• Is your organisation going through a major transformation post Covid in an attempt to become future fit?
• Are you hoping to launch a fresh brand promise, purpose or vision?
• Do you struggle to explain the usp of your business to employees, suppliers and candidates?
• Have you had enough of working in survival mode and crave higher ground?
• Can’t manage the transition from smart or blended working back to bums on seats?
• Struggling to recruit, retain or engage employees?

 

If you answered “Yes” to any of the questions above, you may want to consider re-evaluating your employer brand.

Why employer brand and why now?

For some. It’s a 90s concept, when the war for talent was raging and was used to define the promises and expectations generated between employee and employer. But as I highlighted in Brand Engagement, it should more accurately be known as “employment” brand because the relationship between those who work for and who lead organisations has far more give and take than most realise. It’s an equation that factors in experience (promises made) and subtracts workaday reality (behaviour experienced). And the point is, it’s supposed to make you more attractive to stakeholders.

 

In the current, cynical environment where customers and employees alike are liberated by choice and empowered by a plethora of communications platforms, it’s more important than ever that organisations deliver on the promises they make to markets.

 

Whether stakeholders are customers, shareholders or staff, the truth will always out.

 

Employer brand informs the customer and colleague experience. Crafted and positioned properly, it has the potential to engage employees and candidates with your purpose and business aspirations. It can and should embody what marketeers call your employee value proposition (EVP) or the sum of what makes your organisation unique as an employer.

 

Communicated well, it can transform your employment offering into simple, actionable, enticing, powerful, and easily understood language so everyone, including suppliers and business partners understand and can align appropriately. It has the potential to be inspiring, empowering, and unifying or to suck morale dry with cynicism and hypocrisy. Managed well, your employer brand, should be an asset on your balance sheet.

Employer Brand as an Employee Engagement Driver

If you’re struggling with teamwork in the post pandemic blended working world and can’t seem to get people into your expensive offices, your employer brand may well need some serious re-work. Yet you probably aren’t even aware of the blind spots because the best people will just leave without telling you and your worst people, left behind, won’t be listening.

 

Likewise, if you’re going through a major transformation or change or need to launch a new project, programme or way of working a shift in attitude, behaviour, culture, and direction is most likely required. Focusing on the employer brand can galvanise and help to shape fresh and evolving employee expectations and synchronise them with the latest strategy, narrative, business focus and objectives.

 

A proper employer/employee brand programme also has the potential to build a cadre of brand champions and underpin an appropriate culture that will engage rather than antagonise customers. Too many leaders are too impatient at the moment, re-imposing ways of working that no longer fit employee and customer expectations post pandemic. If they were ineffectual during lockdown, they will probably be worse when the doors open again.

What about our Marketing?

If you’re re-defining or launching a new consumer brand promise, product line or service offering, it isn’t good enough simply to “show your employees the adverts”.

 

The so-called consumer brand requires translation for your employees so they understand how to deliver on the customer experience. They need to know where they fit in and you need to be clear about how this development adds to the organisation’s existing narrative and is communicated via the information superhighway of your workplace and in the behaviour of your people.

Recognition, Retention and Recruitment

For those in recruitment and HR communications who are wrestling with their performance management system and frustrated with their current careers website, social media platforms, internal recruitment procedures, third-party interpretation by agencies, student recruitment communications, and more – you may want to re-evaluate your current employer brand. It should tell a clear story about “why candidates should work here” and give existing employees a very clear picture of the part they play in their organisation’s journey and story.

 

Right now, enlightened senior executives will know that the bottom of the slump past the eye of the storm is a time rich with opportunities. But they will be losing sleep about employee engagement and churn, believe you me. They will also be frustrated by the potential loss of momentum as opportunities come from dark times, as they always do. Times like these call for changing gears in order to re-focus and re-motivate a jaded workforce. But it’s hard to do that when the leaders themselves are worn and hoarse from shouting.

 

Leadership development is one option. Culture change is another. Better communication is certainly up there as an improvement intervention. But you may well already be trying all of these. Under conditions like we’re all facing, taking a fresh, appreciative but critical look at your brand, at the interface between the promises you make to customers and those you make to staff, can provide a focal point for culture development and behaviour change or even a new spark in the marketing space. Call us outrageous but why not get your HR and Marketing functions together with your Comms team to create a joint strategy? It can work really well, you know, if you’re brave enough to want to stand out from the crowd?

Well, it wasn’t the most dynamic of openings I’ll admit, but we recently mentioned in a client meeting that it was Business Continuity week in May. You could hear the eyeballs roll like it was 1999.

 

What short memories we all have eh!

 

We may have just been through a global pandemic which permanently altered our ways of working in ways that we’re yet to fully appreciate. But have attitudes to crisis management really improved for good? And do we still afford Comms and OD colleagues the respect they deserve for their unique skills and invaluable role they play? Really?

