There are many ways managers can lead their teams. We are all familiar with various leadership styles such as autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire. Given that this blog focuses on coaching, what other topic could be more relevant than managers with a specific coaching style? Someone who combines coaching techniques with leadership skills may be able to get far with his team, probably further than any of the above types. On their way, though, coaching style managers may face several difficulties: how to handle different personalities in their teams, how to find their inner motivations, and how to support individual creativity, just to mention a few.
Behavior Window
Thomas Gordon developed a method that allows us to confirm, “through a window,” whether an employee’s behavior is acceptable or unacceptable to the manager. This useful tool helps the manager be cognizant of his or her feelings about a specific behavior and reveals what presents an issue to handle.
It is expedient to compare the proportion of the two areas within a specific diagram. The line dividing the behavior window into two areas is not static. It may move upwards or downwards:
- As a result of the things happening within myself (how I am feeling),
- as a result of the environment (where that specific behavior is demonstrated and who is present);
- depending on who the other person is (we tend to accept some people more easily than others).
A manager, especially when taking over a team, may benefit from logging his employees’ behaviors for a week or so and grouping them into the windows to get a big picture and build a strategy on how to best handle the given employee.
Problem Rectangle
Thomas Gordon also developed an advanced version of the behavior window method. It enables the manager to identify the problem owner very effectively and apply a tool that is appropriate for the case. Every organization has behavioral patterns that could pose a problem for the leader or staff, as well as a problem-free zone where productive work takes place. The leader’s objective is to enlarge the problem-free zone, thereby assisting employees in resolving their own problems.
Managers may conduct coaching-style conversations—door openers, active listening, and questioning techniques—with their staff in order to facilitate problem definition and resolution.
‘What if …?’ questions
When a team is brainstorming and compiling alternative implications for a given issue, members often form sentences with negative comments. The manager may add a ‘What if…?’ tool to these sentences. When a staff member says:
‘This would be a great idea, but there will not be any funds for it.’
The manager should respond as follows:
‘And what would you do if money was not an issue because there was an unlimited budget available?’
That way, not only do we fulfill the goal that the employee conveys their ideas to us, but they may even generate a new one. The following statements also hold true:
‘This would be an extremely time-consuming solution; we are too busy to adopt it.’
The manager may pose another question:
‘And what would you do if you didn’t lack time and were a time-millionaire?’
This enables us to expose all the self-limiting factors, and even if it is impossible to achieve all the goals, part-solutions, including very useful alternative ideas, usually emerge.
Adaptation
There are numerous solutions that can adapt to a specific situation, but each one requires individual tailoring. Managers can help their teams think about resolving an issue by asking the following questions:
• Do you know someone with the same dilemma? Can we adapt his or her solution?
• Have you ever been in a similar (if not the same) predicament before? What was useful, then?
• How might we resolve this issue in a different country or corporate culture? For example, a staff member from a U.S.-based company may study his dilemma in a Japanese environment or an autocratic leader may be open to a democratic manager’s solution, not fully adopting it, but drawing inspiration from its concepts.
