Seasoned runners know that whilst sometimes it can be hard to motivate yourself to get out of the door, you never regret making the effort.
I think the same applies to making time to reflect and review how things are going. It often feels like THERE IS TOO MUCH TO DO and not enough time. When I’ve been brought in as a facilitator to help a team reflect or review I often encounter resistance, irritation and impatience about stopping doing things to step back and think about how they are going. But I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone say, after we’ve done a review, that it hasn’t been a good use of their time.
Maybe those who don’t find it useful are being polite and keeping quiet. But research has consistently shown that regular 15 min a day reflection on performance increases productivity by around 20%. So the real question I find myself asking is how can we afford not to make time for review?
I can be as guilty of this as everyone else. I rush around doing, doing, doing – not making enough time to sit still and really look and reflect. I run up and down mountains (literally, sometimes) but it’s sitting by the lakeside in the valley (like Wasdale above) or next to a summit tarn, like this cracker (below) on Haystacks, that we can find the calm and beauty we’re really looking for.
So assuming you’re not already regularly reflecting on your work (and if you are then please get in touch and share your tips – I’d love to hear them) you might be thinking – but how can I do it? And when can I fit it in?
There are three times when I’ve found it’s helpful to reflect, both for myself and with the individuals and teams I coach:
1) Post-event: the positive post-mortem held soon after significant events/ incidents when it is important to learn from experience – this might be when something went wrong or after an important new project.
2) Weekly – personally I try and find at least 30-45 mins each week to jot down notes on what I’ve discovered and might do as a result.
3) Termly – I plan my work in three terms each year and at the end of each, before I take a break, I spend around half a day undertaking a more thorough review of the past 3-4 months.
Below I’ve shared some of the tools and techniques I like to use in each of those scenarios…
1. The positive post-mortem
I regularly use two sets of reflective questions: both work for individuals or groups.
The longer version takes approx. 10-15 mins and comes from an RD1st exercise. I regularly use these questions when coaching, as well as for myself. They are beautifully simple:
It is important when doing this exercise to do two things:
Focus on action the focus on what you did rather than what happened, or what someone else did. That’s because we can only control our actions so we are only responsible for what we did or chose not to do.
Focus on the positive – many of us tend to focus on what went wrong but don’t overlook what you did that worked well. We can learn just as much from what was successful as what was less successful and yet we repeatedly focus on learning (only) from mistakes. This framework encourages you to consider both aspects: what worked well, and less so. We start with successes because then we are often more resourceful and honest about the failures.
If you’re short on time, the first-aid or 2 min version of this is Here, There, Everywhere:
1) What is my key learning here?
2) How can I apply this learning in the near future?
3) Where else could I use that learning more widely in future?
The added benefit of doing a positive post-mortem is that I have always felt better after completing it, even when what I’m reviewing went seriously tits-up.
2. The weekly Learning Log
Over a decade ago now I was fortunate to benefit from the brilliant development opportunity that is the Clore Leadership Fellowship. During my first two-week residential course I felt like I was learning so much useful stuff I didn’t know how to retain and use it – and so I created a ‘learning log’.
This began life as a simple table with two columns: observation and action. Each nugget of learning I entered into the log had to have an implication or action. Rather than take copious notes from talks or books I read which I never re-read, I started capturing the key learning points instead.
I create one document per month and save them – sometimes re-reading the logs on a quarterly or annual basis to check if there’s anything I’ve forgotten to action.
That I have been doing this fairly religiously for over a decade now probably tells you how useful I find this (here’s the proof – look at all those folders full of learning!).
Being a bit of a geek – as you can probably tell from these folders – I’ve since moved this simple table online to a Toodledo list which means I can add to it from my smart phone anytime, without needing to access my laptop to write up a learning point.
3. The termly review
I plan on a termly and annual basis, usually April-March. Three-four months is a good horizon for coaching goals – and being a coach I create goals as the backbone of this planning. This gives me direction, and also something against which to evaluate progress.
I like to set aside a whole day at the end of each ‘term’ for this kind of review. I often start by looking at the data – including financial data (have I achieved my target income, what has been my average day-rate, how many days have I worked, how many new leads did I get etc), before moving onto more reflective questions.