 

Sure, we’re all worn out, weary of living on the edge of apocalypse, survivors of our own unique dramas hinting at PTSD. But leaders, especially first line managers, have borne the brunt of the constant scrambling for the latest new normal while privileged board members show their frustration with the slow pace of restoring bums to expensive seats.

 

Even if the more logical among us recognise that socio- economic circumstances suggest that the pace of change is going to be extreme, well, forever, let’s face it, crises are likely to be constant (the climate change activists think we only have 50 years left on this planet, for example), and most of us are largely living in denial for fear of the worst.

 

The last thing most leaders want to do is start re-examining our crisis and contingency plans. We want an office and a reason to anchor us there and real work to be getting on with until THIS weirdness all goes away, right?

Are you crisis ready?

I’m sure you’ve heard the moans and possibly even muttered these phrases yourselves from time to time when someone mentions the need to review contingency, comms or crisis readiness:

 

“Oh come on, we’re wasting so much time prepping for something that will probably never happen while I’m here” or “lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place…”

 

Better still: “I’ve got real work to do now” etc etc
“We all know the drill and have all become communicators. So let’s start reigning back on that stuff.”

 

Suffice to say: had it not been for each and every organisation’s contingency/emergency, crisis plans, developed and delivered largely by their IT, Ops, Comms and HR professionals, one thing’s for sure, more organisations would have gone down during the global pandemic than actually made it through. It’s not for nothing that Comms, HR and IT colleagues have been lauded as superheroes during this pandemic, popped almost on the same pedestal as frontline essential health workers.

 

So, before you rush forward and write off the pandemic as a one off event or start filling comms teams with “super secretarial services”, take a hard and long look around you. Take proper stock of the political and economic instability that is rampant at the moment, how 911 was followed by banking crisis by austerity by Brexit by the identity conflicts then by war. Where will it all end? Well, it probably won’t. Sadly. And you’re going to need communicators and crisis managers who are future fit, permanently.

Future Fit Comms

We talk a lot about future fit leadership traits here at Mosaic Towers. We’ve been chatting non-stop about future fitness since the pandemic really gripped as we knew then what we all know now, that the health crisis was only the first wave of permanent changes to leadership competencies. We’ve helped many clients develop their crisis communication strategies before, but often after the proverbial “horse” has bolted.

 

Business continuity skills are very much part of the future fit leadership constellation. The ability to horizon scan, strategize, plan agilely, recruit and engage stakeholders and express the organisation’s journey as an evolving narrative complete with trials and successes are all component parts of the future fitness leadership package. So how confident are you feeling, right now? How future fit are your crisis management skills, especially the communication element?

 

Well, to help mark Business Continuity Week in May, have a go at this simple test. Give yourself and your leadership collective a mark out of five for each of these ten questions. If you’re scoring less than 30/50, give us a ring. As you know, it’s good to chat.

Survey

(out of 5 with 5 = exemplary)

 

1. Rate your current crisis management strategy, plan SOP [     ]

2. Rate the current crisis comms management skills of your Comms, IT, HR functions. [     ]

3. Rate the current crisis comms management skills of your senior leaders [     ]

4. Rate the current crisis comms management skills of your first line managers [     ]

5. Rate your internal stakeholder engagement levels [     ]

6. Rate your horizon and issues scanning ability as an organisation. [     ]

7. Rate the resilience levels of your employees. [     ]

8. Rate your crisis management continuous improvement mechanisms. [     ]

9. To what extent is crisis management entrenched in your organisation’s goal setting and performance management for leaders? [     ]

10. To what extent do you benchmark your crisis management approach and share best practices? [     ]

Scores:

40-50: Head up: fancy delivering a masterclass on the subject for us?

 

30- 40: Chin up: You’re in the zone, but watch for blind spots

 

Under 30: Don’t hang up: Give us a call asap.

 

The Team @ Mosaic

 

We would love to hear from you…

 

hello@mosaicpartners.co.uk

From the Cool Britannia epoch through to the banking collapse, there was a cacophony of chatter about mindfulness. It eased when times got tougher. Odd that. Yet most people are still confused about what it is, male senior leaders especially, in our experience, and interestingly, as coaches, we’ve started talking about it again during the pandemic.

 

But is there a problem with the term and how useful is the concept now?

 

A coping strategy I deploy when faced with hyped, spun or contentious subjects is to tread the writer’s path and literally re-examine the semantic root of the challenge.

 

In this case, put simply, mindfulness is the quality or state of being conscious or aware of something. It’s also a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment, while calmly acknowledging and accepting one’s feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations, used as a therapeutic technique.

 

Well, I’m not sure about the term “therapeutic” but it’s certainly useful as a coping strategy, especially as, from a leadership perspective, being mindful implies a positive coping mechanism and that the skills required to become and remain mindful, when necessary, are very useful. In short, it’s a handy strategy for keeping “one’s head when all about you are losing theirs” etc etc. And let’s face it, there are a lot of exploding heads in the world at the moment.

