"But they won't listen to me!!!"

On entering the house last Friday I was hijacked by my daughter. What happened next I was not expecting but it was an interesting experience for both of us.

She explained that she has been asked by the teachers to be the manager of a cafe to raise money for charity. She has a small team and they need to organise the event and make sure everything runs smoothly. She is 10 so the rest of this makes sense :)

So my daughter comes up with a plan, tells the team what they will do and.... well, you can imagine what happens next. One of them ends up storming off to the bathroom, 2 of them rip up the plan and come up with their own one and the rest slope off to do something else. I think we've all been here, right?

OK a double serving of coaching coming right up.... let's establish the goal.

"I want them to do what I tell them to"

Wow. OK. Healthly dose of reality required. So sweetheart, how do you feel when you are told what to do? She ponders for a bit and comes back with something else.

"I want to do something that will help us bond so we can work together"

OK, nice. Still not sure this is the goal but we are thinking differently. So, if I could wave a magic wand and fix this for you what would it look like? How would people behave?

"People would listen to me and we would come up with a plan that we would all agree on"

Damn it! So close. Oh well. I know her plan is confetti but it sounds like there is 'a' plan - what is wrong with the plan the others came up with? What won't work about it?

* rant * rant * rant *

Synopsis: takes too long to serve people and everyone needs to queue which they won't do

So it takes too long to serve each person. What kind of too long to wait is too long?

"It will take 5 minutes to serve each person"

Wow. That is very exact. How do you know it will take 5 minutes?

"That's how long it will take"

Could we test this? If I asked you to sit still and tell me when 5 minutes has passed, how close do you think you would be? For the record, my daughter has never sat in the same place for 5 minutes. Ever. So I feel this is pretty good bet.

So we test our assumption - I set a timer and she sits on a chair. After about 2 minutes I notice that she seems to be counting under her breath so I start saying random numbers since I figure she is counting so she knows how long is passed. I seem to have underestimated the sneakyness (but am secretly impressed).

After about 3 minutes I ask her how long has passed and she says about 3 minutes (!) but acknowledges that it is a really long time so I deem the experiment a partial success and we move on.

How long do you really think it will take to serve each customer? What could do to find out? The shrugs are less than encouraging so I ask what she would like from MY cafe....

We act out serving a drink and a cake in the kitchen and both agree it probably wont take very long at all to serve people. We talk a little about assumptions and how we can usually test them rather than accept them as truth which mostly gets ignored.

So what's wrong with letting the others go through their plan? Could you act it out like we just did? Would that be better than trying to come up with a plan that you all had to follow? After all if something didn't quite work you could always change what you are doing.... it's also a lot more fun.

"Yeah, that might work. I still want to do something that will help us bond"

OK. I'm tired. We go through "String of Pearls" and she assumes the roles of all members of her team. Again secretly impressed she can remember each persons role and moves into each of their imaginary positions as she says them.

Since everyone can say what ever they want, how come we end up with a story?

"We listen to each other and know it all needs to join up to make sense in the end"

Wise words indeed.

So the next day, what happens? My daughter goes and finds the teacher who organises the McMillan tea morning and asks her to help her team. Just like what Mrs A said before I got home last Friday.

I think I will leave this to Mrs A in the future, we all know she's always right :)

Can you really manage people?

My wife says I get hung up on words a little too much, which is probably true. She often tells me I am reading too much into the word itself and forgetting what it really means.

Of all the words I hear every day, 'management' is high up on my list of words I don't like. This is speaking as a line 'manager', with line 'management' qualifications who 'manages' stuff as well as people.

Here's how I found a happy place for my 'management' responsibilities.

I like to swap things around. So here's a simple test - has anyone,ever come up to you and said "Manage me"? How about "Please manage me?"

No? Doesn't that seem a little weird. If it was something that people wanted or needed don't you think they would ask for it?

Whilst the settings on my computer might need management I think that people do not.

How about the following:

* Help me
* Teach me
* Guide me
* Coach me
* Listen to me

My wife would argue that the word 'management' really symbolises these things, the word itself is not important. And she is probably right (as always).

Do yo' Dojo?

One of the major bits of my personal development has been through coaching dojo's, which were first run by Helen Meek from RippleRock.

Taken from martial arts a dojo is a place for practice. How we use them is not much different - it is where we practice coaching.

Just like a real dojo a coaching dojo is a special place and it needs to be cared for. In a coaching dojo:

* We create a safe space - nothing is judged, nothing is shared with others
* We are all learning and mistakes are inevitable
* We turn up on time!

The setup works best with one host and 3 participants, 2 is OK as well. 1 hour sessions work well, you can expect to be pretty tired at the end of one!

We often focus a session on a particular coaching method. Starting with GROW feels right and is a simple method for people to understand and use for the first time. We usually include an intro for first timers to help them understand what coaching is and is not - discussing the difference between coaching, teaching and mentoring often helps people understand.