Sometimes I’ll use the positive post-mortem questions for that review, other times I might use the 4 Fs model. Both of these are frameworks I use when facilitating team reviews for clients – they can work even better then colleagues discuss and compare their perspectives on these questions. Sometimes I might draw my responses to the questions too, rather than just write them.
There are many other tools and frameworks you can use – I like these ones because they are simple and quick to use. Using them well by being honest, making time to collect data and using them regularly is what is most important. Doing little, but often – that’s why it’s called reflective practice.
Confidence, like trust to which it is closely related, is one of those slippery things that can take ages to grow and seconds to destroy. And whilst those around you might have bags of confidence in you, it’s not uncommon for us to have far less confidence in ourselves. Sometimes we might label this ‘imposter syndrome’, sometimes it wraps itself up as a critical voice or ‘saboteur’ like the ‘people-pleaser’. But at the heart of many of the psychological blocks that can limit our potential is self-confidence.
I’ve been thinking a lot about confidence recently, and in particularly how as a coach I can best support my clients to build theirs. When, at the start of a coaching relationship, I ask what a client wants to achieve through our work ‘more confidence’ is probably one of the most common responses I hear.
I’ve noticed many clients reporting they have ‘lost their nerve’ during Lock Down. People who have not been able to do things for a year or so, due to Lock Down, are finding them harder to resume: be that going on stage or speaking at public meetings. I’ve heard many women say similar things about returning to work after a break for maternity leave.When we stop practising the things in our lives that take nerve we can lose our confidence. When we stop stretching our comfort zone, it seems to shrink.
So as a coach I’ve noticed a few things it might be helpful to share from reflecting on progress of clients and my own experiences (which I’m able to share more freely, whereas coaching clients’ stories are confidential).
How can we build confidence?
The area in my own life where I’ve developed most confidence in recent years has been in the mountains. But I realise what I’ve learned (and earned) in the hills has built my confidence across my life and work.
I have walked with friends and family since I could walk, but it wasn’t until far more recently that I felt comfortable doing so alone. When my kids were younger the only way I could realistically get into the big hills was without them, so I did my first ever solo mountain walk in the Pyrenees in 2012. It was a day walk on a route I’d walked a few years earlier with my Dad so I knew was easy to navigate and within my comfort zone in terms of how technical it was. I was nervous but it felt so good to be back in those glorious hills. The following week I went a step further doing a solo day walk in the Massif Central and area I didn’t know at all. It was scary but exhilarating.
Taking a bigger leap can have bigger benefits…
Then in 2018 I took a big step forward: I had planned to do a long hike in the Lakes to visit some new fells, but woke to discover it had snowed overnight, adding winter conditions into the mix. Snow can cover paths making navigation harder, and progress slower. Icy rocks can lead to slips and you don’t want to bang your head in a fall or sprain an ankle in bitterly cold winter conditions with no phone reception. Then the cloud decided to top the hills too, meaning that I could find myself with limited visibility. Telling myself I would turn round if it felt too dangerous, I set off early that morning feeling really quite nervous. I left detailed info with my husband in the valley below (with the kids) about my planned route and texted him an update of my progress as I reached each stage, relieved that I had phone coverage in places. At least they would know where to find my frozen body if I slipped and knocked myself unconscious….😉
By late morning the cloud had lifted and I was euphoric. The snow covering meant the fells looked even finer than usual and I had not seen another soul: I felt like an alpine explorer. I walked for 10 hours over ridges and 12 mountains, finishing with sore legs but about a hundred times’ more confidence than I had at 8am that morning.
A year later I ran the Coast-to-Coast route, an adventure which more than any other liberated me from the lack of confidence that was holding me back. This 191 mile route saw me traverse the Lakes solo, then the Pennines and Dales before finally being joined by a friend for morale support on the final 2 legs over the NY Moors. I already knew some sections of the route, which helped a lot with confidence, but I also encountered crap weather (cloud and a lot of rain) which made everything harder and I had never run so far in my life – it was like doing a marathon a day for a week. This adventure gave me the confidence make some changes at work which I badly wanted but had felt incredibly scary. ‘If I can do that, I can do anything’ was my thinking.
