COACHING & 6 Ways to Turn Managers into Coaches Again

by Keith Ferrazzi, Harvard Business Review,8/10/15.

Use regular one-on-one check-ins. Regular check-ins, as opposed to waiting for the annual performance review, allow you to work collaboratively with your direct reports to offer regular insight, knowledge, guidance, and suggestions to help them solve pressing problems, and to help them stay on track for their professional development goals…

Encourage more peer-to-peer coaching. Peer-to-peer coaching offers some of the richest, most valuable learning in an organization..

Create mentoring partnerships. “Some of the richest mentoring I have experienced is through ‘reverse mentoring’ where a younger generation employee partners with a more senior employee and they agree to share lessons learned with one another,” says Michael Arena, Chief Talent Officer at GM, so consider pairing-up team members from different demographics…

Tap into the potential coach within everyone… You can encourage your own team members to become coaches and trainers by allowing them to hold their own mini-seminars on an important topic or skill…

Support daily learning and development activities… Suggest that they digest small bites of content when it fits into their schedules during the day, or look for creative and engaging ways that you can bring learning and development into daily activities for your people.

Seek formal training…Consider seeking out formal training to enhance and improve your hard and soft skills, whether it’s one class, a certification program, or completing a more formal executive education or leadership training curriculum.

Read more at … https://hbr.org/2015/08/6-ways-to-turn-managers-into-coaches-again

TRAINING LEADERS & How to Create a Formal Training Structure in Your Church #SpiritualWaypointsBook

by Bob Whitesel Ph.D., excerpted from Spiritual Waypoints: Helping Others Navigate the Journey (Indianapolis: Wesleyan Publishing House, 2010), pp. 197-198.

(In other postings I’ve discussed more specifics of “Apprenticeship” and “Mentoring” for church leaders.  For more on this topic see these postings which are also excerpted from SpiritualWaypoints: Helping Others Navigate the Journey).

Churches over 1254 in attendance should create a leadership development and training program. There are three elements that are essential for fostering holistic leadership training.

Element 1: Educate the mind.

Leadership training in a local church often takes place one night a week, with churches offering courses on leadership, volunteerism, management, etc. Too often churches confuse leadership training with theological or historical training, neglecting the former and accenting the latter. While good training has elements of each, remember that the trainee is struggling with hands-on application. Thus a sizable portion of the educating the mind should deal with the principles of application. It is also important to host a question and answer time for application clarification.

Element 2: Educate the hands.

The focus of most church leadership training is head knowledge, but this can be inadequate for hands-on doing is needed too. Remember the story of Len Sweet at Waypoint 6? Len had burgeoning head knowledge about Christianity and Christ, but it was not until he was forced into a ministry experience did God‘s power impact his life. Thus, training should not be only about theory or case studies, but should require the leader to be actively participating in ongoing ministry. And the trainee should be reporting back the results on a regular basis. This forces the trainee to learn ―in the field‖ as did the twelve disciples and the thirty-six teams of two, who reported back to the master the results for clarification, adjustment, and improvement in ministry.

Element 3: Educate the heart.

As will be noted in the next section, educating a heart to be sensitive to God‘s nudging, guidance, and correction are critical for effective leadership. Research suggests that formal training often results in less spirituality in a trainee‘s life.5 Thus, to offset the potential to over emphasize head and hand knowledge, a formal training program should include devotionals, meditation, ministry focus verses, and spiritual formation.

Elements 1, 2, and 3 must also be equally balanced. Due to the urgent nature of ministry, education of the hands can often dominate. At other times educating the mind can rule. Yet because supernatural intervention is needed in leadership development, it is educating the heart that is most critical to the process. Let us therefore investigate this area more closely.

TRAINING LEADERS & Easy Steps to Fostering Apprenticeship in Your Organization #SpiritualWaypointsBook

by Bob Whitesel Ph.D., excerpted from Spiritual Waypoints: Helping Others Navigate the Journey (Indianapolis: Wesleyan Publishing House, 2010), pp. 196-197.

(In other postings I’ve discussed “Mentoring” and “Formal Training” for church leaders.  For more on this topic see these postings which are also excerpted from Spiritual Waypoints: Helping Others Navigate the Journey).

Apprenticeship, on the other hand, is more focused action than mentoring. Apprenticeship means focusing on one specific job. For example, a Sunday School teacher might recruit an ―apprentice‖ and groom them to be their replacement. To foster apprenticeship, there are also two fundamental rules to follow.

Require job descriptions for all professional and lay positions. Job descriptions should include:

• The number of hours customarily required each week to adequately undertake these duties.
• The leadership hierarchal structure, i.e. to whom the leader reports and those individuals the leader oversees.
• A detailed description of the task, including paragraph long examples describing: exceptional work, adequate work, and unacceptable work.
• A reminder that an updated version of the job description is required to be submitted when a person resigns from a job.

Require a designated apprentice for all jobs. In today‘s fluid and flexible culture, jobs will change and workers will depart. Thus, for continuity it is necessary for all leaders to train their replacement, even if the leader does not intend to leave in the foreseeable future. Thus, an apprenticeship strategy should:

• Be required throughout an organization, and thus be acknowledged by those who are being led, as well as by all leaders.
• Allow the apprentice to lead (under the supervision of the leader) at least 25 percent of the time.
• Allow the apprentice to attend and receive the same training as the senior leader.

#StMarksTX