Motivational Memos

The Roots of Coaching

Practical activities from Mapping Motivation

Welcome back for the fourth instalment of a new series of articles in which we use practical exercises to explore motivation and more. You can find the first article, which explores Roots of Motivation,  here. In the previous article, we discussed the Roots of Engagement. Today, we’re shifting the focus back to the individual and examining how Coaching is interrelated with Motivation. Unlike the previous three articles, rather than beginning with an exercise, we’ll instead lay down the foundations of context and then guide you towards a powerful practical exercise at the end that might just help you discover your inner coach.

As stated in the introduction to Mapping Motivation for Coaching, “[coaching] now has become a mainstay process for developing people in business and in their personal lives. Indeed, coaching and coaches have become ubiquitous.” However, despite the significant growth of coaching in the last 25 years, the idea of a coach is nothing new, and has ancient origins in the concept of a “mentor” or “tutor”.

The word “mentor” is derived from Homer’s Odyssey: Mentor is the wise friend of Odysseus who acts as a guide and teacher to Odysseus’s son, Telemachos, though in actuality Mentor is the goddess Pallas Athene in disguise. Many of the Greek mythological heroes possessed a guide or teacher of some kind, often with divine or magical lineage, whose role was to educate them not only in the ways of war but also wisdom and courtesy. This role of the mentor, however, was not merely the province of myth. In ancient Rome, tutors (the Latin word meaning “a watcher, protector, guardian”) were so highly esteemed, despite often being slaves, that noble families left their children’s care and education entirely in the tutor’s hands. The modern coach, of course, is rarely responsible for children, but the principle of acting as a dedicated “guide” to an individual remains. The roots of coaching, therefore, run very deep, and carry with them great responsibility for shaping a person and facilitating them to reach their highest potential.

But how do coaches achieve this? And why is a coach different from, for example, a teacher or a therapist? In our view, coaching describes a very specific dynamic (we have adapted our definition from Professor Nigel MacLennon’s powerful one):

“Coaching is a planned intervention(s) by one person (the coach) for another (the client) in which the central purpose is either to motivate, enable, and improve the performance of the client in a specific area or for a particular task, or similarly to motivate, enable, and improve their capacity for sustained and progressive personal development.” —Mapping Motivation for Coaching, “Coaching Questions”, p12.

The key word, here, as you have probably guessed, is motivate. That is the difference between a coach and these similar but distinct roles. Indeed, though the ancients did not possess the word “motivate”—it’s a relatively new construction—Gregory Nagy observed, “a mentor is someone who instills a heroic mentality in somebody.”What could more accurately describe the effect of high motivation than that? We see this “heroic mentality” reflected in the modern day in those who are extremely highly motivated. All things become possible to those who are fired up and fully energised, and their physical and mental resources seem limitless to the point they appear like demigods or heroes to those without the same level of motivation.

Of course, we discussed how Leaders also have a responsibility to motivate their Teams in articles. However, the role of a Coach is different in that their attention is focused on the development of a particular individual. Thus, whereas the Leader looks to guiding the flock, the Coach acts as a personal guardian angel, divine emissary, and wise counsellor to a single person. There is overlap between these two skillsets, but they are not the same.

The Leader required four (plus one!) skills to be effective. Teams required four traits to distinguish them from an ordinary “group”. The coach, however, operates on a different basis, instead positioning themselves upon a cruciform pair of continuums that encompass the four major dimensions of the coach. Note, we still have the magic number four! However, we arrive this number via an entirely different route.

The continuums are support versus challenge.

Support v Challenge from Mapping Motivation for Coaching

And empathy versus objectivity.

Empathy v Objectivity from Mapping Motivation for Coaching

The 4 Dimensions of Coaching from Mapping Motivation for Coaching

If you overlay these in the cruciform, then you get the four dimensions of coaching.

These four dimensions: support, challenge, empathy, and objectivity create four roles: The Motivator, The Goal-Setter, The Friend, and The Observer. There is insufficient space here to unpack each of these roles in great detail, but no doubt you can already take a guess how they apply to coaching. A coach must, after all, motivate, as we have already discussed. They must help their clients set and reach goals. They must offer comfort and support. And they must remain an objective observer who can, at times, bring their client back to reality, and cut through the subjective fog.

