Synergistic Coaching

My daughter has started her first job after college. As I watch her on her first days of work life, I'm reminded of my days as a manager and mentoring young employees who are full of excitement yet naive of life in a large bureaucracy.

As a manager, I used to take pride in mentoring my employees to success in an organization.  So the next series of meandering will cover some of these basics and learning as I'm reminded through my daughter's eyes and experience.

I have found that I have tended to draw clients to me who are experiencing work-life transitions. Either they have started new jobs due to workforce reductions or had job responsibility changes including promotions. I guess you could say that I continue to mentor in a different way an executive coach.  My methods are different, but the focus is similar.  In either case, I always remind clients to get back to the basics.

Get the Lay of the Land

First off, get the "lay of the land." Be all eyes and ears. Learn and ask questions. Your brilliant ideas and better ways of doing things must come much later as you get acclimated, unless of course you were brought in at the top of an organization or department to make drastic changes (in that case, ignore this wisdom, it is expected that you'll make brilliant additions more quickly). Ask questions of those who have had history in the organization and learn from them...about the company, the job, the people (remembering to reserve judgments about all after your own experience, but the information will come in handy in spite of your final assessment). People love to be asked their opinions and they expect questions early on from you. Later, they may appear as a weakness if they are too basic. But initially, you have a honeymoon period of nativity.

Get "Joined Up"

Secondly, always set up an "orientation schedule". This is a critical step in your "Joining-up Process".  Typically, your manager will have this planned for you...co-workers to meet, functions to understand, customers/clients to meet, etc. However, it is not uncommon that this important step may be totally missed and assumed to occur naturally. This is a huge assumption. The orientation will include identifying all information you need to do your job. For professionals starting out, this will be very task oriented. For seasoned managers, this will include talking to many people to ascertain expectations of you in your job from not only your superiors but your peers and employees reporting to you as well.

Your Map is the Organization's Strategy, Mission & Values

No matter where you are in the organization, knowing the strategic direction, mission and values of an organization are paramount to understanding what in turn is expected of you and where you fit in.

What, you don't know what is expected of you?

I'm always surprised to find out from employees who are put on notice of performance improvement needs that a large part of the problem is not understanding their job duties (their job description) and what is expected of them. So the basics are never unimportant, no matter your level in the organization.

Build on the Basics!

You'll get points in numerous ways, plus build many networking opportunities by taking initiative early on to make sure you are appropriately oriented and "joined-up" and knowing what is expected of you. As in anything, you must "build on the basics," not step over them.

|  Add to del.icio.us |  digg this