Tag: assess

September 5, 2020 / Coaching Skills

Skills for Effective Leadership Team Development

Developing your leadership team is best done through effective and frequent coaching. And establishing rapport is the critical first step in our In-The-Moment Coaching model. So what happens next?

Understand the problem that needs solving. This occurs in the “Assess” step in our In-The-Moment (ITM) Coaching model. Here are three reasons leaders who learn the skills of Assess are highly effective at leadership team development through ITM Coaching.

They understand they aren’t on point to solve the problem. Assess is exploring another person’s perspective on a situation in order to understand the current frame and uncovering the most important problem that needs solving right now. Once it’s uncovered, the leader’s job is to help him/her arrive at a solution to address it. This is “teaching others to fish,” which boosts the level of motivation, accountability, and engagement in taking action.
They open up thinking with strategic questions. The key to successfully assess is through the use of open-ended questions. Leaders who allow open-ended questions to emerge from a place of curiosity rather than a defined set of questions receive more information that helps them set the problem.
They pick up on nuances by staying present. In Assess, the leader’s job is not only to ask questions and listen but to notice how the situation is being described, the other person’s reaction to it, and motivations. Specifically, they are listening for specific word usage that implies constraints on thinking and views on others. By staying present in the conversation, leaders are able to pick up on these cues, ask the right questions, and quickly set the most important problem that needs solving.

Successful leadership team development through ITM Coaching relies on learning how to stay in Assess versus solving others’ problems for them. For more tips to help you do this and other how-tos on ITM Coaching, download the free Executive Guide to In-The-Moment Coaching.

November 12, 2013 / Ask Mariposa

Ask Mariposa | Dealing with Change

Toby asks: Our new VP has been on the job for six months and is trying to change everything about the way we do our work. This has left middle management feeling vulnerable. The consistent message received is that everything that was done for the past 4 yours was all wrong and needs to change. How do we roll with the changes yet keep morale from tanking?

Sue Bethanis, CEO of Mariposa, responds:

Thanks for your question! The first thing I suggest doing is ASSESS the situation: 1) what changes are good? 2) which ones are not so good? and 3) which ones are hard? After you have done an ASSESSment, figure out for yourself which ones you can roll with and don’t need help, which ones are hard, and thus you need help with? Go to your boss and ask for advice/help on the hard ones. And ask him/her to give you some of the reasoning behind the ones that you deem to be “not so good.” Have your assessment of the situation ready to give your reasoning as well, and let him know how the “not so good” changes have affected you in a negative way.

To learn more about the skills of Assess, check out our Executive Guide to In-the-Moment Coaching.