But now, at last, we come to the practical exercise—and maybe a moment of self-discovery!

This activity comes from Chapter 1, Activity 1.3, page 14.

Give yourself a score out of 10 in each of the four dimensions. A score of 1 means that you barely have that element whereas 10 indicates that you have a superabundance of it. Do this quickly and without too much premeditation. Once you have done it, look at your scores. Which of the four roles do you think is your particular strength – Motivator, Goal-Setter, Friend, or Observer? Which is your weakest link? How does this process of reflection help inform the development of your coaching in the future and with which friends/colleagues/clients?

Hopefully, you have found this article and exercise useful. For more information, consult Chapter 1 of Mapping Motivation for Coaching by James Sale and Bevis Moynan.

And for more information about Motivational Maps please contact one of our Licensed Practitioners.

 

The Roots of Engagement

Practical activities from Mapping Motivation for Engagement (James Sale and Steve Jones, Routledge, 2019) 

Welcome back to the next instalment of a series of articles in which we use practical exercises to explore motivation and more. You can find the first article, which explores Roots of Motivation, here. In previous articles, we discussed the Roots of Teamwork and Leadership.

Today, we’re taking the ideas explored in previous articles onto a broader canvas and discussing the critically important—but still relatively new—concept of Engagement.

As observed in the Preface of Mapping Motivation for Engagement, “Whereas it has always been obvious that leadership is of critical importance in the success of any organisation, or endeavour for that matter, engagement and its significance has been a relatively recent phenomenon…” (Mapping Motivation for Engagement, p. xii). It is easy to see why. Engagement is essentially an employee-centric idea. It is a “bottom-up” approach rather than “top-down”. This runs antithetical to traditional notions of how to run a business.

It is easy to forget in the Twenty-First Century in the West, where we take our rights and democracy for granted, that throughout the majority of human history all leadership and governance has been predicated on “command-and-control” principles: I am the King, I am in charge, and you must do what I say and when. There are many parts of the world where this is still the case. What’s more, the very civilised model for western democracy, aka ancient Greece, was only able to support its people’s freedoms via slavery. So, only a partial democracy, if truth be told. Business has naturally followed the suit of politics in its organisational models; therefore, most businesses deploy command-and-control, hierarchical management styles.

And yet, there is a growing body of evidence that shows just how costly and ineffective this old-fashioned methodology is. Indeed, to pick two simple statistics that tell a grand story: the cost of employee disengagement to the UK economy in 2008 was between £59.4—64.7 billion per annum! A sobering figure if ever there was one! But now, according to Perkbox, the figure is “a staggering £340 billion a year. This is an accumulation of productivity, recruitment spend and much more.” The figure is staggering AND the situation is not getting any better. As Perkbox add, “Poor engagement can impact employee productivity, cause you to lose your best talent, and stop you from attracting new candidates.”

So, engagement is not a mere buzz-word, though it may seem that way, but is a relatively radical concept when taken seriously and not as a tick-box exercise, and clearly vital to the very survival of most modern organisations! As we shall see, there are massive benefits and rewards for those prepared to engage their employees (and, as we have already seen: titanic losses for those who do not).

But how does engagement work? The MacLeod Report sheds some light on this bidirectional and symbiotic concept: “We believe it is most helpful to see employee engagement as a workplace approach designed to ensure employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being.”  (MacLeod, 2009)

There are many important ideas to unpack from this—too many for the space of a single article! However, I want to zoom in on one in particular, and it will come as no surprise to those who have been following this series: MacLeod highlights the importance of motivation. Employees, when engaged, are motivated to contribute to organisational success. This is a more revolutionary concept than it may appear on the surface. This is essentially an act of transcendence (if I may be grand!), for the employee puts the organisational success on par with their own needs, desires, and wants. MacLeod says that engaged employees “are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being”, but what this truly means is that organisational success becomes a means by which well-being might be achieved. Now that is another staggering concept!

