How do you handle really difficult conversations with members of your team?I have two news items to share before jumping into the newsletter for this week: Registration is still open for my free workshop on Using a Coaching Approach to Leadership on June 25. And registration is officially now open for the next cohort of Developing a Coaching Approach to Leadership this August through December! This is an opportunity to join a small group of library leaders meeting every other week for 5 months to practice building your coaching skills and building lasting habits. We…Read more
What is your "why"?Why do you do what you do? If you’re already in a leadership position, why do you lead the way you do? If you’re not already in a leadership position, why do you want to develop your leadership skills? I recently started working with a new business coach, and one of the first questions she asked me was why I do what I do. It's important to be really clear on that "why", because that's going to guide all of our work together. I need to be clear on why I'm doing this in order to make decisions…Read more
Inclusivity and CoachingInclusivity and coaching is a heavy topic. On one hand, I see a lot of potential for a coaching mindset and a coaching approach to working with your team to contribute to making your workplace more inclusive. This comes to mind pretty frequently on LinkedIn, where I follow several people who talk about making workplaces more inclusive with regard to neurodiversity and disabilities, parts of DEIA work that I was less informed on until the past couple of years. Last week, I engaged with a post…Read more
Coaching an employee through managing their workloadTime management is still at the front of my mind right now, because I’m getting ready to teach another session of Strategic Approaches to Managing Your Workload at Library Juice Academy in May and promoting my new small group coaching program built around the same theme, Tame Your Workload. This time, instead of focusing on how you can make time for coaching, let’s flip that around: how can you use a coaching approach to help an employee learn to more effectively manage their own workload? In…Read more
Making time to develop a coaching approachOne of the concerns that I hear regularly from people who are considering adopting a coaching approach to leadership is the amount of time that it can take. When you’re being pulled in too many different directions at once, it can be difficult to take the time to emotionally prepare for a coaching conversation and then have a full curious conversation. Even if the coaching conversation only takes 10 minutes, that’s a lot more than spending only 1-2 minutes issuing a directive. And that’s just…Read more
When coaching might not work…As much as I advocate using a coaching approach whenever possible, it’s important to remember that it’s only one tool in your toolkit. In professional coaching, we talk about “coachability” – whether a person is ready and willing to be an active participant in their development in this area. This isn’t meant as judgment toward them, because there are many reasons a person might not be in a place to benefit from coaching. But it does mean that their energy would be better spent seeking other…Read more
Coaching on topics beyond your subject expertiseHow do you coach employees in areas that are beyond your area of technical expertise? I’ve had this question come up in a couple of different contexts. It reflects some of the challenges of stepping out of your comfort zone as a leader. As an employee at any level, I don’t enjoy being told how to do my job by someone who doesn’t have expertise in my area, whether that sounds like a Provost telling the library as a whole how to manage a collection or like an Associate Dean with no teaching…Read more
One of the concerns that I hear regularly from people who are considering adopting a coaching approach to leadership is the amount of time that it can take. When you’re being pulled in too many different directions at once, it can be difficult to take the time to emotionally prepare for a coaching conversation and then have a full curious conversation. Even if the coaching conversation only takes 10 minutes, that’s a lot more than spending only 1-2 minutes issuing a directive. And that’s just…Read more