coaching

Delivering client value through focused, yet carefree talk

Alistair Russell · February 2, 2023 · Leave a Comment

A team conversation this week prompted the reflection that fresh perspectives and new productive actions result through focused, yet carefree talk. Noting carefree might not be quite the right term, it’s certainly not care-less. By focused yet carefree, we mean that uninhibited talk that is based on trust. Talk that is not wedded to any specific decision and is focused on meeting the agreed objectives, delivering agreed outputs and outcomes.

One way to describe how our work as facilitators of strategic decision taking and planning delivers value is through the clarity and commitment we prompt through focusing their “talk”. The new insight for us was that we deliver more value if we facilitate more carefree talk.

In our experience talk with other people is always productive. The requirement to be clearer, more specific and less abstract to communicate effectively one’s thoughts and feelings often produces new perspectives. The questions from others help. The challenge from colleagues, the questions from a supportive and perhaps even an antagonistic perspective do provide breakthroughs, they can illuminate an issue not previously seen, can show potential new paths. Talk helps.

Focused talk adds a further dimension which is about being disciplined in your talk. Often as a facilitator we add value simply by keeping the team focused on the agreed question or issue at hand. Being clear about both what and how we are talking. Focused talk invites all parties to be clear with each other. To contract with each other on purpose, objectives, outputs and outcomes.

The new insight for us was how much being carefree adds. Entering the “talk” free of cares about what the specific decisions and actions of session may be. Starting the workshop or the meeting letting go of any pre-considered analysis and not being wedded to any particular path or solution, yet being focused on the purpose and desired outcome can produce a better outcome. We find that being carefree opens the mind, encourages better listening and can deliver more value. Value through a way ahead that everyone is committed to and more likely to deliver. Value delivery through focused yet carefree talk.

Client First and Clear: Thoughts on being a coach and a consultant

Alistair Russell · March 9, 2022 · Leave a Comment

So, what did you do at work today, dad? Whilst its getting on for 30 years since our son first asked me that question, it remains a powerful and useful question for us all at Laing Russell. What did you do? What difference did it make? What did you learn? What will you do next? The team at Laing Russell have for many years worked along the full spectrum of consulting approaches. Delivering team and individual development as “pure play” process consultants and coaches. Working collaboratively with clients to deliver critical capabilities and products. Through to responding directly with our advice and guidance based on the evidence – termed “doctor-patient” in Ed Schein’s seminal work “Process Consultation: Its role in Organisation Development.”

Laing Russell has always recognised there are many approaches to delivering value to our clients. And to that end we offer coaching, mentoring and consulting services. Recently, another member of our team has taken time to accredit and develop their capability as a coach. This has prompted us to reflect on what we do and how we do it – what are we going to do at work, today?

Our key conclusions are to affirm our client first focus and to be clear. The beginning and the end of how we deliver value is what our client wants and needs. What our clients want and need in terms of outcomes and deliverables and what they want and need in terms of the most effective way for us to work together. Working as coach, as mentor or as executive consultant across the full range of consulting styles. Client first.

An insight from the coaching development programme is the importance of being explicitly clear and indeed keeping under active review the contract with the client. Here we mean contract in its widest sense. Contract in the classical, commercial sense with proposals etc. and perhaps more importantly contract in the sense of how we work collaboratively as organisations, as teams and as individuals.

A strong idea from one of the coaching models, Co-active Coaching, is the concept of coaching being a “designed alliance” that is in service of the client’s needs. Our insight is that this idea of a purposeful, designed alliance focused on delivering for the client should be applied to all our consulting work. Taking time to pay attention to the contract at start, throughout and on conclusion of an engagement. Making sure that the client is getting what they want, as work progress making sure that agreed outputs deliver the anticipated value and that we are working together in the right way. Flexing our approach as required, as we progress through an engagement whether as coach, mentor or consultant.

We are re-doubling our efforts to be clear and client first in our practice. To deliver on a “designed alliance” in all our work with clients. We are finding that clear contracting on the way we work either as coach, mentor or consultant is helping us build more positive, more productive partnerships.

References:

Process Consultation: Its Role in Organizational Development (1988); Schein, E, Prentice Hall

Co-active Coaching (2018); Kimsey-House, H; Kimsey-House, K; Sandahl, P and Whitworth, L; Nicholas Brierley

Connecting to Value

Alistair Russell · November 25, 2021 · Leave a Comment

In our experience, focusing and motivating your teams to deliver value for your organisation remains one of the most considered challenges for leaders. Especially doing it in a way that works. In a way that is both efficient and effective. We know that sustaining teams and individuals to do the right thing is critically important and yet it remains hard work for us all. This challenge is heightened in our context of enabling clients to deliver value through the power of digital technologies. In our dynamic and developing contexts, we continue to work at making sense of which managerial and leadership approaches and tools will deliver the right outputs, let alone make sure that the outputs do really enable the value desired.