What my adventures have taught me is about how to stretch out of my comfort zone. In the mountains it’s sometimes a psychological risk (as a woman I can be scared at times of the threat of male violence when I’m on my own in a forest, miles from other people) but usually safety considerations are of the physical kind. Neuroscience actually suggests the brain responds in the same way to both types of fear. What I’ve learned is that it’s easiest to grow confidence in small steps: just one new risk each time. That might be doing a route solo that you’ve done with others before or doing a route you know in winter conditions or the dark. If we combine too many new risks at once then we might be too scared to try. For example, I would not have planned that long solo walk had I known it would snow.
But also, if we do take bigger risks – whether by design or accident – our confidence can leap forward. Bigger risk, bigger reward. Last year I did my first solo wild camp and a day of rock-climbing: both terrifying but possibly the best confidence boost I’ve had yet.
Go outside your comfort zone, but not too far…
Back at work, I used to find facilitation nerve-wracking. Holding a space for a group to solve their own challenges and working out the best ways to enable equal, productive contributions can feel like herding cats. But I took up the challenge suggested by the Gamestorming team – to try a new technique or exercise each time I ran a session. Whilst it feels safer to stick with tried and tested tools I have discovered some great new techniques as a result and feel more confident to be playful and responsive with groups now.
So when I saw the Learning Zone model recently, it resonated for me. This simple model shows 3 concentric zones – with risk/fear increasing as the circles become bigger. I think we could replace the ‘term’ Learning Zone with Confidence-Building Zone: that place where small risks help us grow.
Back to coaching, there are two main techniques I suggest when clients want to grow confidence. The first is to find a small step that feels like progress, but reasonably safe to them. If that goes OK then they take another, and another. Alongside I suggest this keeping a simple list of times when I took a risk, or when I was confident and what happened. It can be any size of risk and in any part of your life. I genuinely believe confidence we grow beyond work often seeps through into our work lives.
Confidence can be contagious for other areas of life…
A coaching client (who knows I’m sharing this story) wanted to grow her confidence in work meetings. She finds social situations awkward at times and told me she’d found joining a new sports team really helped her self-confidence. And the little steps she took to dare herself to try new things each time in a work meeting helped her in incrementally begin to be able to participate in the way she wanted. As a facilitator I know a few tools to help people feel at ease in meetings, like saying something low-risk early because the longer it goes before you say something the more nervous you often get, and I’ve offered these to several clients wanting to build confidence in the big formal settings in which many find they lack confidence to speak up. They report back that these small first steps which feel easy, build confidence a little which then makes possible further steps. And they slowly grow their confidence, step by step.
So if you’re looking to grow your confidence, or experience, I’d suggest finding some small first steps that will stretch yourself. Small risks which, if it’s a bit bumpy, won’t put you at risk. Then try another step. And maybe when you’re feeling brave you might think about taking a leap…. And the great thing is they can be little steps outdoors just as much as in the boardroom.
And if you would like support on that journey – get in touch for a chat about coaching.
When working as a coach or facilitator I always ‘contract’ with people before we start work together: we agree boundaries, expectations and ways of working.
‘Contracting’ is the technical term for these conversations, but I prefer to think of it as ‘setting things up for success’ and it typically involves:
agreeing honestly and as clearly as possible what is expected from one another
the purpose and boundaries for the work
identifying what behaviours will enable you both to perform at your best and anything that would be unhelpful, and,
how you’ll review how it’s going so you can adjust accordingly.
We contract before we start work together, but also check-in how things are going periodically.
Before we start…
The kinds of questions we might use at the start of a project or assignment include:
What do we want to achieve?
How will we know we have been successful?
What are our respective roles? What can we offer and for what do we accept responsibility?
What requests do we have of one another in terms of how we work?
How will we know whether things are on track?
How do we want to handle things if it’s not working well for either of us?
What obstacles might get in the way of us working together? How can we avoid this happening?
Are we still on track?
Review questions can be as simple as:
What do we notice about how we are working together?
What is working and what is not working?
Is there anything you want more or less of from me?
What do we want to change to make this relationship have more impact?
Taking 5-10 minutes to include some of these questions in our meetings with others can help ensure we get off to the most productive start with new projects, or review and realign those already underway.
Unfortunately, despite being fully vaccinated, I caught COVID 19 recently. And whilst the acute symptoms lasted only a week I’ve been left feeling very tired – as often happens after a nasty virus. Much as I’d love to return immediately to my usual level of activity, I realise that it’s important to take time to recover properly.
