MANAGING EFFECTIVELY TO SUPPORT OTHERS

The deliberate skill of being able to support another person in the work place is a skill that all executives and managers need to include in their tool kit when communicating and working with their people. I can appreciate this now, but when I think back to managing my own team of 17 in the skincare industry, I was far from supportive until I was coached on how to communicate and get results. My belief was that I couldn’t delegate because no one could do the work as well as I could and I didn't have the time to teach them. Sound a little familiar?

One of the many skills that I have learnt during my 10-year coaching career is to listen, ask great questions and to challenge with compassion. Recently during my time in Ubud Bali, I trained with Dr. Michael Hall to become a certified Meta-Coach to take my skills to the next level, I learnt more about deeply listening and supporting. I learnt that my best state for listening and supporting is to be curious, compassionate and challenging. My highest intention is to work with my clients so that they get clarity and self-awareness to reach their highest potentials.

Coaching is all about supporting a person in his or her situation to embrace it, understand it and transform it as the person wishes. In coaching a coach supports the person not the behaviour.

Supporting another person starts with building rapport, creating a safe environment where a person can feel they are respected, feel safe enough to speak up, be challenged and stretched, be comfortable with receiving feedback and get to the heart of things, to enable and facilitate change and transformation.

We can all get caught up in old programs that we learnt as children and unconscious commitments that we made with ourselves that over time have become redundant, and yet, we still run some of these programs in the back of our minds creating our behaviours. Behaviours are learned and can be unlearned.

When we want to enter into another person's world to have a conversation, we need their permission by asking questions respectfully, and meeting them where they’re at and not where we want them to be. My aim as a coach is to create an environment that is warm and safe, empathetic and understanding, allowing this to show through to the other person so that they feel free to let me into their world. When we enter a conversation with others and ask questions, we are speaking to their map and meaning of the world, but we often expect an answer that matches our own.

What does all this mean?

If there is resistance from the other person, you may not have provided enough support, rapport, respect or empathy. Usually this means there is not enough connection between you and your colleague or friend.

If you want to enter their world - actively listen and support them. If you need to have a challenging conversation you must hold the space by being present, listen and be prepared to be nowhere else.

Creating a safe space for disclosure

Supporting a person often requires your own disclosure, share your experience and evaluate the level that they are prepared to share, Why? because for you to be effective in facilitating change, you first share your experiences and vulnerability, the other person will then be able to experience a more challenging conversation without feeling judged or threatened, rather than a nice chat that dances on the surface. You are granted permission to go into the another person's world it is not a given.

Disclosing ourselves also invites us to confront ourselves, our humanity and our fallibility. Disclosing our reality in the presence of an accepting human being facilitates growth and change and be very transformative.

When managing and leading others the core belief above all other beliefs is that - The problem that is presented to you, is never the problem. 

People have a fire in their bellies to develop themselves. By creating the awareness of what is running outside of their conscious awareness gives them the opportunity to esteem themselves, so that they can make better choices and have an opportunity to see what they are capable of.

It's your job as a manager to develop the human skills you need to have frequent and timely conversations that create awareness through challenging conversations that gets to the heart of things quickly.

Continuous improvement and dedication to learning will add to your skills as an executive and manager to create and lead amazing teams.

I invite you to check out my Self-Mastery Program which begins June 14^th in Canberra. 

Ondina x