BridgingTHE GAP : Coaches must know how to relate to the team

BridgingTHE GAP : Coaches must know how to relate to the team.

KRIENGSAK NIRATPATTANASAI

'What did you do in Vietnam?" my sister Jeab asks me on my return home from a recent trip.

"I went to coach one French managing director and seven Vietnamese department managers on 'Coaching How to Coach'."

"What's that?" she asks.

"When we work as a team, it's not easy to interact with each other since we have different values and talents. The session's objectives are simply this: to know each other as individuals and learn how to best interact together.

"Before the workshop, each participant received the book Now Discover Your Strengths by Marcus Buckingham and Don Clifton. Each book has a code to do an online questionnaire. The result shows each participant his or her top five talents out of a total of 34. We use these top five talents for discussion."

"How do you handle different values?" Jeab asks.

"After breaking the ice, I showed a six-minute video clip that demonstrated a controversial scene involving five characters. Each person was assigned to rank the characters by preference from 1 to 5, which took just three or four minutes. They then started working in two groups of four. This time they had to rank by consensus, and were still debating 15 minutes on.

"I intervened and give them some criteria to make a decision. Now teams agreed within five minutes. That exercise made them discover that different values can create conflict easily. If we learn what each individual values and also have clear criteria, that can minimise conflict."

"How did they know each other's values?"

"I prepared a list of 100 values and some questions to stimulate their thought process. I gave them 15 minutes to write down their individual values and then we copied them onto a flipchart.

"The next exercise was to work as a team to come up with team values. Some were the same as the individual values and some were not. Then we concluded by identifying eight team values for use as criteria in a management committee.

"After the lunch break, I gave them a three-page summary of Now Discover Your Strengths. I asked them to read and work in a group to come up with between six and eight questions.

"I answered those questions until they had a clearer understanding of the concept. After that, we learned how to interact with each other based on individual talents.

"The book's chapter 'One By One' contains a menu that tells you how to manage 34 talents. Each talent has six to eight items describing how to work with, delegate, motivate or coach that person.

"Each participant read his own menu to his colleagues. I asked for work examples to reinforce each item.

"For example, my partner Chana has five talents: Focus, Deliberative, Analytical, Maximise and Activator. To manage a person strong in Focus:

- Set goals with timelines and then let this person figure out how to achieve them. He will work best in an environment where he can control work events.

- Don't always expect him to be sensitive to the feelings of others because getting his work done often takes priority over feelings. If he also possesses a talent for Empathy, this effect will obviously be lessened. Nonetheless, always be aware that he may trample on feelings as he marches toward his goal.

- He does not revel in situations of constant change. To manage this, use language that he can understand when describing the change. For example, talk about change in terms of 'new goals' and 'new measures of success'. Terms such as this give the change purpose. That's how he naturally thinks.

Then, let's compare Chana's talents with my top five talents: Relator, Empathy, Input, Developer and Connectedness. To manage a person who is a strong Relator:

- Tell this person directly that you care about him. He recognises value in his life through his close relationships, so he'll want to know how you regard him.

To manage a person strong in Empathy:

- Before securing his commitment to a particular course of action, ask him how he feels and how other people feel about the issues involved. For him, emotions are as real as more practical factors, and must be weighed when making decisions.

"You can see that if Chana and I did not know this information before, we would have been in conflict when we had to interact. Conversely, by understanding how to deal with each other's talents, we would have a much easier time working with each other."

"Did it really work?" Jeab asks me.

"I did it with this customer when he was head of marketing and sales in Thailand. Now he's a country manager in Vietnam, and wants me to do the same since it helped him and his team."

Kriengsak Niratpattanasai is the founder of TheCoach, specialising in executive coaching in leadership and cross-cultural skills. Copies of previous columns are available at www.thaicoach.com. He can be reached at 02-517-3126 or coachkriengsak@yahoo.com

Bangkok Post
Monday January 15, 2007