 

Yet why does the term trigger the gag reflex in most leader and serious business types? Surely mindfulness should epitomise inclusion. Yet it’s pitched as exclusive. Mention it in a meeting and watch for the heavy eye roll? And why have studies criticised it so, including respected publications like Psychology Today and Neuroscience News.

 

Well, let’s be honest, it has an image problem. If mindfulness were an animal it would quack, have a rainbow coat and reek of essential oils. It’s associated with exclusive “alternative” life-styles and the fringe behaviour of counter-cultural types. It’s more Brighton than Brixton and I should know, having lived and worked in both locations.

 

I do recall, with toe-curling clarity, a funky Omnicom leadership workshop on the Strand in which I and my senior colleagues were assaulted by what appeared to be a rabble of ragged troubadours wielding talking drums, peace pipes, vegan notebooks and recipes for knitting yoghurt (that last bit may be a fib). They taught us to juggle and breathe fire while channelling a speaking stick (I kid you not)…

 

It was supposed to bind the team and spark creative thinking. But it caused a rift in the senior ranks from which we never recovered. So we all had to take a few thrashings from the productivity learning stick of experience as a consequence.

 

The challenge with concepts like mindfulness is that they’re pitched as exclusive or “special”. While we all oscillate on a daily spectrum that ranges from panicked to distracted to grounded to mindful in response to internal and external environmental factors, many of those who teach it aim to live permanently on the margins. And they kind of like it that way. This has to be a prime reason why mindfulness has acquired a reputation for exclusivity, indulgence and for marginalising the mainstream in which most normal folk swim.

 

Having all been through a global pandemic together, however, everyday life has drawn heavily on the wellbeing resources of everyone, employees and leaders alike. Line managers have been the pivot point for much of the crisis management and change activity, HR functions have battled valiantly and it’s no surprise that most leaders are running out of ways to cultivate sustainable performance levels from drained colleagues who are obsessing constantly about how national and international socio-economic issues are going to impact their children’s lives.

 

In this scenario, an individual’s resilience is largely determined by the interplay of their coping mechanisms, also their ability to remain calm, grounded and focused for the sake of the team.

 

Now that sounds familiar, doesn’t it?

 

In a coaching setting, we’re able to compartmentalise each coachees stressors then explore coping mechanisms from the resilience circumplex to ensure that they become and remain focused on the moment rather than drained by fretting about the uncontrollable. It’s why our coaches focus on the whole individual, not just the person who presents for work. This approach gives us license to discuss sport, nature walks, spiritualism, hobbies, gardening, writing and reading and time with children and pets as a mindfulness element of the coaching mix. So we do.

 

Sorry if our approach to mindfulness sounds boring and may not always involve enough incense for some of you. But the way we’re now approaching this subject seems to be helping more senior leaders than you might think. And many are men. Though if it makes you feel any better, more than one has been known to hug a tree from time to time.

Was it Donald Rumsfeld, amongst others, who uttered this phrase?

 

Well, that should be pinned to every Boardroom wall at the moment. Because we truly are living through entirely unprecedented times and it’s the unenviable task of leaders to make some sense of it all, while feeling under siege themselves.

 

“On-going challenges and global threats such as the pandemic, climate crisis, political instability (particularly in Europe), and now outbreak of war continues to create a volatile and hugely unpredictable trading landscape for our clients.

 

As coaches and engagement and change specialists, we hear about their struggles every day. So if you’re reading this, you’re certainly not alone in finding it hard to see into the future.

 

Organisations are grappling with a unique set of unforeseen challenges. Leaders are scratching their heads about how best to implement classic thinking in the face of revolutionary conditions in search of a ‘catch all’ hybrid working model whilst meeting ever-demanding targets. Yet continued covid related pressures add further physical and mental resourcing issues into the mix. And all of this is precariously balanced on the heads of people, from first line manager level up, who are just about managing to keep above water level, for now.

 

None of us can deny that it is imperative that leadership development evolves at an appropriate pace to remain future-focused and ahead of the transformation curve. But there aren’t any textbooks about the how as noone has had the chance to write them yet. Some of the classics still hold true. But not all of them. Agility, evolution, listening and adapting to each unique set of circumstances is key. But who has the time and foresight in your organisation to do that when the workaday normality is so fraught?

 

It’s no coincidence that the Mosaic team is drawn from very experienced and versatile practitioners from across the organisation development spectrum. All are cross-sector experienced. All have been leaders in their own rights. Together we’ve provided support to dozens of household names and many more emerging brands.

