katrina, Author at high performance culture

Part One: The myths, corporate commitment and government perspectives

HPC’s Head of Research, Justin Kinnear explores the myths, corporate commitment and government perspectives surrounding the future of work.

Nobody knows exactly when the pandemic might end, nor can say with certainty what a typical working week will look like when this is all over. Will our organisation’s culture remain intact, or will we need to rebuild it? Are our people still loyal, engaged, and motivated? Will the demands from clients be the same as before or will we need to remodel our offerings, structures, and processes?

There are so many questions and very few answers, but it’s our duty as leaders to prepare, to plan, and to paint a picture of the future that will give our people hope and direction. So, what can we deduce about the future of work post COVID-19?

Shattering myths about remote working

The notion that remote working can’t be trusted, that people are “shirking from home”, and that things work only when I can watch over my people, has been well and truly shredded. People are working from their homes, in often challenging conditions, and getting things done. Many have managed to keep going with their work despite no assistance from their manager or employer. Has this produced a productivity surge? Anecdotally, workers report longer working days, improved balance between work and personal time, and feeling more productive. A significant number of economic reports suggest that total factor productivity, however, has fallen. This is particularly true for some countries and some industry sectors. The verdict on productivity is a mixed picture, but what is clear is that working from home is effective and will be part of the world of work from this point on.

However, remote working does not suit everyone. Remote working managed badly may reduce fairness. A mix of workers at home and others in the office creates power and access dynamics that favour those that are in closest physical proximity to the boss. Four people sitting in a meeting room with the boss, joined by four people dialling in from home, is not an equal dynamic. Restoring and managing fairness when we have unequal proximity will be an early and immediate challenge we will need to address.

How organisations see the future of work

Right now, the key question many organisations are focused on is how many days a person should come into the office each week. This triggers subsequent questions about physical space, car parking, food service, cleaning schedules, layout of space and the future of open plan, and many other practical considerations. Leaders are pondering what share of people should be in the office on a given day, whether we come in for routine work such as email and procedural tasks, or whether we should only come into the office when we need to meet as a team. Nobody has worked all this out yet because it’s not possible to know all the factors involved. Any decisions must take into account the risks of favouritism, access bias, and everything else that flows from merely being co-located with the boss and other key decision-makers. As the old saying goes, “out of sight, out of mind” and so it may feel for those encouraged to stay put at home.

Where does this leave professional development and learning?

Most organisations have shifted to virtual learning since early 2020. While useful to maintain skill development and help staff to keep connected with one another, it is limited by its nature. You can’t simply switch a two-day management development event into a two-day Zoom session. Most things that shifted online have been shortened, narrowed in focus, and designed to do a best-effort job under the circumstances. Virtual events are ideal for some topics, needs and groups; face-to-face learning events are much more effective for other topics, needs and groups. Face-to-face events, whether for learning and development, for business meetings, or for group problem solving will be gradually reintroduced. The positive reaction to human reconnection could trigger a reflex to bring everyone back in the office, so leaders must anticipate this emotional response and be ready to restate their commitment to decisions on who needs to be in the office every day and who can just as effectively work from home.

Corporate commitment to new ways of working

While many companies are still exploring how they intend to implement a form of hybrid working, others are pressing ahead with a commitment to a new way of working. ESB, Ireland’s largest Electricity provider, has embraced “smart working” where flexibility and autonomy are encouraged in order to find the best arrangement that suits the customer, the business and the employee. Smart working encourages employees to think ‘virtual first’ for meetings thereby saving time on commuting and reducing carbon emissions. Employees are also encouraged to balance the number of online meetings with planned time together.

Creating a high-performance culture underpinned by a positive employee experience is all part of ESB’s ‘Brighter Future’ strategy to lead Ireland’s transition to a secure, affordable, low-carbon future powered by clean electricity.

