Things they say

At our parent consultations yesterday, we had our usual share of comments and feedback from parents. I loved the story a P1 Dad told me. His wee one had gone home and complained another boy had pushed him and hurt him. Dad asked why he hadn’t pushed and hurt him back.

Says the 5 year old:

“It’s not school policy to hurt other people back.”

Give that wean a job!

Coaching

As part of a diploma in coaching mentoring, I’m just about to start formal coaching sessions. My trainer is called Steve Hurst and he sends out regular e-zines with useful advice. The latest one was about playing to people’s strengths. I’m a great beleiver in finding out what people are best at and helping find ways, with them, of how they can become even better at that. Here’s Steve’s advice on how to do this. Changing how you approach conversations with staff helps motivation and helps us improve that thing we’re all in the game of – improving authentic learning and teaching, where we are fully present for those children, parents, staff we work alongside.

“A good ‘one to one’ can be measured on what your employees feel at the end of it. Do they feel, depleted, anxious, confused, under valued, stressed and insufficient? If they only felt some of these things, think of the impact on their morale, performance and your profit margin! How many days sick do your people take off with nothing more life threatening than apathy and what’s this costing your business?

We’re back to that ‘positive energy’ again, a.k.a. motivation. How can you focus the one to one so that you allow your employees to feel, valued, energised, confident and capable?

Here’s how; simply hold the conversation around four questions:

1. What are they enjoying at work?
2. What have they done well?
3. What could they do even better?
4. How can you help?

Don’t go over the “yes I know that was good but you didn’t fill out the report on a regular basis, you need to be more regular”. Then you write, development area is to ‘fill out reports regularly’, come on!

What are the 2 or 3 things this person could be even better at, if only they were given the chance? “Even better” isn’t that the crux of it? Rather than focus on all they’re useless at, focus on what they could be even better at and what could truly add value to their overall performance and your bottom line.

Change the nature of the conversation then you naturally change the outcome and wouldn’t it be great if it were more positive, up beat and based on strengths rather than perceived weaknesses?”