 

All Mosaic programmes are unique, yet based on tried and tested foundations and each is purposely designed to act as a pathfinder for the transformation process within our client organisations, equipping leaders with the skills needed to adapt to a new world, at a new pace, ensuring a consistent model of leadership excellence for future fit organisations and their people, at an inconsistent and volatile time.

 

We partner with organisations to develop their leadership teams at all levels, from first line management through to senior executive teams. Always at the forefront of our approach is maintaining constant focus on the achievement on the business’s core outcomes and deliverables. We do this by concentrating on the enabling activities that drive those outcomes and ensure that they are, and remain, grounded in core purpose, outcomes focused and future fit.

 

We take a ‘done with’ rather than ‘done to’ approach, ensuring that we transfer ownership for all the goals, objectives and methodology to the client leadership teams over time. Our approach guarantees a sustainable versus over dependent relationship that empowers, encourages, and supports to unlock potential at individual, team, and organisational level.

 

In this age of information overload, our programmes are purposefully designed to cultivate co-created and co-owned outcomes that are unique to every client. We constantly learn from good practice but take nothing off the shelf. And where we genuinely don’t know, we create learning pathways to help our clients explore and evolve. Where we excel is in creating safe, informed, supported, and immersive development environments and pragmatic learning experiences that motivate leaders to think for themselves and in turn, deliver behavioural and cultural change aligned to business strategy.

 

This adaptability with a consistent core is what we believe future fit leadership looks like, for an uncertain world and, as ever…we would love to continue the conversation with you.

 

“A leader’s job is to look to the future and see the organisation, not as it is, but as it should be.”

Jack Welch

Why “Reframed”?

Well, we’ve little doubt that, as leaders of complex organisations battling the challenges of the post pandemic tail, February probably feels more like November, such is the scale of the complex conditions in which you’re operating, the depth of uncertainty and the height of the performance bar. If the chatter in your boardroom doesn’t feature the term “resilience”, we’ll eat our branded hats. Resilience, until recently, was a term reserved for elites or extremes:

 

• endurance athletes
• adventurers and explorers
• special forces personnel
• contact sports players
• disaster survivors

 

It was an implied measure of how much punishment an individual can take before either achieving triumphant success of failing spectacularly. It wasn’t for the workaday, the average and the mundane unless they worked under a theory x, command and control, output-pushing management regime.

 

It took a pandemic, however, to jostle the term out into the open until it became openly discussed, as it is now, given the ongoing debates about:

 

• how much pressure leaders and managers can soak up
• how much insecurity and burden employees can endure

 

and has somehow morphed into an implied challenge; “Just how resilient are you….eh?”

It’s a term far more suited to the toxicity debates that pre-dated the Covid crisis, the identity politics that suggested that one of the symptoms of alpha competitive behaviour was inverted competitiveness, unhealthy silences, and worse coping mechanisms.

 

In short, in business, resilience has never really been a good thing over a significant period of time because:

 

1. It hides but doesn’t address underlying problems with the system that are causing the stress on the system and the individuals
2. It reinforces behaviour that isn’t sustainable
3. Quite frankly, nobody, not even those being remunerated above director level, should have to simply endure their work in return for a salary.

 

So, in the context of leadership behaviours that are fit for the future, not just now, we reframe resilience to ensure that it is explored:

 

• from both the individual and organisations’ perspective
• in the round, taking all of it’s key drivers into account
• in the light of the prevailing corporate culture and socio-political landscape

 

As crisis gives way to uncertainty and opportunity, future fit leaders have to listen, adapt and innovate at a pace commensurate with the pressures of the age. We reframe resilience as a measure to determine the pace of leadership development. We, enable future fit leaders to understand the learning process, to fail faster, recover agilely and continuously improve rather than being afraid to be seen to be invincible and dodge risks as a result. We teach them to bend and flex rather than break, but from a core that remains consistent, stable and rooted in core values.

 

We’re very pleased to be helping a number of organisations explore the role of resilience amongst their leadership cohort, but from a balanced, pragmatic perspective, developing tactics for building and sustaining resilience when it’s most needed during the leadership journey.

With our Strategic Advisor and Transformation Consultant Ian Buckingham

 

Systems thinking has been around since the 40s/50s but only really came into its own in the post Senge Fifth Discipline world, and even then has not always found favour with the hearts, flowers and feelings proponents within HR.

 

Why? Well, largely because it views all organisations as systems, with mutually dependable parts, including the people processes and systems, all elements that can be influenced and managed. And let’s face it, there’s a bit about the psyche of certain people professionals that likes to think it takes more than just a pinch of magic dust to be great at doing the “people stuff”, an ingredient that, conveniently at times, can’t be identified let alone quantified.

 

Systems thinking is the process of understanding how things influence one another within a whole. In nature we look at ecosystems in which various elements such as air, earth, water, movement, plants, and animals work together to impact environment and co-dependents. In organisations, systems consist of people, behaviours, structures, and processes that work together to make an organisation “healthy” or “unhealthy”, provided we’re enlightened enough to measure in the right way.