“We know from the research we have carried out that most of our employees don’t want to return to the office full time after the pandemic, yet there are others who are really struggling at home. We are working to accommodate both groups so that everyone feels a sense of belonging, and everyone is empowered and motivated to deliver for our customers,” says Sarah Claxton, Head of Organisational Development at ESB

“For the most part, people in the future will come to the office to collaborate, to build social networks and engage in learning and development. They won’t commute for the sake of sitting in front of a screen or having a meeting with their team,” she adds.

Similar approaches have been signalled by Facebook, Amazon, Google, and Spotify as a new way of working post-COVID.

Government perspectives on work after COVID-19

Most governments see the changes in working practices during 2020 as being generally positive. Reduced pollution, reduced traffic, more time for family and leisure, and better individual health and wellbeing have all accrued as fewer of us commute to work. Naturally, governments would like to see some level of working at home remain once the pandemic has ended.

The Irish Government has set out a plan for the future state of work in its National Remote Work Strategy. In its introduction, Leo Varadkar TD, Tánaiste and Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment, highlights that, “when the pandemic is over…things will never be the same again.” He points out what, “while some people will work full-time from the office or from home, most of us will be blended workers, working sometimes from the office and other times from home, a hub or on the go.”

However, there is a recognition that boundaries need to exist between home and work life and that a code of practice will need developed for the ‘right to disconnect.’

He adds, “we want to retain the creativity and innovation that flourishes from people meeting each other and do not want people to become isolated.” This is equally important when it comes to structuring the balance of learning and development initiatives.

Who is responsible for the shift to hybrid working?

It’s one thing to have a policy about how we will work after the pandemic, it’s another thing altogether to make it a reality. In Part Two, we will explore how hybrid work can become a reality, and most importantly, who will be ultimately responsible for making it happen.

Read more of our ‘Anticipating the Future of Work post Covid-19’ series here: Part Two: Who is responsible for the shift to hybrid working?

Justin Kinnear is Head of Research at HPC. His passion for people development and his ability to inspire makes him a key member of HPC’s facilitation and coaching teams.

As well as his extensive research and facilitation experience, he was formerly Head of L&D at IBM and Britvic.

His work with HPC focuses on the development of a high performance culture for our clients with a particular emphasis on accountability and feedback.

HPC Executive and Team Coach, Barry O’Sullivan explores some of the factors that impact team effectiveness and how team coaching can play a role in ‘re-launching’ a team and powering its future growth and success.

After working with many teams and identifying the 6 Conditions for Team Effectiveness, Richard Hackman and Ruth Wageman of Harvard University framed the 60-30-10 rule. This simple rule of thumb became a guide to where leaders might place their time and energy to develop high performing teams.

It’s a simple idea. Place the majority, or 60% of your energy on the pre-work, where it will have most impact. Spend 30% of time and energy on building a solid foundation and spend the balance of 10% on coaching the team in real time, simply paying attention to the factors that impact team effectiveness.

But what if you already have a team in situ? What happens when a leader realises that the team is not performing at its best? What happens when stakeholders, such as the board or key clients, demand more? Sometimes teams get stuck, lose their direction and motivation. What can you do with this team?

As team coaches, we have vast experience of working with teams to enhance their performance and deliver on their organisational mandate. We partner with senior teams over an extended period, to shine a light on the factors that impact team effectiveness. Rather than just coaching one member of the team, the team becomes our client. We aim to increase the capacity of the team to coach itself.

How do we do this?

We work closely with the team to understand what’s happening in real time and how the team is functioning as a collective. While diagnostic instruments can play a role in understanding the factors impacting team effectiveness, our greatest skill is in identifying what is being said and what is not being said. By playing this back to the team, questioning and through constructive challenge, we can begin to tackle the key drivers of an effective team. Key questions such as:

– Is the team a real team? Are they a stable group of individuals capable of working with each other brilliantly?