The way that this process works is, of course, complex and necessarily ambiguous (as all things concerning human emotion and beliefs must be), but one can grasp the essence of it via this relatively simple formula:

Figure 1.6 – from Chapter 1

We will break this down in detail, but first, it’s important to mention this equation is a development of a simple model for understanding performance which is given in Mapping Motivation (Routledge 2016, page 87). This (abridged) model is: Performance = Skills x Motivation. Employee performance is really what we’re talking about when we discuss “organisational success”. High-performing employees will deliver results, and results—even in domains that are not traditionally associated with revenue—will always positively impact the bottom line. Highly motivated administrators, for example, will save everyone time, which will reduce costs. Highly motivated HR professionals will be better at recruitment and retention, which means less overheads to acquire talent. The list goes on. So, performance is what we desire, and the simplest way to understand this is our motivation multiplied by our skillset. If you have no motivation, then even the best skills in the world will achieve nothing (think of a sports car with no fuel in the tank)! Likewise, all the motivation in the world will not help the employee who knows absolutely nothing about what they need to do (think of a sports car with plenty of fuel but no steering wheel)!

However, the “P = S x M” model is incomplete when it comes to engagement, which is where the more advanced model detailed in Figure 1.6 comes in. This equation factors in that other critical word identified in the MacLeod report: “commitment”. Commitment is the mediator between the organisation’s goals and values and the employee. Without commitment, the employee may be high performing in the general sense, but only when pursuing activities aligned with their own values and goals, not those of the organisation. Commitment is what creates synergy (we dislike this word, but sometimes it has to be used) between the employee and the organisation, and we formulate this commitment as being the sum of the Value of a Goal plus the Likelihood of Success in achieving.

Now it’s time for our practical exercise to understand this in pragmatic terms.

This activity comes from Mapping Motivation for Engagement, Chapter 1, Activity 1.5, page 22.

Let’s re-consider this data… Skills and motivation are now to be scored out of 5:

         My current skill (S) level out of 5 is:

         My current motivation (M) level out of 5 is:

         Add these two numbers together (S + M) = a score out of 10.

Consider now the biggest or most important or consequential work-related goal that you are trying to achieve? Write it down.      

         My biggest work goal is:

Score yourself out of 5 of how valuable that goal is to you. Then do the same for how likely it is that you perceive you can achieve that goal.

         The value of this goal (V) to me out of 5 is:

         The likelihood (L) of my achieving this goal out of 5 is: 

Add these two numbers together (V + L) = a score out of 10.

Finally, to get your probability of performance success multiply your two numbers (S + M) x (V + L), to get your % score.

As stated in Mapping Motivation for Engagement: “Having done this, you will be in a much better position to begin to understand that this means for any employees you are managing. These variables are critical for you to understand and utilise if you are going to overcome barriers and get employee engagement.” (p.23).

Hopefully, you have found this article and exercise useful. Please let me know what you have discovered in using this, either on yourself alone or in considering others within a team. For more information, read Chapter 1 of Mapping Motivation for Engagement.

And for more information about Motivational Maps please contact one of our Licensed Practitioners.

Roots of Teamwork

Practical activities from Mapping Motivation

Welcome back for the third instalment of a new series of articles in which we use practical exercises to explore motivation and more. You can find the first article, which explores Roots of Motivation,  here. In the previous article, we discussed the Roots of Leadership. Today, we’re looking at teamwork. Of course, Motivation, Leadership, and Teamwork are all interconnected (or to continue the metaphor, we might say their roots are intertwined). In many respects, Motivation is the mediator between Teams and Leaders, for Leaders need to motivate their Teams, but likewise motivated Teams can buoy up their Leaders.

But before we can examine this interconnected triangle or trinity, we have to know what a team is! And the answer is not so simple as one might think. At Motivational Maps, we draw a distinction between a mere “group”—a bunch of people trying to do something—and a fully committed and effective team. Let’s take a look at a practical exercise from Mapping Motivation to get a sense of what the distinguishing factors might be between groups and teams.

This activity comes from Chapter 6, Activity 2, page 103.

“If a ‘group’ of people in a department, say, are effectively just a random collection of people who happen to have been put together ostensibly to work on some project or objective, what do you think might be the defining characteristics of a real team? List the core characteristics in your opinion. What do you notice about how real teams work?”

