Real Life Stories

Gill was a first line supervisor and had worked for her company for 15 years. When new management took over they were not happy with Gill’s impatient highly stressed style of interacting with colleagues. Her capability in the role was in no doubt because of her vast skills and experience. However when they tried to talk to her about her conduct she became emotionally upset rather than angry and they were at a loss as to how to communicate with her. They felt loathe to start formal disciplinary proceedings but were not sure what else they could do without it looking to the other staff that they were condoning her errant behaviour.

On my first coaching session with Gill I found an emotionally distraught person who had no idea why she was there and saw coaching as a form of punishment. The company had not used coaching before so she viewed it with suspicion. She was particularly upset about the formality of the warning she had been given by HR. Her vulnerability suggested an internal style and someone who liked working with detail and getting things just right.

By session 3 she was starting to see the results of her own behaviour on those at work and was able to identify how it was affecting her health (e.g. headaches, insomnia and other stress symptoms.)

Gill diligently applied herself to raising her own awareness on what triggered her impatience with others and worked on new strategies to help her deal with this in the workplace.

By the end of the six sessions she had moved from feeling that her experience of work had moved from a “4” to a “9”. This was in a period of 4 months. Gill had an “Away From” motivational style which meant she was galvanised by the idea of not losing her job.

Coaching skills in this situation were more around empathic listening and building confidence.

Paul was a client who was oblivious to the impact he was having on his staff, who found him aggressive and over bearing. He was very task focussed and operationally a success but his staff did not enjoy working for him and harassment complaints were made.

His self awareness and empathy radar was not "tuned" into how others saw him. During my work with Paul, feedback about his style had to be very direct and to the point. His body language was quite dominant and aggressive which I reflected back to him. We also did some coaching around various one to one meetings he found difficult e.g. subordinates complaining of being undermined and intimidated. We used the empty chair technique for him to practise new methods of using words and tone in a more assertive rather than aggressive way, as well as him putting himself literally into the other person's chair and imagining how it felt for them. Observing the two chairs from a third observer position also showed him the impression he was giving to others.

Jack was a manager who had undergone a 360 degree appraisal. The feedback he received was that his staff felt that he had a bullying and autocratic style. His brusqueness was well known and he did not suffer fools gladly.

I worked with Jack using the Johari window as he had great difficulty accepting that this was him. He felt that people did not know him well and that they were misinterpreting his behaviour. He came to see that his inability to risk exposing his real opinions and feelings (which he saw as a sign of weakness in a manager) was leading to staff creating their own impressions, but which was in fact only a façade or front that he was putting on.

His blind spot was due to the fact that he didn’t’ receive the feedback he needed to make changes. His staff were too frightened of his bullying style to give him the very information that would have helped him to grow and change. Our coaching work focussed on the type of things he would need feedback on and how he would go about getting that feedback.

Robert was a young inexperienced manager who was seen as having great potential and his technical abilities were good. However he suffered a lack of self confidence during the various networking events he had to attend. As Robert was much younger than his colleagues at these events, he found it difficult to engage in the necessary small talk that was needed when first building a relationship. Robert felt that because his colleagues were older, they were at a different point in their lives and were talking about mortgages, children and schools! By discussing the Johari Window and the Communication Pyramid, Robert could see that he was showing his irritation at their small talk because he felt he couldn’t join in. This meant he was impatient to move to the second and third levels of the pyramid to engage in some of the more business orientated areas. He could now see that others were resisting this move too quickly up the pyramid until they felt comfortable.

Our coaching together helped him to formulate some ideas on the type of things he could talk about and not to see it as unnecessary trivia or time wasting but a natural progression in the development of interpersonal relationships.