– What’s the team’s compelling purpose? Does everyone on the team understand how critical they are to the delivery of the common purpose? What is it that the team can do better than the members can do as individuals? In our experience working with senior teams, it is this issue that surfaces most commonly as a blockage for teams.

– Have you got the right people, with the right task and teamwork skills to deliver?

– How can you establish a solid structure, the best work practices and behaviour norms to help achieve team goals? While many teams will have tools such as team charters in place, they may not observed in practice. Unhelpful behavioural norms can quickly undermine a team’s effectiveness. What happens within the senior team is observed by colleagues outside the team, leading to a further erosion of impact.

– Finally, leadership can ask if they are providing a supportive organisational context that provides the necessary resources to the team and its members.

Through team coaching, we work with the team to pay attention to what happens in real time. We actively work with the team to reduce the barriers to their effectiveness. While interventions, tools and diagnostics all play a part, the added value we provide is the real partnership we form with the team to understand itself and the conditions that impact on its success.

While you can’t “launch” an existing team, it is possible to “re-launch” a team with team coaching. In our experience, time spent bringing the team together and engaging with their purpose, process and dynamics is time well invested. It raises their capability and builds their credibility throughout the organisation. Supporting the team in the re-launch process and giving it the attention it needs is invaluable. Re-laying the foundations for effectiveness by improving the conditions in the team will pay dividends long into the future.

Barry is a member of HPC’s Executive & Team Coaching Panel. He has worked as a senior executive for over 20 years in financial services, sales management and operations to director level.

Barry has worked as a Coach since 2010. His experience includes coaching senior leadership in Financial Services, IT, Professional Services, Retail, Wealth Management and Utilities.

Through team coaching, he has enabled senior leaders and their teams to achieve a sustained step change in collective performance and growth.

HPC’s approach to team coaching is based around our core strengths in discovery, diagnosis, design and delivery. But also, our deep commitment to helping your team transform the way they think and act, which leads to a significant and sustained impact on business results.

We have researched, structured and implemented our leadership team coaching solution around a number of leading psychological schools of thought and our experiences of working directly with senior teams. While team coaching is still an emerging field in academia and L&D, our approach is already delivering pivotal results.

Download our Team Coaching Brochure for more information or get in touch with our team for a more in-depth discussion at info@wearehpc.com

We asked some of our coaches for their observations on the importance of coaching for individuals and teams as they enter a hybrid working environment and how well companies capture and communicate the impact of coaching.

Daire Coffey

HPC Executive Coach

Q: Why is coaching important as we enter a hybrid working environment?

As we edge closer to returning to the office, we will encounter a new working environment where a new set of challenges and opportunities awaits us. Covid has changed our relationship with work and the workplace and so a lot more is required of our leaders to step up to this challenge and adopt a more flexible and supportive leadership style. The adoption of a hybrid working model in many sectors will lead to an increased focus on people leaders and people leadership. This will be exacerbated by increased opportunities for mobility as the global economy recovers.

Based on my conversations with leaders, I see three areas of focus for them:

Personal: What behaviours and mindset do I need to adopt to best navigate the new model of work? How can I develop a more focused and positive mindset? What resources do I need to support me personally on this journey? How do I sustain my performance over the long term?

Team: How can I best adapt my leadership style to support and empower my team individually to stay engaged and productive? How do I best foster a healthy level of collaboration and trust? In light of an increasingly global recruitment market, how can I retain my top talent and keep them motivated?

Organisation: What do others now need from me and my team? How will create a sense of agility that will allow us to respond to the next crisis? What opportunities does Covid create for us as an organisation?

Coaching becomes really important in this environment in that it offers a personalised approach to support and empower leaders to hone the skills they need. Coaching:

– Offers a trusted sounding board to ignite fresh thinking around new challenges and opportunities.

– Supports and empowers individuals based on their individual circumstances – the CEO , the line manager, the new employee working from their bedroom and who has barely seen their desk since they started – all with different multigenerational and personal circumstances.