 

As with all sciences, there’s room for magic, flair, charisma, the maverick and hard to explain elements of the system. But most of it can be predicted, tracked/monitored and continuously improved and, indeed, has to be to be truly sustainable and scalable and repeatable, qualities very important when scaling up, growing, globalising, shifting to blended working or acquiring.

 

The typical components of an OD or Organisation Development strategy, the traditional systems domain within HR or the people disciplines can and should, as a minimum, include most of these components:

 

• HR systems (IT)
• Planning, processes, measurement and legals
• Culture development
• ED&I
• Employee engagement
• Recruitment and hiring
• Performance management, reward and recognition
• Leadership development
• Learning and development
• Coaching, mentoring and service delivery

 

Ideally, these components will be operationalised as important working elements within the people strategy. There should be KPIs and goals in place for them all and they will be monitored and managed, so they work in synchronicity. Oddly, however, that seldom happens as each component often falls under an individual’s sphere of influence and is, therefore, subject to the ultimate in “magic dust”, the unpredictability of human discretion.

 

Of primary importance in this list, especially during times of great turbulence, uncertainty, and change, is the culture development aspect. It’s vital that there is a clearly articulated picture of:

 

• the desired and future-fit organisation culture necessary to deliver the vision, mission and goals in a 3-5 year horizon
• the current culture, thereby depicting the gap between ideal and real.

 

The rest of the system relies heavily upon these two profiles to steer the milestones governing their own rollout and effectiveness. Without clarity here, the human influence has too few guidelines, checks and balances and often wanders widely from the path of the main transformation journey.

 

For example, what’s the point of a performance management system that reinforces the current culture and doesn’t include goals, L&D and traits, values, and competencies necessary to bring to life the required culture? These goals and milestones coordinate, steer and guide the leaders developing the core components of the system. Without them, well- meaning chaos often looms.

 

Interestingly, however, a quantitative or even qualitative picture of what good looks like from a future perspective seldom exists in many HR systems. This could be overcome by decent mentoring and/or coaching at all influential levels. But where it exists, leadership coaching is often confined to the very top team. Here it has less immediate operational impact than including line managers. It is often delivered by training or L&D departments too, who are often part of the problem/challenge.

 

As I said in the recent Leaky Bucket article, an OD system will continue to drain goodwill, morale, and money when you apply pressure and plug a hole in the system to attend to one deficiency if you don’t take a comprehensive, system-based approach to any major transformation, change or HR improvement drive. It will also fall short if you don’t upskill your leadership teams to become passionate advocates, ambassadors, and role models for the change you want to see.

 

Coaching, especially in high pressure situations filled with the uncertainty of rolling change, can be hugely valuable. But it is fraught with pitfalls:

 

• focusing solely on the senior leaders fails to recognise the impact that first line managers especially have on the culture
• in-house coaches struggle to envisage and inspire the desired future as they’re tied to and a product of the current culture
• independent supervision and cross-sector best practices are really important. Without an external influence, organisations fail to learn from the mistakes and hard-earned successes of others

 

Coaching in a vacuum without that desired future culture and clear goals can cause more problems than it cures by pushing leaders so far ahead of the operational curve that their approaches are rejected or swallowed up by the core current culture.

 

Sure, it’s perfectly possible to employ people-centric consultants to help coach your leaders as part of a transformation process. It happens all the time with lots of quick wins amongst the top team. But no matter how highly skilled they are, change will struggle to stick if your OD system isn’t comprehensive and in balance with the zeal of the top team coaching.

 

Senge talks about three components of system’s thinking:

1.A consistent and strong commitment to learning
2.A willingness to challenge your own mental model – accepting your own role in problems and being open to different ways of seeing and doing
3.Always including multiple perspectives when looking at a phenomenon – e.g. “triangulating” theperspectives of customers, line-staff, experts, etc.

 

A great coach will be a great business partner and will provide both support and challenge in equal measure, not just on an individual coaching level but in terms of the components of the OD system. So, when choosing the ideal partner, do make a point of progressing conversations with those who get this and at least insist that someone has the components of the system covered, somewhere and can ideally share successful case studies to illustrate their point.

We would be delighted to continue the conversation…

Another day, another bucket full of employee engagement articles, most of them woefully misguided and terribly confusing.

 

Employee engagement, put simply, is a state of mind in which employees deliver to their full potential because of an emotional and rational connection with the organisation they work for.

 

It is no more complicated than that.

 

It does not require dozens of definitions. It most certainly is not, as many commentators imply, a goal in and of itself.

Employee engagement is a means to an end and that end is the achievement of the objectives of the organisation.

 

Far too many people who should know so much better suggest that employee engagement can be achieved by a single initiative or requires complex behavioural science. No wonder the statistics have flat lined over the last decade while CEOs leave the room in search of the headache pills upon mention of the term.

