Executive Coaching High-Performing Teams

 

Managing Priorities?
Or Attitude?

 
Initial SituationA high potential young manager was repeatedly told that he poorly managed multiple priorities. Missed deadlines, inconsistent follow-through, and difficulty to maintain high productivity for himself and his staff repeatedly came up in his performance reviews. Several time management courses resulted only in limited improvements that were not sustained. Consequently, his expectation to be promoted did not materialize.
  Results The coaching process helped the client recognize how his attitude and conflict avoidance influenced his prioritization of tasks - and how his choices caused his peers to poorly rate his ability to follow-through on deadlines and commitments. These insights helped the client in taking responsibility for ineffective behaviors - and in instituting more effective behaviors managing himself and his staff. A 360 assessment and the performance review by his manager showed marked improvements within less than a year.
 
 
Initial conversations with the client’s manager and selected peers consolidated the impression that the poor time & task management ratings could not be explained solely by a lack of technical skill. Consequently, the coaching process focused on differentiating between technical and motivational aspects of the client’s time & task management.

As this behavior had been persistent in the past, we focused initially on establishing the link between the client’s current behaviors and the restrictions it had caused for his career progression. These sessions helped to build the necessary intrinsic motivation for the client to address deeper issues of attitude and a bias to avoid conflict.

Using the data from peer feedback and facilitating several “difficult conversations” with peers who felt particularly impacted by the client’s lack of follow-through served to underline that several of the client’s choices were substantially motivated by an attitude of “I know what’s really important here” combined with a bias to avoid direct confrontation with team members.

This insight helped the client in taking responsibility for his attitudes and conflict behaviors. He started to be more outspoken about his professional points of view duringformal and informal meetings with his peers and superior. Rather than avoiding conflict, he started to more directly negotiate his and his staff’s priorities before decisions were made.