Reflective entry by Yuchen

My role as a coachee:

This week’s coaching session was really helpful to me. After talking about my “terrible experience” with a mal-functional team, my coach helped me realize that during team building process, communication and inspection are both important. He demonstrated this with an example of scientists and engineers who collaborate to complete a task. As the scientists need to plan for the project, they also need to communicate with engineers and make sure that the engineers understand the purpose of the process they designed in order for better participation of all members. An important lesson I learnt from this story is that each member, no matter what his role is, must understand the goal of the team so that they won’t feel that they don’t belong to it.

In my team, what happened was that the new member of the team might feel she was “the third wheel of a bicycle”. With the help of my coach, I realized that it’s important for team leader to periodically inspect the commitment of his team members and ask about their opinion. As a result, team members, including the new comers would be encouraged sharing their opinions without being afraid of break the harmony within the team, and therefore they would participate and engage themselves more to the team activities.

In addition, I realized that on the other hand, it was her (new comer’s) responsibility as well to be more proactive. All of us should make extra efforts to “rock the boat” since the problem won’t come out themselves and the team building processes won’t flow without intervention.

My role as a coach:

For another time, I was really inspired by how Awa talked about the skillful leader that she had worked with. She had briefly mentioned this leader in the session of last week. I had a sense that she was really impressed and convinced by the leader. However, to my surprise, she told me that this manager wasn’t a charismatic leader and it’s not the manager’s personality that made him an admirable leader. She explained that the manager was actually a successor of a very popular manager who intended to influence his subordinates by building personal relationship and turning this into his own personal assets. However, the new manager conducted a very different way. Although he has kept suitable distance with his subordinates, he made them feel that he was accessible and he would listen to their opinions. In addition, he used very creative way to organize the meetings. In short, the manager has demonstrated that he had the competency in commutation and management so that his subordinates would follow him.

great team and great leaders by Awa DIALLO

Just like all our coaching sessions, this one has been very educational in our different perceptions of good teams. However, we all worked in different environments, one aspect is always found in our experiences, effective team working goes through effective communication.

David emphasised this aspect at his workplace by explaining how in meetings where technicians, engineers and managers are present, one needs to make sure that technicians knows and understand that their opinion and thoughts about the task are needed. They must contribute to the good outcome of the meetings and the great performance of the teams. Not just by being able to do what engineers ask them to do; but by also being able to analyse a situations suggests better ways to perform a task.

Bob had a bad experience when working in a team that ended splitting up because one of the members left the team. That team member did not speak up for her ideas and she was following the lead of the two other team member. Writing about it now, I think, made Bob realised that they might not have given her the opportunity to express her feelings and thoughts about the subject they were analysing at the time. I learned that in the Chinese culture, you do not oppose to what the majority is saying. That resulted in a team member that did not agree with the team’s choices and could not say it. All the frustration could have been avoided if the team was aware of her difficulties to speak up for her ideas, and if they made her feel and understand that her suggestions were essential for the team’s performance.   

Depending on our experiences, we learned different lessons that I believe will make us great managers. Indeed, as an MBA student and a Future manager, I understand that I have to make every member of the team I am supervising understand and know for sure that their opinion is needed for the wellbeing of the team; considering any restrictions that they may have, either cultural or personal. From my own experience, I know that to get people committed to their workplace, a great manager has the duty to make them understand that they are an essential part of the company; for the company to be at its best, they all need to perform their best.

teamwork reflective posting DDemers

In general, I must state that this coaching exercise (teamwork) was much easier - the opinions and lessons learned seemed to flow out much more easily.  In our "meetings" coaching sessions there were occasional awkward silences, while during the teamwork coaching sessions even our observers could not resist adding their observations into the coaching conversations.

As a coach this session was very "rewarding" as my coachee seemed to have learned a lot from his personal before-coaching blog and also during the coaching session.  His experience was a team that "ended badly", partially due to inequalities among the team members.  At the end of the coaching session he came to realize that team progression through the "forming-norming-storming-performing" stages had dependencies on cultural and even personal backgrounds.  He came to realize that when some team members had already made it to the norming stage (due to previously being on the same team), it is important to make extra efforts to help "new" team members feel like they are part of the team.  However, the new team member also has some responsibility, it is not just up to the existing team members to take the initiative to ensure that the team structure naturally enlarges itself.

