What happens when you meet a team that is truly inspiring? I’ve just come from 2 days of coaching where the entirety of the schedule was so well structured and flawlessly executed. My perspective has shifted in how I would develop programs for my team. This includes:
- Being clear about expectations. We often do a terrible job at setting parameters, making assumptions that our teams already know things they would have no way of knowing.
- Be obvious. Related to the above, when giving instructions, be specific and clear about what you are asking the team to do. I often say the words amazing, great and awesome. These are no where near the specificity needed
- Walking the talk. Once you have defined expectations – as a leader, you need to also act in the way we want our teams to behave.
- Create a safe environment. I don’t think I fully understood what this meant until these past two days. The coaches I worked with truly made our cohort of very different people feel like we could speak up. There was feedback but without judgement. They were kind and open and truly embodies the values they espoused. They emphasized how important it was to make the audience of your messaging feel safe with simple techniques. Tell them where you’re going. Give them guidance.
- Techniques to cope with stress. Our teams faces unexpected situations. As leaders, we’ve likely faced these before. When creating programs, identify the potential challenges and develop simple ways to cope with examples.
- Have a clear structure. Each part of a program needs to make sense and have significant value. Each needs to have a core set of simple components so teams can easily digest what it means for them. And … the key is that the sum of the parts needs to be greater than the whole
- Create moments of buy in along the way. No one likes a process being forced down their throats. Use social engineering tactics to create the build connectors. Simple things like – a pledge, key markers / rules (being on time and lights flickering), repeating principles and living them through examples, creating demand to want to learn more – eg – creating master classes once team members reach a certain level.
- Building in small touches. The extras add value to en environment. Toiletries in the bathroom, thoughtful snacks at each session, printouts, lanyards, water bottles. Small touches can elevate an experience in many ways
- Measure and improve. Poll your teams on their experience of the program. Gather feedback and when it makes sense, adapt programs to the feedback.
These are just a few of the things from my experience these last two days that I will use in building any program in the future.
The Objective Co 