Playing your own game or someone else's?

I had the pleasure of talking to a highly successful project leader today - the sort of guy who takes multi-million pound projects of frightening complexity in his stride and still looks around for a challenge. He'd found exactly that in his new appointment - taking over the leadership of a global transformation team - but to his surprise was finding it harder going than he expected and not a lot of fun.

Inventing your own game?

"I'm so used to playing on my own pitch" he mused " I was so familiar with how things were with my old team but now I'm having to fit in with this new lot". He was right at the start of his own change process, feeling the discomfort and uncertainty of change.

This got me thinking about what it takes to be playing your own game rather than someone else's. For some it is about picking their own team, for others it is about throwing out the existing agenda and bringing in their own. Others never get there and are forever dancing to someone else's tune... never a great place to operate from.

Feeling in control - issues in coaching

It occurs to me that 'feeling in control' is another of those things that you can have too much of or too little. When I meet a coaching client that feels too little in control there is usually a sense of being overwhelmed, coupled with anxiety and powerlessness. Almost without fail, if I can encourage them to take back a bit of control in their lives  -- often in a very small symbolic way -- this can be amazingly liberating and will often prove a turning point. One recent client gave himself permission to take a short lunch break and get out of the office -- a simple act that did wonders for his sense of personal control and proved a springboard later on for greater changes in his life.

However, sometimes the problem is holding on to too much control... the client who won't delegate or micro-manages their team to within an inch of their life to name two examples. I find this a tougher pattern to work with as there is often a bigger investment in existing behaviour. It is often a slow process of encouraging the client to progressively let go of whatever they are holding on to too tightly and test whether the sky actually does fall in. As one client said' It's a bit like a kite string ... you let go of control a bit at a time'.

So how are things today - too much or too little control in your life?

Asking questions in change

I was talking last week with an HR Director who does an exceptional job at managing change in his organisation. "It is simple really" he said, "as soon as you grasp that change means loosing some degree of control then all you have to do is get really creative to help people feel back in the driving seat. Probably the most immediate way of doing this is to help people to ask the question they really want to ask ---then work really hard to get them an answer ".

This is an organisation who takes this sort of process really seriously - they regularly track employee queries and can tell you how they are doing responding to them. Its not that the employee necessarily gets the answer they want to hear, but at least they have the certainty of being heard.

Simple maybe but very effective.