As a coachee I came to understand that communications, in particular effective communications, are critical to effective teamwork for team reports.  The team that I had given as an example (MRK class) used Facebook as a means of coordinating.  At certain points in our teamwork communications, there were so many new postings that the important messages were sometimes falling through the cracks.  The fact that we virtually never had face-to-face meetings meant that it was difficult to communicate messages to all members of the team and have "deeper more philosophical" discussions of what are the important points to be included within our marketing team assignments.  The only way to assert one's ideas within the group dynamics is to put text within the report that is being revised and updated from time to time.  I have low self-confidence in the "writing about marketing" skills, and low self-confidence in my writing in French skills, so I find it difficult to assert my ideas in this particular framework.  This fundamental comprehension of my weaknesses (inability to assert in such cases) is part of the reason behind me changing my MBA program from Global Business to Supply Chain Management (SCM).  The coursework in SCM will be in French, but it is a more "quantitative" subject area and I will fell much more comfortable being assertive in teamwork situations.

The characteristics of a team by Yuchen

It’s not easy to accept failure, especially when it’s the failure of a whole team. In one of my other courses, we had a group of three people, two guys and one girl, and we were supposed to deliver two team projects. The first project is a group presentation of an analysis of Sport brand commercial, the other one is a 30 pages paper. Everything was on track until the first Tuesday after the reading week and one week before our presentation, when one of our teammates left the class. The rest of us were shocked, angered then confused. We managed to deliver the presentation but that was also the end of our group. We had to split up and look for other groups that would accept us for the last team project.

Now since I finally have some time to review what went sour in the team building process that lead to the unfortunate split. To be honest, I blamed her for weeks and never had a single thought of if it was me to be blamed and it actually is. Before she left, I thought our team was creative and effective because each time we met (once per two weeks but the other guy and I contacted often), we had solid progresses on the subject. The team also looked diversified in terms of different background, gender and capability, though we are all from China. One potential problem was none of us tent to lead the team, but at the moment we thought it was OK.

However, the real reason is underneath the peaceful surface. First, we didn't manage to create a friendly and trustful atmosphere for all of us. When the team was formed, the other teammate and I knew each other which made the girl a new comer to the team. However, either he or I bothered to establish the sense of security for the new comer; we just went directly to the business and thought that would be sufficient. As a result, we lost our magnetism and therefore, people no longer wanted to affiliate with this team. In addition, when one person in the team talked too much (it’d be me in our situation), the other members might feel unappreciated since they couldn't share their opinions equally. In the end, since nobody was in the middle to communicate with each member, we couldn't know what people's true feelings were, and finished our team with the split.

There are several things I think we could improve. First, create a trustful environment for the new comer as it’s the foundation of any teamwork. Second, have one person to lead the group. Last but not least, encourage all members to share opinion in order to facilitate the coherence and avoid from letting someone feel undervalued.

reflective posting from meetings - late, I forgot :-(

I found this coaching session the most difficult so far.  As a coachee I had difficulty coming up with good and poor meeting experiences.  However, after reading other blog posts and hearing other coach-coachees as observer, I came up with other examples.  I found that meetings of about one hour for passing messages throughout an organization are very effective.  I mentioned the framework of an upper management COmité des OPérations (COOP) meeting on Monday morning, followed by a meeting of section head, admin assistant and group leaders was very effective for passing messages and ensuring that communications channels were open.  While I was a group leader for a scientific group, we also found that having group meetings (when all members could be present) was very effective in helping to coordinate and ensure collaboration among the various R&D initiatives within the group.  When I was group leader for informatics personnel we had group meetings only occasionally since the informatics support function is mostly made up of individual interventions.  For the most part, ad hoc coordination was all that was needed.  Meetings were held mostly for periodic budgeting (determining how much money would be needed for software purchases, training, determining priorities etc.) and developping annual business plans.

