When I started as FD of Amnesty, I had a great finance team. But there were three things I found challenging (A, B and C on the slide below):
'A' was one of my team who sent me drafts of their work, which required hours of my time to rewrite and make them 'right'.
'B' was Board and SMT meetings. I hated having to prepare for detailed operational queries when I wanted to be having strategic discussions.
'C' was a colleague who would bring me their problems, after which I would always end up with a long list of actions while they walked away having handed everything to me.
After learning mentoring skills, I worked out 3 top tips to address these challenges:
Put a monthly one to one in the diary with each of your direct reports, and make it a mentoring conversation. One ground rule - this meeting cannot be about giving out work. If you need to hand over work, do that separately. Allocate this time to really listening to your staff member, and asking them open questions to help them delve into their issues, brainstorm their options and solve their own challenges. As a manager, listening to your staff is hard to learn, and practising it will reap dividends as your reports gain confidence, have better ideas, and start helping you with your problems too. 'A' still sent me things to review, and having discussed these in our mentoring chats, they would schedule time in my diary, and tell me what specifically they wanted me to look at. I learnt to hold myself accountable to only give them feedback on the aspects they'd asked me to review - and NEVER to rewrite their material. This optimised my time and empowered them to develop their writing style.
In all meetings, set yourself reminders to listen more than you talk, and to use your airtime to be curious. At Board meetings when someone asked me an operational question I switched on my curiosity and asked questions back like, 'Where is this coming from? What is the real issue for you?' Sometimes my questions resulted in the trustee withdrawing their original enquiry, and sometimes the discussion uncovered a deeper issue that was critical to explore.
When colleagues come to talk to you, start by asking them what they want to get out of the conversation. At my next meeting with 'C', to my complete surprise, they said, 'I want you to listen'. This was easy; they got what they wanted, and I didn't get saddled with the problem!
After doing the above, my team started solving their problems in ways I had to admit were better than I would have suggested; my meetings improved, and I had time for the more valuable aspects of my work. For me, using the mentoring approach transformed my personal leadership and benefited my organisation.
How might these tips work for you? Drop me a line and let me know!
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