 

Of course organisations can influence engagement levels and of course they should given engagement is an important enabler or driver of organisation performance. But it requires a systems approach to fix the leaky organisation bucket. Concentrate all efforts in one area only, promise what you can’t deliver and you’re likely to do more harm as the goodwill leaks out elsewhere at a rapid rate.

 

I’ve worked with dozens of organisations to bring about sustainable, positive change. I’ve seen examples of great initiatives that have created energy and focus. But this always fades away unless the people processes that drive the organisation development system are improved systematically. These include, but are not limited to:

 

• culture management
• leadership development
• internal communication
• recruitment
• retention
• succession management
• performance management
• training and development

 

The best organisations recognise that brand management involves collaborative partnerships between internal and external facing departments and they form alliances between hr, marketing and comms.

 

So do everyone a favour, unless you recognise that employee engagement is an enabler not an outcome and you’re prepared to address at least all of the above holes in your otherwise leaky OD bucket, then please drop the engagement word. You’re wasting your time, doing yourself and your organisation an injustice and giving the people disciplines a very bad name.

What is the range of leadership development challenges you’ve experienced as a coach recently, and does the nature of the invitation change depending on whether the client is male or female?

Ian: The range is huge. Mostly the requests are to coach a cohort as part of a programme of leadership development, possibly linked to a management standard but almost certainly coinciding with a major tipping point in the evolution of the organisation like a takeover, a fresh strategy or perhaps change at the top. There are also occasions when we’re asked to coach a particular individual with a challenge, like a rising star or a leader dealing with a unique set of circumstances.

 

The nature of invitation doesn’t really change based on gender. Most cases are referred via HR departments where there is normally a strong female/male gender bias (as much as 80/20 in some sectors): unless well-managed, this could influence how coaches and coachees are paired.

 

Generally, female clients seem more comfortable appreciating people- centric change practices. But bias according to gender could be an issue to be addressed during the coaching. It shouldn’t adversely influence the procurement process, setup or programme management.

 

Kate: You tend to see themes and trends depending on the level of leadership you are working with, and the industries they are working in. However, the nature of requests can be extremely varied.

 

We coach leaders usually as part of a broader strategic leadership and culture development project; therefore many of the strategic objectives for the coaching will be shared. But within that, each leader will set and work towards their own personal goals – and they can range from developing their confidence, communication and delegation to helping them see the bigger picture and sometimes reaching difficult decisions. Both men and women often have things going on at home that are affecting their personal wellbeing, resilience and performance.

 

On reflection, the nature of the requests doesn’t tend to be all that different for men and women. However, men are much more likely to seek coaching with a specific purpose or outcome in mind, whereas in my experience, women are more likely to seek coaching for more holistic reasons: they may not have a specific outcome in mind initially, but just feel it would be helpful.

 

I see a lot of imposter syndrome, mainly in some of the most talented, competent and successful leaders you can imagine, and gender is not a factor here. Both men and women suffer from imposterism equally – but women are more likely to admit it!

What are the likely male-to-female coachee ratios at senior levels?

Ian: Within more traditional sectors and heavy industry I’d say, based on recent experience, that there’s still a 70/30 or so bias towards men at senior executive level. But this completely changes in agencies, digital organisations, education, health, the civil service and some professional services sectors where it’s closer to 50/50 or sometimes female-dominated. However, there are more female than male coaches. It’s an interesting trend and possibly a reflection of women leading the gig economy. I’d certainly expect to see a lot of thought given to supporting true diversity and inclusion when considering the coaching mix, whatever the focus of the programme.

 

Kate: I would say that about 80% of our current coachees are men. But that’s mainly down to the industry sectors we are currently working in. I’m afraid there is always a higher percentage of men occupying senior executive posts in the majority of organisations we work with, yet it seems to be getting more evenly distributed in tech and healthcare. Most clients are now making genuine and concerted efforts to change this, which is good to see.

Do you find that leaders prefer to be coached by their own gender?

Ian: Hard to generalise. People are complex and their motives more so. Some will want to be challenged and may consider that a coach of a different gender will add to their learning curve. Others may prefer more support and may consider that this can be offered by someone with similar characteristics and whom can more readily empathise with their lived experience. Others will want an easier ride! Whichever way, expression of a preference is the root into some interesting development territory. Whether coachees perceive that someone of the gender with which they identify will be more or less indulgent is a moot point. It does highlight the importance of the programme team when making decisions about matching coaches to coachees to ensure the right support/challenge ratios.