Through multiple sessions, once people have enough practice in one method you can then introduce more: SARA, OSCAR, CIGAR, 5 Whys etc.

We ask people to come with a problem. Ideally this will be current and real, something you need help with. Alternatively, you can go back to a situation you have already been through and maybe had some sort of resolution to. The key thing is that it is real for you. You can role play but it is just not the same, you are welcome to have your own opinion.

In a timebox of your choosing (7 - 10 mins) you have a coaching session. Someone volunteers to be the coachee (the one with the problem) and someone to be the coach. Everyone else is an observer, writing notes is a great idea allowing you to play back your observations in sequence. It is important to feedback both good AND bad since both perspectives are required. Suggestions are always welcome.

You allow the coach to complete their session and then the host gathers feedback. We ask the coachee for their perspective as well as the coach and the observers, including the hosts. It is somewhere in these perspectives that you learn what works and where you can improve.

Swap the roles round and repeat as many times as you can in your session.

In running these sessions, we have found there is no one type of person who benefits - everyone who has attended these sessions has found them useful irrespective of role. There is a lot that can be said about people taking the time to learn how to listen and ask 'powerful' questions....

For me personally, I have a tendency to solutionise. This led to me asking closed questions very frequently which is not helpful for the coachee. I was also pretty terrible as listening, often steering a conversation to where I wanted it to go rather than where the coachee needed it to go. Had I done this with a 'real' person I fear I would have done more harm than good.

True Story: In an effort to show me how many closed questions I was asking, Helen once simply responded 'no' to each one. It was brutal. Having said 'no' for most of the session, it was pretty obvious what I needed to improve. It was only through coaching sessions did this happen even though I had read several books and been to several meetups about coaching.

The Sarcastic Scrum Master

As a Brit I am unbelievably sarcastic at times. Some might say uncontrollably, which can cause problems.

Just recently, I have been trying to channel this urge for good. I do this using my new favourite start to a conversation, "If Only...". This is the setup for my call to action, delivered with a sarcastic punch.

Here is an example:

Frustrated Developer: "GOD! What is going on with communication in this team? Nobody seems to know what is going on, everybody is running around like headless chickens - it's soooooo frustrating!"

Sarcastic Scrum Master: "Oh, that is SOOOO true! If only there was a point in the day when we are all gathered, in receive mode and trying to actively organise ourselves. That would be a great time to share knowledge or highlight a conversation that might need to happen."

Frustrated Developer: "What? Like the standup...."

Sarcastic Scrum Master: "OMG! I had forgotten about that! You're right that would be a good time to share things with the team. You would need to remember to say something of course, maybe we could add some sort of cue for you to let the team know something important...."

Frustrated Developer: "Erm. Like when you say 'Is there anything else that we need to share?"

Sarcastic Scrum Master: "Hey! You're right. I DO say that everyday.... what a ninny. That would be a super time to let the team know anything that they should be aware of."

It would be so easy to just say "That's what we have the stand up for" and be done but there is no learning attached to that.

Yes this is gently mocking and I know it works in my team with the relationships I have built. Your distance may vary.

Reference Conversation

So, I have this problem. I find it very hard to start conversations. This has never really been a problem, I put it down to how I'm wired. Just recently, I have cause to think this is holding back my career progress so I have been working on understanding why and finding a solution or workaround.

First, I looked back and realised that fear had a big part to play. I have a tendancy to build up the conversation in my mind, running scenario after scenario in an attempt to control the conversation when I have it. In reflection this creates a negative feeling around the conversation so I shy away from starting it in the first place.

The build up also means that if I do start a conversation I am already apprehensive about it, which I am pretty sure the other person picks up on. Bad news all round really.

Now, I use 2 things to help break this cycle. The first is to think only about what the conversation is about and how I let the person know that. Seems simple really, I just work out how I open the conversation e.g if I am just checking in, I let the person know that in the first few seconds so they can relax.

Even if this is something that the other person might find difficult to talk about, I realise that I only need an opener - something is worrying me, this is why, now lets find a solution. I find this far less scary to think about.

This got me some of the way in that I could shut down a thought process by recognising it as daft from the outset. Once I had an opener, I could put it to one side as there is nothing left to think about.

Then I needed to find a way of countering the fear of starting the conversation, which felt like a learned response at this point.

Taking a cue from story planning, I came up with the idea of having a reference conversation. This gave me something I could refer to in the lead up to a conversation if I was feeling anxious about it. Similar to how we would use a reference story in planning, I would compare the type of conversation I was going to have with my reference conversation in help me recognise that it is really much less than I had built it up to be.

I use my reference conversation at any point that I am holding back from a conversation. If I am putting off booking it or starting it, I review my opener and remove my fear by comparing with my reference conversation.

For me, my reference conversation is one that I would not have the words for. It is one that I can think about and realise that all mine are trivial in comparison. As simple as this technique is, it has helped me move on and focus on having the conversation itself.