As mentioned in previous entries in this article series: it’s important to physically write down your answers, as it engages a different part of the brain.

Now, those of you who have read the Roots of Leadership article and participated in the activity will know that there were four (plus one!) important skills that a leader needed to possess to be successful and efficacious. Four was a significant number because it connects to the four principle domains of business: Finance, Marketing & Sales, Operations, and People (more information about this can be found on pages 19-20 of Mapping Motivation). It will therefore come as no surprise to you that there are four factors that distinguish teams from groups and that point toward the likely success of a team in any endeavour they undertake.

In considering your answer to the question of what these four factors might be, then, it’s important to contemplate how these factors or traits (we might also use the term “qualities”) intersect with the four domains. As always, the name of the game is balance here. For example, viewing the situation through the lens of the People domain may prompt you to say, “Teams need to be socially cohesive”. It brings to mind images of team away-days (paintballing and quad biking anyone?) or drinks after work. But as wonderful as these can be, a team that is only about the social cohesion and bonding is not likely to get much work done. Sociability can prove deleterious to productivity, not just because people feel more inclined to chat around the water cooler, but also because friendship can fuzzy the hierarchical structures upon which most businesses still lay their foundations. If your manager is your best mate, are they likely to insist you deliver a project on time?

Similarly, a team that is mandated only by the bottom-line results (which we might consider to be aligned with the Finance domain of business) is unlikely to be a place where cooperation thrives; all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy, to quote a famous writer. Some may think invoking Stephen King’s The Shining is a little bit extreme—but Jack will go crazy and become alienated if his life’s meaning is defined only by material results. Just as too much sociability can create problems of complacency, too little can create friction which is ironically even more deleterious to productivity. Will Jack do what his manager tells him to do as quickly and efficiently as possible if Jack’s manager is always on his back about numbers, numbers, numbers and never stops to consider Jack as a rounded human being with loves, hopes, desires, and physical limits? I highly doubt it. How then to strike this fine balance between a productive and effective “workforce”, to use an old-fashioned term, and a socially cohesive and cooperative “team”?

Many would argue that no discussion of teams and teamwork is complete without also discussing leadership, and they are right in many respects, for teams require leaders. Though the topic is far too rich and detailed to discuss here (indeed, I have not one but two books dedicated to this very topic: Mapping Motivation for Leadership and Mapping Motivation for Top Performing Teams), we can say with certainty that the nature of a team’s leadership is another factor that distinguishes it from a simple “group”. But this raises more important questions. To what extent should a leader be integrated with their team or stand apart from it? To what extent should a team report to their leader? To what extent should a leader define the objectives of the team?

Now we have set your mind a-whirr with questions, it might be best we look at our answer to the question of what characteristics constitute and define a great team. You’ll be pleased to know this time round we have not cheated: there are four components.

(note - images from Chapter 1 of Mapping Motivation for Top Performing Teams)

So, these are the four traits of a real team: a clear Remit, Interdependency on one another, a Belief in the efficacy of teams, and Accountability. Each one of these is worthy of a chapter in itself. However, as you can see from our next simple diagram, each of these factors transforms a potential obstacle into a positive and progressive outcome.

To pick one example, Interdependency solves the dichotomy of “too much” or “too little” sociability. Instead of trying to build social ties outside of work and hoping they translate into effective collaboration in the workplace, you build them within the framework of the work itself and the desired objective, creating a team of people who need each other’s skills to achieve their end goal. Interdependency fosters collaboration and respect for one another’s skillsets, especially if those roles and skillsets are clearly defined at the outset. This isn’t to say you shouldn’t also throw your employees a barbeque once in a while, of course, but as you can see building collaboration into the very fabric of the team’s identity is a far more powerful way of achieving this cohesion than simply plying people with drinks or experiences that may be totally unrelated to their everyday experience of working together.

A lot more can be said about each of these factors, but we have run out of space. As a final thought, you may want to consider how these four factors intersect with the four domains of business, and how they underpin one another!

For more information, consult chapter 6 of Mapping Motivation.

And for more information about Motivational Maps please contact one of our Licensed Practitioners.