Whilst I am generally manage to attend to the bigger tasks to keep myself healthy, like fitting in a long run once a week, I’m not always so good at the smaller things that are just as important. But taking care of your health involves doing lots of little things on a regular basis – sticking to ‘good’ habits and avoiding ‘bad’ ones. Some of the habits I’m trying to stick to currently to recover from the virus include:
Getting early nights – going to bed by 10pm
Eating well – including drinking ‘recovery shakes
Doing 15 mins stretching and conditioning daily
Practising 15 mins daily reflection – what went well/ less well and what I want to do differently.
Creating new habits is a topic that crops up often in coaching conversations and I recommend James Clear’s Atomic Habits as a useful resource. As this brilliant book outlines, there are two main reasons why habits are helpful:
Firstly, goals or one-off achievements are often the main focus of our work in organisations or via coaching. But habits help us to focus on the building-blocks of discipline that underpin success – the daily tasks or behaviours which are just as important to creating success.
Secondly, the more of our daily tasks become habitual then the more ‘headspace’ that leaves for other things. Through repetition if we can reinforce our positive behaviours so they become automatic, we can focus instead other activities that require more effort and attention.
Clear suggests there are 4 main ways we can help ourselves get into a good habit:
Make it obvious
Make it (more) attractive
Make it easy
Make it satisfying
It’s a great book, and I’d encourage you to read the whole thing – but as a taster for coachees I created a ‘crib sheet’ which includes some of the top tips that help us stick to the good habits. And I’ve used some of these techniques to help me stay on track over the next few weeks with these habits.
Getting early nights – going to bed by 10pm
First up, make it obvious. It’s important to be specific and simple – 10pm is more useful than ‘early’. There’s no ambiguity if there’s a specific time. Reminders are another way to make it obvious – personally I find a reminder on my phone 30 mins before I need to do something useful.
Eating well – including drinking ‘recovery’ shakes with my breakfast
These are not tasty! I’ve made it easier by setting up the equipment to make them (a blender and the ingredients) in the kitchen. It’s obvious because I’ve left that stuff next to the kettle – the first thing I do each day is make a pint of tea so I am reminded then to make the shake. And I’ve made it more attractive by buying some frozen fruit I can add to the mix to disguise the taste.
Doing 15 mins stretching daily
This is something I find very hard to stick to, as here’s no obvious reward to doing these activities. Do them and they help avoid you getting injured, but if you skip them there’s no immediate bad consequence.
One of my favourite tips from this book is about making it obvious via habit ‘stacking’ – scheduling a new habit to be directly before/ after something you always do to help you remember to do it. So I do these 15 minutes of exercise after breakfast each morning, in the same room, at the same time, and I have the equipment I need (a yoga mat and resistance band) ready on hand – making it easy. It’s basically all about taking any thought or effort out of it – so nothing gets in the way.
Practising 15 mins daily reflection – what went well/ less well and what I want to do differently.
Again, I know I should do this but I often struggle to do this regularly. I’ve found being unwell and needing to slow down tough mentally. Making time for reflection will help make sure I’m not overdoing it and also help my motivation, especially if I use these coaching-style reflection questions.
Making it obviousby sticking to a regular time slot helps, so I’ve identified 30 mins each evening when it’s normally quiet. And I’ve set myself a reminder on my smart phone to make it even more obvious. Plus whereas before I was taking notes on my laptop I’m now using a note-taking app to jot down my thoughts to make it easy. So far I’m managing about 50% of the time – which is a start!
And – finally – as an overall reminder of these healthy habits as well as having a ‘to do’ list each week, I now have a simple checklist of the daily/ weekly regular tasks (or habits) which is next to my desk and which I tick off. There’s a simple satisfaction to ticking things off and feeling like you’ve accomplished a small step. And the list also serves as a visual cue or reminder to do these things, once again, making it obvious.
As Clear concludes, creating habitscan be hard because a lot of these behaviours are not satisfying in the short-term. When cause-effect are disconnected we are less inclined towards changing our behaviour. With ‘good behaviours’ the effort or inconvenience is short-term, whereas and the payback days or weeks, or even years, later.
But at least we can give ourselves a helping hand by using these 4 simple tips from behavioural psychology to make these habits more likely to take root.
Being clear about your values, as an individual or an organisation, can be a very effective way to provide direction. It can also keep you on track: by guiding decisions about what you do and how. Values are like a compass – a simple navigational device you can consult when in doubt about which way to go. As someone who loves wandering in the hills, I always take a compass in case I wonder if I’m on the right path.
