Working with new managers

WORKING WITH NEW MANAGERS

Over the years, I’ve found that a common client problem that is brought to coaching is that of a newly-promoted manager struggling with a promotion from team member to team leader. The related changes to the relationship with members of their team, coupled with developing a leadership mentality often leaves them feeling stressed and insecure about whether or not they are performing their new role effectively.

Since training in MindSonar, it has become apparent to me that one of the underlying causes of the stress lies in the client’s manager not recognising my client’s need for feedback on their performance during the early stages of their new role.   The more senior managers are generally experienced leaders who are expected to take initiative and make decisions. Consequently, they tend to be predominantly Internally Referenced. This can result in them not recognising (or remembering) that new managers may be more Externally Referenced in the context of their new roles, requiring some feedback on how they are progressing.  This difference can lead to new managers being left to their own devices and feeling unsupported, as their managers believe that they’ll either cope or request support as and when needed.

Less often, new managers feel they are not trusted because they feel that their manager is micro-managing them and giving feedback far too often.  Such cases are less frequent, but can also arise from a disparity between the Internally/Externally Referenced Meta Programmes.

In larger organisations, formal structures may exist in which regular feedback meetings are undertaken, but these still operate on the assumption that all staff are running the same thinking patterns, which of course is not the case. The result is that some feel that such meetings are too infrequent (those who are highly Externally Referenced) and some feel that it is micro-management (those who are more Internally Referenced).  Many smaller businesses have no feedback procedures at all.

If middle and senior managers were to invest in MindSonar profiles for their direct reports, they could tailor their approach to individuals, giving more frequent feedback to those who prefer it (the Externally referenced individuals), and feedback on a “as needed” basis to those who do not (the Internally referenced individuals).  This would reduce the stress and insecurity felt by all members of the team, whether new to post or not. As a result, team members will feel more motivated and so develop within their roles more productively.

Of course, there are other Meta Programmes which are at play in such circumstances, especially around the changing context of moving from team member to team leader.  The MindSonar profiles will also enable more experienced managers to support their junior managers to handle those changes too.

If you are a middle or senior manager who would like to get the most from your junior managers, then contact your local MindSonar Professional to learn more about how MindSonar could enable you to get the best out of your team, and keep each team member motivated and less stressed.

If you’re a coach who works with managers at any level, then you’ll find becoming a MindSonar Professional a really worthwhile addition to your coaching toolkit, so do consider adding it as soon as you can.

Time Perception in the Mindset: Sometimes crucial in Therapy

One of the Meta programme sets that I have found can have a significant role in the thinking patterns of my therapy clients is that of Past/Present/Future. It seems that if any one of the three is very strong in the context of how they view their life, it can contribute to the issues which have brought the person to therapy. As with all Meta programmes, the rest of the profile is important and certain combinations of Meta programmes seem related to specific therapy issues. However, the time perception meta programmes are of particular interest to me in some clients. Below are some examples of how each of the time focus meta programmes can contribute to a client’s issues:

Future

I often see a very strong Future focus, usually coupled with the Mismatching programme, in clients suffering from anxiety. These clients constantly worry about what might go wrong in the future and rarely take any time to appreciate what is actually happening in the present. They often do not learn from their past experiences. Part of the therapy work therefore is to enable the client to look back and identify both good and neutral things that have happened in their past. This enables them to recognise that the things they were anxious about in the past rarely, if ever, materialised and that, if they did, they were not as catastrophic as they had imagined and they had coped and survived them.

Past

I frequently see a strong Past focus in clients experiencing depression. Most often I see this along with a Mismatching meta programme. Such clients look back and remember almost everything that has gone wrong for them and every mistake they believe that they have made. This, of course, reinforces their depression and the accompanying low self-esteem. By moving first to a stronger Matching pattern, they can begin to recognise times of good fortune and personal success in their past and so see that not everything has been a bad experience. Doing this in combination with strengthening both Present and Future Meta programmes can have a really positive effect on their depression as they start to feel less negative about their past life experiences whilst becoming more positive about current and future events. .

Conversely, some depressed clients have strong Past Meta programme combined with a strong with Matching metaprogramme. These clients view the past through rose-tinted spectacles and believe that all the good times are over. They tend to believe that everything was better in the past, both for them as individuals and in the World in general. They remember all the good times they’ve had and forget any hardships and conclude that those times exist only in the years behind them. Again, coaching to enable them to achieve a more balanced profile across Past/Present/Future can bring about improvements for them,.

