say?

Philosopher Onora O’Neill respectfully disagrees. Focusing on trust “gets the equation backwards,” O’Neill says in her TedTalk. Trust is something other people earn from you. Trustworthiness, on the other hand, is something you earn from other people.

O’Neill defines trustworthiness as your capacity to consistently demonstrate three qualities, being:

Reliable: you follow through with commitments and keep promises.
Sincere: you are transparent about your motives.
Competent: you demonstrate the skills needed to get the job done.

Instead of worrying about how your colleagues need to earn your trust, be the kind of person that your colleagues trust. You will not only get more done together, but will have more fun doing it.

Tips you can use: In your next team meeting, ask team members to describe how they can personally demonstrate more trustworthiness.

That’s a wrap! Thanks for going on this journey with me to uncover the 5 key ingredients in the secret sauce of great teams:

Inspiring Purpose
Team Norms
Supporting Each Other
Ownership of the Work
Trustworthiness

I hope you’ve taken away some useful insights and practical tips.

In the meantime, I wish you and your teams much satisfaction and success, wherever you are in your journey.

More Secrets of Great Teams

May 19, 2017

In our previous post, we met in my grandmother’s kitchen and I introduced the first of five secret ingredients of great teams. We began with inspiring purpose. It’s time to reveal the next two.

Ingredient #2: Team Norms

Tony* had the steering wheel. Seven of us crowded in a circle, gripped the metal bar, and pedaled across a parking lot at the Googleplex.

It was a sunny afternoon in Palo Alto, California. Our group, the Executive Development Roundtable, part of Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, had been walking the campus with its 3.1 million square feet of office space on an insider’s tour. When we stumbled upon this strange, yellow contraption of pedals and bike seats, we jumped at the chance to take a Google’s “meeting bike” for a test drive.

I imagine that the seven-seat bicycle shaped like a roundtable was just one of Google’s many experiments to uncover the secrets of great teams. More symbolic than practical, Google’s insatiable appetite to dissect the behaviors that drive team performance led to a data-driven study.

Two hundred Google teams went under the microscope to pinpoint the special sauce of a great Google team. The findings surprised the quants (people who really, really, really like numbers): great teams live by a set of norms. Norms are agreements about how people will work with one another. The two norms of most importance? Turn-taking and empathy.

Turn-taking means giving each person a chance to be heard. Empathy is the skill of putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. How would your team do under Google’s microscope?

Tips you can use: In your next team meeting, ask people to read this New York Times’ article on Google’s findings. Lead a discussion where you ask the team to pinpoint instances of turn-taking and empathy. Ask how the team could increase the use of these crucial skills, for greater enjoyment and productivity.

Up next, we’ll head to Arlington, Virginia, to learn about ingredient #3, where I was certified in a powerful team coaching approach by my friends at consulting firm Corentus.
*That isn’t ‘Tony’’s real name.

Ingredient #3: Supporting Each Other

Think of the best team you’ve been part of. What qualities did that team possess? How did youfeel about being part of that team?

If you are like most people, your best team was committed to an inspiring purpose and lived by a set of norms. But more than that, you probably felt like your team mates were on your side. And you returned the feeling.

My friends at the consulting firm Corentus stumbled upon this insight through their 20+years of studying the DNA of great teams. I learned this on a wooded campus in Arlington, Virginia during their team coaching certification.

On the best teams, people are mutually supportive of one another’s professional goals. They achieve great heights by helping each other stretch and achieve the things that matter personally to one another.

Tips you can use: In your next offsite retreat, make time for people to share their professional goals. Lead a discussion about how you can help one another find more enjoyment in the NeXus between people’s personal, professional dreams as well as the organization’s goals.

Our next post will tell you about ingredients 4 & 5 and leave you will the full recipe for the Secret Sauce of Great Teams.

How to Inspire Purpose in Your Team

April 25, 2017

TODAY’S TIP: How to Inspire Purpose in Your Team

In our last post, we discussed that there are five key ingredients to creating a great team.

Inspiring purpose is the first ingredient that distinguishes great teams from good ones.

Ingredient #1: Inspiring Purpose

Whenever I ask a group of leaders, “What makes a great team?” I hear the same, accurate answer: a common goal.

It’s like saying the secret to great tomato sauce is tomatoes.

To delve into this a little more, let’s return to my grandmother’s kitchen.

On Sundays, we’d hover by the white stove stop, waiting for Nana to turn her back. When she wasn’t looking, we’d dip a torn corner of fresh Italian bread into the pot of tomatoes, basil and olive oil simmering into a boom of red sauce and sneak a quick taste.

The purpose of food is nourishment. More than that, Nana added love. She stirred frequently, added ingredients slowly, and probably smiled as she turned away from the pot and we swooped in. Her food brought us together and kept our Italian heritage alive. That’s what inspired us and made her food great.

In my experience, great teams feel great commitment to something beyond a common goal – they feel inspired by the greater purpose of their work. As a leader, you have an opportunity every day to connect people’s goals with greater purpose to their work. This is important for everyone, especially Millennials. If you want to accomplish great things together, regularly remind people of the inspiring purpose for their work.

Tips You Can Use: Here are a few secrets from my toolkit to help you inspire your team to greatness.

Working One-on-One: When you delegate a project or task, be sure to explain the “Why” behind the person’s goals and how their work relates to the purpose or goals of the team or the organization. “When you do this task well, you’re contributing to the company’s vision to cure cancer for patients,” or, “By doing this project well, you’re helping the team innovate new ways of working,” or, “Even though this may seem routine, it matters because other team members are relying on your quality work product to achieve our team’s goals.”
With your team: One of my favorite team development experiences that I designed is called “I am Here.” At your next team meeting, take five minutes out of your agenda. Ask people to take out a paper and write the reasons why they chose to work in your company or team. Then ask them to share their answers with the team. I’m always amazed by the common threads people offer. This experience works well in large groups as well.

In our next post, we’ll leave Nana’s kitchen and turn our attention to Palo Alto, California, where Google’s data-geeks uncovered the next key ingredient of great teams. I’ll offer more details on the other four key ingredients and actionable steps you can take as a leader to put them to work in your teams.

KEY TAKEAWAY: great teams feel commitment to something beyond a common goal – they feel inspired by the greater purpose of their work.

Stay tuned for our next post to learn about the next key ingredient to great teams.

The Secret Sauce of Great Teams

April 7, 2017

TODAY’S TIP: There are 5 key ingredients to building great teams

In my Italian family, food was love.

Sunday came with a big pasta dinner and my grandmother’s red sauce bubbling gently to a simmer in the pot on the stove-top. We have lots of wonderful cooks in my family, but no one could make sauce like my grandmother. Even if she gave you the recipe, your food would come out good, but not great.

Today, I confess to take-out more often than homemade meals. But I love my work and carry my grandmother’s ethic with me. As I coach, I help leaders build a great culture to achieve bold goals.

Team Building