Agile Learning & Development

When the company re-organised, Joanna was promoted and took on a larger team, including a new function which she had no experience of working with.  Joanna was delighted that her success had been recognised, and proud to be working at this new level.  However, she was fearful about managing the new team.  With 4 direct reports to now take care of, and 14 people in total, she wondered how on earth she was going to find time to get her day job done, let alone the additional people responsibility.  It had been relatively easy when the team was small and the members sat closely together.  Now, with them so spread out, it was much harder to monitor their work and keep in touch.  Joanna felt under pressure constantly, with more work to do than she had time for, and was unsure how to ask for help.  In some ways, her workload was her comfort blanket.  As long as she had plenty to do, she was able to avoid engaging fully with her team members – especially those whose jobs she did not really understand.  She was secretly afraid they might think she wasn’t ready for this kind of step up, and she didn’t want to be seen as a bad manager.  So she continued to work her socks off, paddling hard to stay afloat.

Asking for help

This went on for several weeks, and one day, following a particularly exhausting week, Joanna finally plucked up the courage to talk to her boss.  He was empathetic and suggested she work with a coach to develop better ways to manage her team.

Here are some of the things Joanna did differently as a result of her coaching sessions:

• Her starting point was to set clear goals for her team. Her coach helped her with this, and she collaborated with her manager to make sure the team goals they agreed fitted with the company goals and overall plan.
• Joanna recognised that an important part of her role as team leader was to set direction for the team. So she met with her direct reports and shared the goals she had developed. She invited their feedback, and they talked about roles and responsibilities in the team, and what activities team members were engaged in.
• Many of the team goals related to the specific functions of the department.  Additionally, there were some generic ones, such as organising team meetings and setting up effective communication mechanisms between team members. Joanna asked her direct reports who would be good at handling the generic ones, and was pleased that several names were suggested to help her with that.
• Working with her coach, Joanna then re-assessed her own workload and sorted her responsibilities and tasks into various categories - to determine which activities she could delegate. Some of these were one-off activities, such as a paper to be researched, and a project plan to be written. Others were more regular, for example a weekly meeting needing a representative from her team.  Joanna identified the best person to represent the team instead of her.
• When Joanna was ready to delegate the responsibilities and tasks, she thought carefully about who would be the best person to take each one on. When she briefed in the work, she did it face-to-face, explaining what was needed and taking care to describe the desired outcome and the context for it. She steered well clear of telling each person how they should do it!

Joanna’s Top 5 Insights

With some prompting from her coach, Joanna started to challenge some of the engrained thoughts she had previously held about being a team leader.  She feels relieved to have discovered that:

1. Being a team leader is not about having all the answers – and the best answers often come from taking a collaborative approach and involving others.  A bonus is that team members love to be consulted!

2. People don’t like to be micro-managed.  When you’ve agreed with them the outcome for what needs to be done, stand back and let them take care of the ‘how’.  There is more than one way to skin a cat!

3. If there’s a task you find dull or unfulfilling, there is often someone in the team that will willingly take it on for their own development.

4. It’s OK to let people fail.  Be supportive and help them to learn from the experience.

5. It is perfectly possible to manage people who do jobs we do not have the expertise to do ourselves.  We can still help them with the process of how they are doing their job, without being involved in the content!

Joanna is now much happier at work.  Her working hours have reduced to a manageable level, she is mainly doing the kinds of work she enjoys and is regularly complimented on her fairness and effectiveness as a manager.  Once again her team has a first class reputation in the company.  Joanna knows she has done this for herself - and that her coach helped significantly to fast-track the process!

Agile helps individuals and teams to get more of the right things done in less time.  To discuss coaching for your business,
us or call +44 (0) 845 224 5657.

© Helen Krag, 2010