As a coach I found it somewhat surprising how well the coachee was able to coordinate and brainstorm a group presentation with only limited interactions beforehand.  He said that the group felt energized (by the looming deadline :-) and really got their creative juices flowing.  As a group they were so pleased with the advancing of their work package that they did not realize that another meeting to polish up their group presentation was needed.  That is one thing that is very important to realize when doing group presentations.  Some people are very good at doing impromptu presentations and at understanding how to transition from one presenter to another, but it is not natural for all presenters.  Practicing beforehand is important to help ensure all are "on the same page".

I learnt from this exercise that there are many surprising twists and turns and detours on the road to running effective meetings.  Preparing beforehand and ensuring that all members are given the opportunity to "do their homework" in advance is critical to creating a smooth-running meeting.  Of course, not all meetings are meant to be smooth-running, an example being budgeting meetings where it is difficult to come to win-win solutions (there is only so much money to go around).  In cases such as these, and also where participants may not have the same understanding regarding the planned outcomes, it is critical for the meeting organizer to create a common understanding before the meeting starts.  With a common understanding of the desired outcomes from the meeting there is a much better chance for the discussions to stay "on topic" and ensure that all efforts reach toward the desired meeting goals.

Reflective entry by Yuchen

As coach, this week’s coaching session was conducted with three steps. First, we discussed the two scenes that she posted in the blog, more in details. Second, we evaluated the pros and cons of these meetings. Finally, we summarized the coaching with two questions: “what are the conditions of a successful meeting?” and “what are the competencies a manager should have to organize an effective meeting?” My expectation with these steps was that to help my coachee to crystallize the supportive factors of an effective meeting and the reason why participants were not engaged, and then I would conclude with the two questions to see if the coaching session has exceeded my expectations.

After the small talks to warm up a bit, we continued with my questions on the first meeting my coachee introduced in her blog. As she was saying, there were actually two types of meeting in her company, one was conducted on a weekly basis concerning employees’ performance, their KPI etc, and the other one was a 30-minute daily informative meeting concerning the sales data of each person. The organizer of the latter one was the manager on his shift at that day. According to my coachee, neither of them was constructive and effective until the intervention of top management due to the planning and preparation of the management team. As for the second meeting experience, my coachee expressed her learning on the situation where she was surrounded by senior employees who were mean to her at first.

In the next step, I planned to evaluate the pros and cons with two aspects, the aspect of manager and the aspect of meeting process. As we discussed, we found that the managerial skills, especially the communication skills of a manager are important since he will need to convince participants with authority as well as respect. The way he communicates in the meeting may influence the result whether it’s a decision-making or brainstorming meeting. On the other hand, we found that sometimes the participants are not fully engage with the meeting due to the clarity of the meeting purpose, the process and the planning. As my coachee’s first meeting experience shows, one way to improve the participants’ moral and commitment in an informative meeting is to recognize their work before discussing the statistics. My coachee connected this with motivation theory as the recognition of their works improved their job satisfaction and therefore motivated them. In this regards, they were more committed to the meeting.

Finally we concluded our coaching session with the two questions mentioned above, and I think my expectations were mainly exceeded. Personally I think this coaching session was really helpful as it actually gave me clear methods to organize my coaching process and I'm grateful for having Awa and David sharing their priceless experience on organizational meetings.

effective team leader by Awa Diallo

The assignment about meetings and interviews got me thinking about this manager that I had in my last workplace. To get workers interest about the meetings, he always tries to include activities that will involve all attenders’ participation. As I explained in a previous post, he included a sort of award ceremony in the weekly meetings in order to get employees involved and interested about the company’s key performance indicators, and all in a fun a way.

Therefore, during the whole week, employees always do their best in order to improve the company’s status; he was also able to implement a good competition spirit within the same team. That means we will still compete to get the best results, be we were all aware that all our efforts were to make the team perform well.

I think he was able to perform this well regarding those meetings because he was genuinely interested about the workers, and he had strong managerial and people skills. Even though he was a senior manager leading a group of employees half his age, he was able to find out what would get them more interested and increase their implication at the workplace.

Before taking actions, he observed and studied the whole group spirit and he was able to make everyone understand his opinion and feelings about the company, and he was able to make everyone feel the same way: we are all on the same boat and we need, each in our part, work our best, but still with each other, in order to make our boat move forward.