Addressing this challenge is made more complex in many of our client organisations because teams and individuals are typically ‘citizens’ of many units. Units that have a digital product or service focus, units that have a strategic business focus, units that have a professional focus such as programme and project management, business analysis, quality assurance, user experience etc.. We find that now more than ever, generic objective, KPI driven models rarely deliver for the individual, team or indeed the organisation. Sometimes such models can even work against the delivery of true shareholder or stakeholder value.

In response to this enduring challenge we developed an approach – the “Personal Measurement Framework”. We have used this successfully many times with clients, guided by three important axioms. Firstly, to design an approach that connects with value as perceived by the relevant stakeholders, connects to why your role, your team and your capability exists. Secondly, to provide structure and framework, yet empower individuals to develop their own measurement framework and thirdly, to balance the measurement framework across the full range of measures, not just on the traditional metric of output delivery.

The Personal Measurement Framework starts with the idea of a value proposition from the Business Model Canvas – see Business Model Generation. The process invites leaders and teams to teams to start with ‘end in mind’, to start with the job that their ‘customer’ or indeed their customers’ customer is responsible for delivery and what are the pains and gains for them in delivery of that job. Then the process gets the leaders and teams to make explicit the value proposition of their product or service in terms of the pain relievers and gain creators that they deliver. If appropriate you can add in a step of using the value proposition to structure and engagement with ‘customer’ or agent of ‘customer’ to validate the value proposition.

The next step is to use the gain creators and pain relievers identified in the value proposition to develop measures of delivery of value. And to develop measures through challenging leaders and teams to hold onto the tenets of Kaplan and Norton’s work on balanced scorecards – see Harvard Business Review article. Developing measures that don’t just measure output e.g. tested and integrated code, but also measure development of capability and learning e.g. codified process improvement alongside measures that are meaningful for the customer e.g. transaction speed, volume growth.

The Personal Measurement Framework delivers benefits through explicitly connecting your teams to value delivery with additional benefits delivered through the process that builds ownership and commitment leading to increased effectiveness and efficiency. As with all ideas and models our Personal Measurement Framework is only as good as the leadership that assures implementation, learning and development. And when deployed fully, with appropriate support and collaborative coaching amongst the team the Framework can and does deliver sustained value.

References:

Business Model Generation: Osterwalder and Pigneur, Wiley 2010

The Balanced Business Scorecard, Kaplan and Norton, Harvard Business Review 1992

So, what’s so special about Connected Coaching?

Alistair Russell · October 8, 2020 · Leave a Comment

As a mechanical engineer who started work in the chemical industry, entered the consulting profession through the project management practice in the late 1980’s, I started with practically zero understanding of coaching as an approach to development. All my experience of leadership development and management training had been through the classic in-company and open programmes. My journey with coaching started as a consultant marvelling at the skills and capabilities of my peers, typically from the HR practice, that worked alongside me on major change programmes. They had a counselling, occupational or organisational psychology or similar professional background and were incredibly able facilitators and coaches.

Working out what coaching meant for me and getting good at it became critical when I recognised the importance of the client’s individual and collective leadership in achieving the sustainable outcomes we were there to deliver. Through PA Consulting Group, leading Executive Education at Durham Business School and developing the advisory business at CIO Connect, I have been on a journey to develop my own skills as a coach and define our value proposition for coaching. Along the way learning that the coaching of others is a great self-development approach, too. Settling on the Laing Russell approach to coaching has been the most recent stage in that journey. We have labelled our approach Connected Coaching.

Connected Coaching embodies all the professionalism that you would expect of a quality coaching service and more. A professionalism driven by a focus on the delivery of value. Professionalism that makes sure we have explicit contracting and makes effective use of supervision. In offering more through Connected Coaching, we look to bring everything that we value in Systemic Coaching approaches. And we bring additional value through our coaches making relevant, new connections into our network.

Systemic Coaching addresses a key challenge that I think the early coaching had in being solely focused on the coachee. We have all found that our coaching is much more effective if we focus on the coachee in their context and work with the coachee on the whole system – their stakeholders. As I read in the recent book on Systemic Coaching by Peter Hawkins and Eve Turner – it’s about bringing the ‘outside-in’ to your coaching. I would add it’s also about bringing the future forward into the coaching, too, working across a productive balance of today, tomorrow and the future.

In bringing our network to bear we are drawing on the power of the practical, real experiences direct from the peer practitioner that is not mediated by our Laing Russell coach and the direct connection means that a new learning dialogue can be established to mutual benefit. So whether it’s a peer, who has directly addressed a similar issue or a new perspective, we are finding that this additional connections adds significant value.

As evidenced by quotes from two coaching clients from this year:

“…Alistair created both space and a framework to explore ideas and ways forward whilst also reaching out to his own networks to enable conversations which tested my own thinking.
“..Alistair enabled me to think through properly about the path I wanted to take over the next 5/10 years which has had a hugely positive impact on both my focus and motivation. Alistair helped me to better understand my own strengths and weaknesses and utilised his vast network of contacts to allow me to interact and learn from others in my field… for anyone looking to enter in to a professional coaching arrangement, I can’t recommend Alistair highly enough!”