Present

Less often, I see a problem resulting from a very strong Present metaprogramme. Such clients tend to struggle with planning and can end up in difficulty when unprepared for events or unable to meet commitments, including financial ones. These clients also often do not learn from past experience and fail to predict what they will need to achieve the things they want or need to. These clients can often identify areas or times of their lives when they have been able to plan, and learn from past experiences. Using this enables coaching to strengthen Past and Future thinking appropriately.

Of course, as with all our work with clients, we need to consider the MindSonar profile in its entirety and work with the client’s priorities. However, as our time perception has a powerful effect upon how we perceive our life in general, I think that this particular Meta programme set worth looking at very closely. Maybe that’s true for all of us – not just our therapy clients.

Have you any experience of the time perception Meta programmes helping or hindering you or your clients? Please share your experiences in the comments box below.

 

 

Organisational Thinking Styles in Recruitment and Practice – Sometimes a Contradiction

The culture of an organisation can be a major factor in the sort of people that are attracted to belong to it. This is true whatever the organisation – whether an employer, a club or an educational establishment. I was thinking about this recently after reminiscing about an incident that occurred at the senior school I attended. I attended a school which set out as its values the expectation and encouragement of high educational and personal achievements for every student. The school’s prospectus and other materials made it clear that it aimed to produce future leaders, business owners and other forward and independent thinkers. The governors and staff clearly wanted to attract pupils with ability, initiative, and creativity and who had the same aspirations and the potential to achieve them.

However, the school also had very strict policies on uniform, hair styles, jewellery and suchlike. Pupils who wore the wrong style of skirt, shirt or coat or who had an “extreme” hair style or wore jewellery to school would be reprimanded. The argument given by the school was that pupils needed to give a good impression of the school as a whole, and show both loyalty to and pride of being a part of it. They also expected the pupils (and their parents) to take their word for it that this would make a difference to the pupils’ success in life.

These policies resulted in frequent bouts of rebellion, sometimes supported by the parents. One such incident escalated to the point where coats were confiscated en masse, and many parents writing in to say that they had no intention of forcing their teenager to wear the dowdy prescribed coats. I can’t remember the formal outcome, but I do recall that many pupils continued to wear non-uniform coats generally with the compromise of getting a coat in the school colour.

Such group rebellions were generally small ones, and the overall academic achievement of the pupils remained high.

Thinking about this now in terms of thinking styles, I can see that such clashes were highly predictable. The school was deliberately attracting pupils from families which valued independent thinking and creativity, and so they and their children were likely to have a high level of Internally Referenced thinking and a high Internal Locus of Control. However, the school’s uniform rules were based on an expectation of high level of conformity, a concern about how others perceived the school as a whole, and a belief that they (the school) knew best about how the way a pupil dressed for school would impact on their eventual success. That required a high level of Externally Referencedthinking and an External Locus of Control. This mis-match made some clashes inevitable.

I see similar disjoints in many organisations. Some advertise for strongly independent innovators, creative thinkers and yet have a culture of conformity, especially around dress and appearance. This can result in the employees feeling constrained and restless – and is likely to impact upon performance and retention.

Interestingly, many years after I’d left the school I heard of a pupil whom had been sent by a class teacher to the (new) head teacher because of an “extreme” hairstyle. The head sent her back to the class and told the teacher that, if they wanted pupils who would go on to become leaders, they should encourage independent and creative thinking, not suppress it. What a change from when I was there!

I’d love to hear from anyone else who has seen this, or other contradictions in the thinking styles recruited and the ones best suited to the actual organisational culture. It’s certainly something to look out for when called in to discuss management issues with clients.

As always, please let me know your thoughts on this in the comments below.

MindSonar is Not a Personality Test

A colleague from the UK mailed me saying: “I suppose what I have difficulty with is … if ‘personality’ is situational, in other words we are ‘at cause’ and can choose to be whoever we wish to be depending upon our outcome and upon our context, then how could we ever measure that? Personality from this perspective is not a stable trait which can predict certain behaviours and language in certain contexts, it is simply what someone chooses to do Continue reading