– Gives space to explore goals and develop practical strategies to build their overall impact, enhance collaboration with their team/stakeholders and ensure wellbeing of themselves and people remains front and centre.

– Provides a meaningful incentive to develop and retain top talent in a highly competitive global market. We know that the growing millennial workforce particularly value this.

There is no doubt that those who invest in a personalised authentic and motivating development experience will enhance their own capabilities and their capacity to hold onto their talent, strengthen individual, team and company performance and deliver an improved bottom line. Coaching offers the perfect solution to do just that.

Jenny McConnell

HPC Senior Facilitator, Executive & Team Coach

Q: What new challenges and opportunities can coaching help to unlock in leaders and teams as we enter this next phase of work?

Coaching helps leaders and teams to identify the new questions they need to ask of themselves, their customers and key stakeholders. For example, “What Covid losses do we want to recoup or remain as lost? What are our ‘Covid keepers’ – the changes that we want to retain and strengthen?” As the answers emerge, leaders and teams often find themselves in that uncomfortable space between what has been versus what must become. This transition demands a complex personal and organisational systemic shift. When you feel the searing heat of a ‘burning platform’ underfoot, change becomes the only viable option. Coaching plays a critical role in unlocking the shape, pace and impact of that change.

Deirdre Foley

HPC Senior Facilitator, Executive & Team Coach

Q: In what ways can coaching empower a team to overcome the challenges of working in a hybrid environment? What are the primary challenges teams should anticipate and prepare for?

In the past year, teams have had to quickly adjust and flex how they work, collaborate and communicate with each other. They’ve developed a wealth of experience in new ways of working. Where they may once have felt that it was impossible to collaborate effectively unless they were all physically sitting together, they have now developed ways of interacting and collaborating via a range of virtual tools from MS Teams, Zoom and in house tools and resources. This experience provides a rich learning opportunity for team coaching to empower them, as we move to a hybrid working environment, where a mix of onsite and remote working will soon start to become the norm.

The move to a hybrid environment is certain to present more unique challenges as teams negotiate what the ‘new normal’ will look like for them. What will the new norms of behaviour be? What are the positives from the past year that the team will benefit from bringing forward into a hybrid model? Are there old ways of working, prior to Covid, that the team would benefit from re-instating? By working with a team coach, each team can reflect and consider the best approach for their particular team. While each organisation may have over-riding policies, the organisation will benefit from team coaching where teams are empowered and accountable for how their team can perform to their best potential. A team coach will ensure that all voices on the team are heard and each team considers the challenges they will face and how to overcome and prepare for them.

Louise Molloy

HPC Executive Coach

Q: How well do companies capture and communicate the impact of coaching?

When your people commit to coaching, as a company, what are you hoping will be different and how do you capture the benefit? Often the focus goes on the delivery of support for our people. Return on investment can often be quantitative, linked to staff engagement; promotions; improved performance. Creating the conditions so that coaching impact is ‘pushed’ back to you rather than ‘pulled out of people’, is a strategy I’ve seen work really well.

What would that look like? Greater collaboration, better listening, more explicit reflection on how groups and teams work together and might work together better. Increased advocacy and more constructive feedback. All standard coaching outputs – but what about sharing our successes? What about telling these stories, it’s the stories that connect, not the numbers. When you or your board hears that sales and compliance are suddenly proactively collaborating on processes before they land – rather than retrospectively tweaked for compliance, that’s cultural gold!

We coach for purpose and balance between the individual, the team and the organisation. So, to really take delivery of the benefit of coaching, we need the individual to surface what’s different and then share this with the team and the organisation. No numeric assessment will ever catch a micro moment…but micro moments are what create (or break) trust and cultures. And coaching catches those moments, one conversation at a time.

HPC Executive Coach, Tom Armstrong argues that despite the huge changes experienced during lockdown and home working, for most people, core obstacles, challenges and opportunities haven’t changed as much as we might think.