 

As professional coaches, our role is heavily reliant on self-awareness, understanding our personal brand and unique qualities. We’re not amorphous blobs of beige projecting neutrality or rainbows of colour, relentlessly perfect. CPD is vital, as is being part of a team able to maintain critical objectivity and balance, and able to offer clients what they need to make the most of their coaching relationships. Gender shouldn’t be a big factor. But we’re realists. A diverse and inclusive coaching team offering options across the support and challenge spectrum is a critical part of coaching and a sign of a healthy practice.

 

Kate: I’m so glad this question came up. In my experience, men often prefer to be coached by a woman, something which many people seem surprised about. I have asked coachees why this is the case and I’m told that men find it easier to open up and be honest with a female coach, more able to share their vulnerabilities. I often wonder if, on some level, they expect to receive less challenge from a woman coach, but I’m not sure this is what they get.

What’s most important is that the right chemistry and fit exists between coach and coachee, regardless of gender or other characteristics. The success of any coaching intervention is directly proportionate to the quality of the relationship between coach and coachee. Sometimes it fits well and other times it doesn’t.

What does a typical coaching relationship look like?

Kate: I believe each coaching relationship is completely unique; however, there are some typical characteristics of successful coaching relationships regardless of gender, and they are trust, equality, openness and respect. The relationship is purposeful, and as a coach you are there to hold space for your coachee while remaining flexible and adaptable to ensure they get what they need from the coaching. Effective contracting is key here. It is hugely important to ensure all parties are clear on the expectations, desired outcomes and boundaries of the relationship. This increases the likelihood of commitment and success.

 

The coaching relationship is a safe space for leaders to exclusively focus on their development; a place where they can go to their ‘learning edge’ while being supported and challenged in equal measure. Leaders will often need to express and work through difficult and/or uncomfortable issues, and they might need to really ‘eyeball’ themselves at times. If the coaching relationship isn’t strong, a leader won’t go there, and you end up with superficial development that doesn’t truly evoke change or transformation.

 

Ian: Regardless of the logistical mechanics, there needs to be contracted clarity about:

 

• a. goals and milestones;
• b. a context and wider support programme, because coaching doesn’t happen in a vacuum;
• c. boundaries,respect andways of working;
• d. andreviewinfrastructureandprogressupdates.

 

There are clearly other nuances harder to define, like chemistry, but these are the core foundations upon which a productive coaching relationship is built.

Do you believe there’s any difference to the way men and women coach, and respond to coaching?

Kate: I’m not sure that gender is a factor when it comes to coaching styles. I think this is more down to the unique nature and characteristics of the coach. I’ve been coached by both men and women and have trained both as coaches and I can’t say I’ve noticed any trends.

 

In terms of response to coaching, when we go into organisations to deliver large-scale leadership development programmes, I have noticed that the men seem more cynical at first! They are far more likely to ask if there’s some sort of hidden agenda and if things are going to be ‘fed back’ to the executive or HR team; perhaps the women feel the same, but they rarely articulate it. Once we get established in the coaching relationship, following our contracting session, it’s brilliant to see the initial cynicism fall away and leaders making the most of the coaching experience.

 

Ian: No, not really. You might as well ask whether men and women paint or cook, build or teach differently. There are some nuances in how men and women typically present when working through the range of emotions that coaching inevitably unleashes, but it’s more subtle than the clichés imply.

 

Much of a coachee’s attitude to the coaching relationship depends upon the setup, selection and introduction processes and the way the organisation has sold the need. We prefer to focus on skills, attributes and experience when pairing coaches and coachees.

 

With regard to how coachees respond to coaching based on gender, again I believe the relationship between a coach and coachee is as unique as the sum of their experiences. While professional good practice and a coaching system will guide relationships, part of the joy of coaching is taking and travelling the development path that’s best suited to the individual and their needs, adapting process and behaviour along the way.

In light of the above, has coaching changed during the pandemic and has gender played much of a part?

Kate and Ian: We work with national clients, so we’ve always delivered the bulk of our coaching remotely. Obviously this has increased dramatically over recent months.

 

As the typical working day has encroached on private time, both the men and women that we coach, where they have families, report that they have invariably become more involved in managing home and work life together. This certainly affected women more than men at first, but we believe that it advanced the cause of shared parenting, as well as gender equality at work.

 

While many coachees with families had to make the most of the chance to spend more time as a family, it is also clear that they highly valued the opportunity to take time out, step back and work through issues, decisions and opportunities with someone impartial who, most importantly, is not working in the business or with a member of their household.

 

Coaching helps bring fresh perspectives and unlocks different ways of thinking about important subjects. Ultimately senior leadership roles can be very lonely: there’s often few people you can turn to and have an honest and frank conversation with. This has been exacerbated by limited contact in person. Under these circumstances especially, coaching relationships are appreciated.

 

Loneliness has been accentuated by the pandemic. This has certainly highlighted leadership deficits where leadership style is based on proximity, presenteeism and directive management. Flexible, listening, responsive, open-minded and objectives-based leadership styles are thriving.

