Progress Talk - Change Is Inevitable But Progress Isn't!

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Copyright (c) 2013 Professional Coach - Solution Surfers

1. Help your people look to the future

People will drift backwards if they can't get a future vision. Focus your view around what will be happening in the future - the tension and creative tension between now and the future is key to progress. Make sure this future vision has plenty of attraction and appeal for you. If the CEO isn't spending at least 20% of his or her time communicating this Vision, to everyone I would ask them "how come?"

2. Really be explicit about what you want

Keep your vision fresh and "alive". Know that your vision, your purpose are critical drivers for your company, your department your team - Vision is number 1, goals number 2. Encourage your team to review their goals every 90 days

3. Practice and develop your "soft" skills - business is personal

Realise the power of perception and your "presence" and "impact". A new leader will get to know all his people in 6 months. They will know him in 6 days.

Trust your imagination, self reliance and intuition as a leader together. These are "soft" skills that will make a hard difference - know exactly how theses "soft" skills are linked to hard business objectives. Use 360 feedback and other processes to get very clear on this

4. You need to understand your talents and those of the people around you

This refers to a massive research project by Gallup which polled 1 million employees over 25 years. The research is written up in "First Break all the Rules" by Marcus Buckingham. This can have huge implications for the way we interact and deal with people

Performance - What do you do exceptionally well? In which situations did your performance did exceed expectations?

Fast learning - What new things or knowledge do you acquire quickly?

Attraction - What are you attracted to do? What do you love?

Buzz - What gives you most satisfaction? What are you enthusiastic and very proud of?

5. Apply talents and strengths by utilising them fully

Consciously decide on the right time to apply talent and help your people use theirs strategically. Develop your talents and those of your team by practicing, by training, by setting goals that stretch these talents. Find new applications for these talents by asking questions such as "where else might this be very useful too?

6. Ideas on using strengths

It can be useful to acknowledge problems but the way you do it is very important - here are some suggested ways:

• When someone clearly has a weakness set an acceptable level of progress. • Help people to utilise systems, tools and processes to compensate for their weakness • Help your employees develop their strengths so that clients and colleagues no longer notice their weaknesses • When somebody is weak it may be possible to assign tasks in such a way that they can focus on what they do well and like

7. Attributes of successful companies

• Bias towards action • Simple structure, lean staff • Continual client contact • Productivity improvement through and with people and their on-going development • Operational autonomy to encourage innovation, collaboration and fresh thinking/action (Progress Talk!) • Incredible focus on one key business value, i.e. price, design, service, etc. • Emphasis on doing and utilising what they know best - focus on strengths

8. Anticipate, predict & decide

Anticipate and predict so that you are better placed to plan for the future - encourage your team to adopt "forward thinking" approaches in their meetings

Continuously discuss what the "better" opportunities in the next 6 months are. Incorporate this in your meetings and planning. Uncertainty creates stress if you are stressed in any area it's time to make a decision.

9. Action planning

1. List everything that you will need to do to achieve your goal 2. Prioritise your list according to importance and the sequence of the task 3. Determine how much money you will need to spend and allocate more time than you think is necessary to achieve this 4. Be prepared to review and revise this plan weekly. Revisions are to be expected as you receive information or things are not going as expected 5. List all results weekly

10. The power of expectations

Assume that every condition that you encounter is in sync with your company's current nature/culture/beliefs and expectations. Bring this out and "put it on the table" by discussing what they believe is possible, what they expect and what do they base their thinking on. Work on changing expectations to create your desired outcomes.

11. As the leader of your company, department or team observe how often you focus on the following during the course of 1 week

a. Seek out opportunities to make progress on the goals of the company, department or team - focus on results b. Respond to the concerns of other by showing empathy - focus on interpersonal dimension c. Listen to, accept and act upon suggestions from others - focus on openness and flexibility d. Anticipates problems/ issues in their early stages - focus on awareness and being pro-active e. Clarify the expectations of others in a work group - focus on collaboration

12. Change is simple it's happening - people are the ones who aren't!

A drive for progress should be built into the fabric of every organisation. The leader and top team should be "brilliant coaches" in terms of running meetings, teams and getting the best from individuals (Progress Talk!). Most companies have performance levels of 60% or less of their capacity - innovative leaders will get the most from these individuals by creating a culture of collaboration, "coaching" and "performance conversations". They will "role model" this by having "coaching" themselves as well as finding the best training available for this.

13. Specific conversations are powerful coaching tools

Rather than introducing "coaching" into a company, I like to re-word this as formal and informal performance "conversations" or whatever phrase works for the company or individual, such as "solving business problems in a simple way", or "having useful conversations that make a positive difference….".

The reason is that you are already having conversations and we are skilled at having conversations and using language just perhaps not in constructive ways…..Ways that bring out the best in individuals, teams and companies

14. But it all starts with listening!

• Listening at all levels of the organisation fosters openness and the sharing of ideas • Listening for differences of thinking encourages collaboration • Collaboration leads to innovative fresh thinking and new ideas • Leaders MUST listen • Leaders who want to have "better coaching", better "performance conversations" to improve productivity and profitability MUST listen

15. Learning a new language

Analysis and understanding of the root cause of "problems" may be the way for medical, legal and financial situations, but for people problems and even strategic problems, there are alternatives…

This is a big step for many because for 100 years or more humanity has stressed the importance of finding out what is missing and understanding of a "problem". Armies of consultants were and still are using GAP analysis as the indispensable pre-requisite to growth and progress. The positive psychology movement, appreciative enquiry and other methodologies including Progress Talk have emerged in the last 10 years with useful insights and evidence based research into high performance and generative success factors.

16. Creating the "thinking" & "mind set" for this approach - flexibility/non-judgement

Before I go into the actual "tools" of these problem-solving strategies I think it's important to know the "mindset" of the problem solver, the coach, the interviewer or whatever label you would like to put on the person using Progress Talk as the approach. The individual's attitude and intent is far more important than a set of techniques. Without the attitude of curiosity, openness, non judgement and flexibility "Progress Talk" cannot take place. All that will happen will be asking questions in order to manipulate versus working collaboratively

17. The Start - Problem Talk versus Progress Talk

Problem Talk as the name implies includes descriptions of the problems, about the effects they are having, explanations and detailed descriptions of what they are, where they came from, theories of why they occurred, how people feel about them and speculation as to where they are leading.

18. The Launch Pad - is there motivation for progress?

Okay, so the question I want to ask you is - How keen are you to learn a new approach? What do you want to learn about this approach? What benefits do you think it will be you personally and to your role? What are you prepared to do in terms of learning this approach? And what is your goal?

All of these are examples of establishing at the start of a conversation if the person opposite you is a "customer for change and progress". Because otherwise you may be wasting your time and energy!

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