When Covid-19 struck in March 2020, I wondered “what new challenges will people in businesses and organisations face” – now that our working world had been turned upside down. Initial challenges ranged from teamwork and team meetings to Wi-Fi to tech anxiety. And on the positive side, people cited the joy of the lack of the daily commute and greater flexibility.

Home working issues

For sure, most people are sensing a loss of connection and belonging, and the physical sense of people. There is a general feeling of fatigue related to the general consequences of lockdown. However, on questions around ability to collaborate, set boundaries, remain productive and perform, there is a much wider range of opinions and no clear consensus – with almost equal numbers favouring home / remote working and office working – a clear nod to blended working.

When I ask clients ‘what would you like to talk about and explore?’, and I follow their story, the conversations move towards more familiar themes, albeit in different surroundings.

Coaching issues during home working

This surprised me initially. So, I looked back over my notes to see what were the most common themes that emerged over the last year. They look remarkably familiar, but on reflection I’m not surprised.

– Self-doubt / fear of looking foolish

– Being courageous

– Limiting beliefs and assumptions

– Empathy

– Adapting and being flexible

– Empowering the team

– Vulnerability and leading

– Managing relationships

– Authentic leadership

– Career Presence / gravitas

– Personal values / organisation values alignment

– Assertiveness

– Self-awareness and habit changing

What does this mean?

Home working, and especially if and when we move to a mix of blended working, is mainly an issue around how we work. And yes, there is significant fallout and consequences – many of which are not fully apparent yet. Home working will need to be handled carefully if it is to succeed for all stakeholders. However, people are flexible and if this pandemic proves anything it is the adaptability of humanity. In terms of productivity, the Irish economy grew by 3% in 2020 (GDP of course, is boosted by medical and pharmaceutical exports). While this is a crude measure, I believe it demonstrates how quickly human beings can adapt and respond, especially in the short term. Most of us ‘do what it takes’ – we survive. The fax, the telephone and the internet have all changed how we work in recent centuries. The constant factor is the human being at the centre.

The long game

The long game and the challenges people face have not changed as much as we may have first thought. Issues around courage, leadership, empathy and more, will continue to test us. We could be deflected from tackling these constant themes based on recent positive experiences around adaptability. Also, because of home working, some issues are less visible than if we were in the office. However, the key issues that people face remain and are part of being human. The choice is whether to tackle and overcome the barriers and challenges, and help people thrive – or not. Whether there is a lockdown – or not. Whether there is blended working – or not. To quote Stephen Covey, “we develop our character muscles by overcoming challenges and obstacles.” Taking actions that have long term reward requires long term focus, vision, patience, and courage.

What can we do?

Concerns around connection, belonging and collegiality have increased during home working and I believe these are red flags for the long term. The more familiar challenges, obstacles and opportunities that people face are still there too – it’s part of being human. The surest way to facilitate our people to help themselves is through supporting them in their development, like a sports coach working tirelessly with their team no matter how good they ‘think’ they are.

Well-functioning humans are at the heart of healthy businesses and organisations. Executive coaching helps people manage and find ‘their way’ through the multitude of challenges that working and living throws at them – to draw on their own reserves, to survive and thrive – both now and into the future, whatever it holds.

Tom is a member of HPC’s Executive Coaching Panel. In addition to his coaching qualifications, he has over 25 years’ experience working as a senior executive within various sectors.

Prior to joining HPC, Tom worked at a senior level in the Motor, Investment, Leisure, Equestrian and Property sectors. He was the Finance Director of Toyota Ireland for 10 years and CFO of Killeen Group Holdings for over 4 years. In addition to operating as part of the senior management team, he had overall responsibility for Finance, IT, HR, and Company Secretarial.

Tom’s executive coaching experience has enabled him to coach in a wide variety of environments including executives in small, medium and large private sector companies, as well as private individuals and leaders in public organisations.