 

When working remotely, almost every interaction is ‘transactional’. If the phone rings, someone wants something from you. There are few moments for transformational discussion, for the relationship- building niceties. In this environment, many coaching relationships have come into their own.

 

The pandemic may have eroded some of the gendered coaching clichés. Organisations are recognising the importance of compassionate and people-centric leadership and cultures. Command and control and number-crunching performance management simply doesn’t cut it any longer.

 

These trends won’t end when the pandemic does. Blended working is here to stay and smart working has opened up the diversity and depth of the talent market. Quality coaching relationships will undoubtedly become more important than ever as leadership and the nature of work continues to evolve, for both men and women. Organisations increasingly need to wake up to this reality, and coaches and coachees alike need to be prepared to continue to evolve to meet this challenge.

 

Kate will be expanding on and delivering a talk on this topic on 9 March, 2022. You can read more about Kate and Ian’s work by following the Mosaic blog, picking up a copy of one of Ian’s books – which explore the nature of leadership in many organisational contexts – or reading his HR Fixer column in People Management magazine.

 

We’ve adopted Ian’s #CoachingConversations format for the above piece. Throughout the pandemic Ian has run a series of events where he assembles coaches, mentors and HR professionals from around the globe to debate a critical, people-related organisational change topic. The format asks the group to suggest a burning question about the topic that they would like their virtually assembled colleagues to answer. They submit this independently. Then they answer all of the questions alone and Ian sculpts a thought piece based on the output. The aim is to compare and contrast while avoiding group think.

Firstly, what is psychological safety?

Psychological safety is a phrase first coined by Amy Edmondson, a behavioural scientist at Harvard University.

 

Essentially, in a psychologically safe environment, we are safe to show up, express ourselves, have our voice heard and be accepted without judgement and fear that somebody in our team is going to be malicious towards us.

What is the negative impact of not having psychological safety?

A workplace without psychological safety can lead us to feel stress responses. We know this can result in a lack of creativity, we shut down, we don’t speak up and this is not a great environment to work in to get the best out of people.

Now we know what psychological safety IS, what is it NOT?

Some assume it is where people feel very comfortable and safe with one another but it’s actually the opposite. It’s having an environment to feel safe in to have difficult conversations, address the tough issues and not be afraid.

 

Psychological safety is not where people can say what they want and without consequence. It’s about agreeing what’s acceptable and encourage that behaviour in the team.

With so many people now working from home, how do we ensure that employees feel psychologically safe whilst not physically together?

We are experiencing a global pandemic and situations that are new to us all, and as a result, people are really suffering. It’s never been more important to create psychological safety within our teams.

 

Many teams I work with don’t have a team charter in place. Team Charters mean being explicit about what the key goals are, the priorities and the deliverables. How do we measure success, what is the shared vision of success, and most importantly what will you agree to as a team in terms of the behaviours to cultivate a psychologically safe environment where we can achieve everything we’ve set out to.

 

The team that leads the charter is critical. It is not something that is leader driven; it is the team agreeing what they need between each other to create maximum trust in a psychologically safe environment – what is okay and what is not okay.

How do you establish whether your colleagues/employees feel psychologically safe?

Have a conversation about “what is psychological safety?” Help people understand what an unsafe psychological environment looks like.

 

Then think about increasing psychological safety as a group. What does that look like? What behaviours should we see and demonstrate between ourselves? With your team, go through these questions and rate them 0 to 10.

Collating the responses

Some of the results might be difficult to look at but that’s okay. If the scores on the questionnaire return low, then it’s a good place to start the conversation. Ask why the score is that way and what needs to happen to increase it.

 

The results should be discussed with the team rather than the leader – let them lead the process. The ultimate question is: ‘what do we need to do as a team to make this a more psychologically safe environment and what are we signing up to together?’

Now it’s time to build the Charter, how do you do this?

It’s all about having a dialogue and it’s a unique process to every team. Some may choose to answer the questions individually then come together; and others prefer to go through the process together.

 

The charter will be something people can sign up to – a simple, one-page document. When it’s implemented well, the team will call each other out and reward each other. Therefore, it’s important they sign up to the group charter and decide what they want to do more of, and what do they want to eradicate.

What success stories have you encountered from implanting a Charter?

We have seen teams where conflict has been reduced, but with the right kind of conflict increasing. When we see teams challenging each other and having difficult conversations then we know that’s a psychologically safe environment. Seeing the right kind of conflict increase is something to be welcomed, as opposed to shy away from.

 

The organisations with the most challenges in their culture are often those when there is no conflict, and everything looks cosy and harmonious. That can be because people do not feel psychologically safe.

Finally, what is the positive outcome of creating a culture of Psychological Safety?

There’s lots of empirical research that shows us that when teams are feeling psychologically safe, they are more creative, more innovative, they have better relationships and as a result, performance rises.