Organizational Culture, Comfort Zones, Support, Trust, Norms, and Change

Organizational culture contains norms of accepted behavior, comfort zones, and processes to find support and to develop trust.  There is an Organizational Performance Change Curve (slide 9) that shows how organizations move through a process of change.

Some organizations have created habits of looking internally for support--a kind of "inside the box" thinking.  As organizations grow and mature, some learn to look outside the box and outside the organization for appropriate support.  It is difficult for people enmeshed in the culture of an organization to seek outside support unless it is endorsed and encouraged by the culture.

In many small to mid-sized entrepreneurial businesses, all employees turn to the business owner for support.  This can create problems for the entrepreneur.  He or she can get bogged down by the number of daily challenges and problems brought to him or her for decisions and advice.  Instead of putting his or her energy toward the improvement of business processes and in growing the business, he or she is invested in putting out innumerable small-fire-problems brought by the employees.

Often the entrepreneur can seek outside support for the business owner, the business, and the employees.  By finding a trusted advisor outside the business, he or she can suggest that employees take many of their small-fire-problems to the consultant who is not going to have his or her support for the business interrupted by dealing with the problems and the employees.  When entrepreneurs can use these consultants more effectively, they can choose a few employees to be the "go-to" people within the organization and the outside consultant can coach those people to be effective in helping employees with small-fire-problems and in improving their own ability to make daily decisions and to put-out the "small-fires" themselves.

Coaching Supervisors--the Supervisors' Dilemma

In conversations this weekend, I was reminded of what I call the "supervisors' dilemma."  Traditionally, supervisors are usually very good in performing whatever tasks they were doing when they were selected for promotion to supervisor.  Once they are supervisors, only rarely do they receive training or coaching in how to be effective in managing others.  Frequently they are good problem-solvers and are eager to help the people they supervise.  When they step-in to do what they "did best" before they were promoted, they frequently forget to help the people they supervise learn how to perform better.

Years ago I worked with many organizations to train supervisors to be instructors and instructor-trainers in a program designed to help supervisors learn to manage the people they are supervising.  As I worked with more than 100 supervisors from many organizations, it became clear that the "supervisors' dilemma" is a common problem.

Some organizations recognize the problem and provide supervisory training similar to the training I worked with years ago.  Once supervisors received the training, they were frequently left on their own to apply it.

Another feature--rarely offered--is ongoing coaching for supervisors to be more successful.  Some of this coaching can be one-on-one, perhaps helping supervisors acquire the learning they need without having to take a formal training.  At other times this coaching can be on an "as needed" basis, helping supervisors to have a support person in place to help them move to a new perspective in their lives.

Yesterday's post dealt with "unintentional intolerance."  The connection between that post and today's post is that life-experience (slide 3) is what we bring with us to face any new challenge or decision we make in our lives.  Frequently we are not aware of all of the components of this life experience and make our decisions based on a very limited "sub-set" of our life experience--frequently what we are aware of "in the moment."  To be more successful as supervisors (and as coaches), we need habits of reflection (slide 2) to be able to access more areas of our life experience as we make our daily choices and decisions.

Coaches need to be "trusted advisors"  so that the people they are coaching can be honest with them and bring forward their real experience and thinking for assistance in reflecting on new performance choices and comfort zones.