So as a consultant I use values with teams wanting to develop a shared purpose and way of working. And they can be using when working as a coach too, particularly around decision-making and careers planning. Values offer an inspiring and simple framework for long-term planning and day-to-day decisions. But sometimes talking about values can feel wishy-washy. There’s nothing less inspiring than having a set of nouns than feel meaningless, or worse still hypocritical, to stakeholders.
In my experience values-based models need to be authentic, accountable, clearly defined and inclusive. Below I’ve set out some of the tools I use with coachees and organisations wanting to use their values.
Authentic: values aren’t invented, they are surfaced
The first step is to identify the values and for individuals a simple way to do this is a questionnaire.
For groups the process needs a little more structure to ensure all voices are heard. For example, this week I’ll be using Appreciative Interviews with a client team to surface their values with by sharing stories.
I’ve noticed that certain values seem to be fashionable with arts organisations (e.g. Creativity, Excellence and Diversity). But it’s important to be honest about what really matters, what defines your organisation, what guides your decisions, what is your bottom line? When you’ve drafted a short-list double check: does this capture our essence? Is there anything missing? If the list is more than 4-5 values then ask yourself – which are the key ones?
Clear: values need to be defined and embedded
Linguistically speaking values are abstract nouns, so not surprisingly the words alone can be somewhat… abstract! At worst values can be open to interpretation and mean nothing or are so vague they don’t guide you. So values need be defined – we need to ask ourselves ‘what does this value mean for how we work’?
Once you have a shortlist I suggest drafting a 1-2 sentence definition of what that value means in practice. It can also be helpful to include some of the core behaviours that demonstrate that value in action.
For example – one of my personal values is ‘Challenge’ and I define it like this: ‘wanting to create positive change, actively challenging inequality, constantly seeking to improve’.
In terms of my behaviours I think embody that value that are relevant to my work, I came up with: Not being afraid to challenge those in power. Working with clients that embrace learning via mistakes above playing it safe.
You can download my guide to defining values, which includes an example from Ripon Museum Trust, an independent museum I supported to define their values a few years ago.
Inclusive: everybody needs to be involved, and the values need to make sense to everyone
If you’re developing a values-based approach within an organisation, especially if you’re using values to inform change, then it’s crucial to involve everyone in shaping the values.
At Ripon Museum Trust, a task group of volunteers, staff and Trustees created a first ‘draft’ which was shared and refined by the wider organisation. This ensured the values resonated and could be usefully applied across everyone’s role. The kind of questions we asked were: do these values sum up what is special about RMT and important about what the organisation does? What examples can you find of these values in action now? Where do we fall short – and what would living the values more fully look like to you?
Accountable: values can be aspirational, but we need to work at ‘living’ them
It’s OK for not to be living your values 100% of the time yet. Values need to be credible but they can be aspirational too. In fact articulating your values is a great way to approach organisational change.
A good exercise for noticing whether you’re on track as a team is a simple ‘As Is/ To Be’ analysis. This involves describing together where you are now (‘as is’) and where you aspire ‘to be’, taking each value in turn. Once you’ve shared your collective wisdom as to how you’re doing, and discussed any differences of view, you can start to generate options as to how to improve.
In a coaching context, I often suggest looking at values as part of career planning if clients are faced with competing options or not sure whether the path ahead is the right one for them. I’ve developed this simple tool to help.
So – am I walking the talk? How have I used my values recently? I tend to look at them anytime I’m reflecting or planning. For example, when I was thinking about my budget for 2021 my value of Care led to the decision to continue to offer Pay What You Can coaching and also to make available free resources and tools online.
At the end of the day though, just like my compass, I think our values really come into their own in a crisis or when you’re feeling really unsure about your ‘path’. In the hills I mainly use my compass when the mist comes down and I can’t see the way ahead. And in times of massive disruption to how we normally work values can help us make bold and creative decisions too – as this blog post about Slung Low’s focus during CV19 shows.
Action Learning is a highly practical peer-learning model that enables you to find solutions to real issues whilst developing skills and insights. This factsheet offers a short introduction to the principles and practices involved to assist those considering joining a ‘set’. As an accredited AL facilitator I can also help you establish a new set, facilitate meetings or train your group to run their own sessions.
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