Happy Birthday Blog!

One year and 63 posts later - its the first birthday of this blog! Rather than talking about something that has happened this week in my travels around corporate life - my usual topic for a blog - I thought I'd take a look back at which blogs have proved most popular with you, my esteemed reader in 2011-12. So roll of drums, fanfare of trumpets I can reveal the top 3 most read blogs as:

1. The Elephant and the Rider

2. Abdication, delegation, interference
3. The 'imposter syndrome' - issues in coaching

What if anything does this tell me about organisational life and those of us who inhabit the corporate corridors? For me there is a theme here about 'worry'.  It worries me (!) that I meet a lot of people who worry about getting it wrong - as if there was some external standard that they have not been made privy to but will still be judged on. Organisational life strikes me as far more chaotic and messy than we give credence to, but instead we blame ourselves for our alleged inability to cope/be smart enough/be certain enough. On the odd occasion when teams get around to the subject of worry, they are usually relieved to find that others are struggling with similar issues and they are not the only one who feels like a fraud or a poor line manager.


So thanks for all the reads and comments - I still can't get my head around having a readership in Estonia, Australia and Peru but that is the global village we live in. Looking forward year two - keep the comments coming.

Abdication, delegation, interference

How do leaders know if what they are giving their people is right?

This was the question that was exercising a leader I met last week. He was very aware of the strengths and weaknesses of his team and the challenges they had on . He was also very clear about his own management style and was well aware that he loved 'doing the doing'  and was in danger of getting overly involved and potentially becoming an interference and a nuisance to his team

He'd also experimented with more delegation and talked fondly of a happy couple of weeks when he'd been able to go home at 5pm after off loading his project backlog. This had backfired slightly when he discovered his team straining to complete tasks and he'd  concluded that his 'delegation' had actually become abdication.

This delicate balance is of course the stuff of 'situational leadership' - the fine art of judging the right degree of empowerment and autonomy. And art is is ... if there was rule book on how to do this perfectly it would be a best seller. My leader was more than half way there as he understood that getting it wrong was normal and was willing to have conversations with his team about what he needed to provide them. How refreshing!

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?