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Better than average effect

How to help a coachee or mentee be “realistic” about their performance The “better-than-average effect” is a phenomenon first explored in the 1960s, when it was discovered that terrible drivers all judged themselves to be better than average and much closer to the expert end of the spectrum than to the poor driver end. Further...

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What to do when the coachee or mentee is overly optimistic or pessimistic

Most of us have a bias towards optimism or pessimism. Within normal ranges, this is quite healthy, but outside of these, it can be a significant problem in terms of relationships with colleagues, decision-making, and career potential. Of course, some jobs demand an element of pessimism — working in finance or compliance requires a focus...

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What makes a great team coach

Great one-to-one coaches possess knowledge, skill, and a set of personal attributes that include compassion, curiosity, courage, and humility. Great team coaches need all of this – and more! The increase in complexity from supporting a learning dialogue with one person to a dialogue amongst a group of people (who may or may not be...

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Being a sponsor

Sponsors play a special part in the retention and development of talent within organisations and professions. A good sponsor takes an active role in helping individuals grow and be recognised. Their responsibilities include: Sponsorship vs. Mentoring Being a sponsor is not the same as being a mentor—in fact, the two roles can be largely incompatible....

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How can I ask better questions

What makes an impactful question? In their early training, coaches are taught a number of questions that have the potential to help clients to think. In practice, these rapidly lose their impact because: A question is only powerful or impactful if it causes the client to step outside of their normal narrative or self-discourse. From...

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Separating out sponsorship and mentoring

Various studies have demonstrated conclusively that mentoring and sponsorship are different, largely incompatible relationships. Attempting to combine them leads to reduced impact in terms of both career and personal developmental outcomes for a number of reasons, including: These problems may be exacerbated in the context of gender, where the power dynamics of the relationship may (more…)

Using Spiral Dynamics in Team Coaching

Spiral Dynamics1 is a concept many team coaches apply to help a team explore and become more aware of its internal dynamics. Unlike most stage models of human development, Spiral Dynamics assumes that the values people and groups apply vary with the situations in which they find themselves. It identifies eight v-Memes (short for values-attracting...

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Trust v clarity of purpose matrix

A team’s readiness for learning and achieving Having the right environment for learning together is critical for any team. One useful way of looking at this is by using the matrix below. Read the description and consider: The reality of teams is that you have to work hard to maintain both trust and clarity of (more…)

Restarting the mentoring relationship

Mentoring relationships “go quiet” for a wide variety of reasons, many of them positive. For example: And that’s where the problem may lie. Both mentor and mentee may feel some anxiety in approaching the other. This anxiety may stem in part from embarrassment that they let the mentoring relationship slip off their radar; and partly...

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How to get others to give you the honest feedback you need

Giving feedback is tough for both parties. Most people prefer not to cause others pain, so we tend either not to give them feedback at all, or to soften it. Feedback givers may also be concerned that the feedback receiver will react with aggression. Making it safe for other people to give you feedback is (more…)