Managing staff and volunteers
(Handbook for a training workshop)
Workshop outline
Introduction
How to motivate people
How to manage and develop people
Plans and prayer
Suggested reading
Introduction
Why this workshop and why now..?
Many organisations today are concerned with how to attract, engage and retain talented people. This is because most recent research shows that people who are both talented and engaged typically contribute most to an organisation’s success. People who are talented in this sense are those with high potential who are not only knowledgeable and skilful but have the ability to learn quickly and apply what they bring to fresh, challenging and changing circumstances. People who are engaged in this sense tend to be prepared to go the extra mile, can’t imagine wanting to leave and instinctively encourage others to join in.
Similarly, the church has historically sought to nurture and sustain high levels of engagement – with God and the church in the context of wider community. These things are at the heart of what we might describe as Christian commitment. The church’s view of talent has been, however, similar in some ways and different in others. On the one hand, Christians believe that everyone has particular God-given gifts and talents that should be invested for kingdom purposes (e.g. Mt 25) and on the other, that everyone is valuable – i.e. not just those with ‘high potential’ in a utilitarian sense – and should be honoured as such (e.g. 1 Cor 12).
Churches and Christian organisations alike have struggled with some of the practical challenges this latter tension creates, especially when operating with strong mission mandates, trying to apply professional standards and having to compete with others for scarce resources. The tension is particularly acute when we depend on volunteers with a variety of motivations and a relative ease to leave. The question becomes how to get the job done well through people whilst, at the same time, valuing everyone’s contribution, keeping the right people involved in the right ways and helping release God-given potential.
This demands prayerful, insightful and skilful leadership – and that’s the reason for this workshop today. We will start by looking at what motivates people, explore ways to develop your own management and development approach, move onto how to handle some of the difficult performance conversations these tensions can create and end with prayer and personal planning as you leave – hopefully feeling refreshed, inspired, with renewed confidence and with new tools in your hands..!
Nick Wright
27 September 2007
www.nick-wright.com
How to motivate people
What motivates people? Is everyone motivated by the same things? Do motivations change over time or in different circumstances? What de-motivates people? How can we engage and retain people by ensuring that, as far as possible, ‘rewards’ match motivations?
There are lots of secular theories about what motivates people – and they don’t all necessarily agree. However, some of the most common theories about what motivates people at work are outlined below.
You may find it helpful to look at each theory in turn and ask (a) in what ways it could help you understand the different motivations of people you work with and (b) what you could do to practically to ensure you take individual motivations into account when managing and developing staff and volunteers.
You may also find it helpful to compare and contrast these theories with biblical theology; e.g. the Christian ideal (e.g. what should motivate people), the reality and influence of sin (e.g. what does often motivate people), the redeeming work of the Holy Spirit, the role of the leader/manager in influencing motivations.
Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs
Maslow initially proposed that first order needs (e.g. physiological) must be addressed before higher level needs (e.g. self-actualisation) could be satisfied. This ‘hierarchical’ element of the model has been widely challenged but the model does, nevertheless, differentiate between different kinds of need and how they might be addressed.
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Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory
Herzberg’s theory proposes that the things that positively motivate people (‘motivating factors’) are different to the things that negatively demotivate people if not addressed (‘hygiene factors’). For example, this theory proposes that people don’t tend to be motivated by salary (except, perhaps, when applying for a job) but do tend to feel demotivated if they don’t think their salary level is fair or sufficient.
Herzberg’s theory proposes that the things that positively motivate people (‘motivating factors’) are different to the things that negatively demotivate people if not addressed (‘hygiene factors’). For example, this theory proposes that people don’t tend to be motivated by salary (except, perhaps, when applying for a job) but do tend to feel demotivated if they don’t think their salary level is fair or sufficient.
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Factors that demotivate if not addressed
Salary Job security Working conditions Level and quality of supervision Policy and administration Interpersonal relations |
Factors that motivate if addressed
Sense of achievement Recognition Responsibility Nature of the work Personal growth Career advancement |
McClelland’s Achievement and Motivation Theory
This model includes categories similar to Maslow’s (above) and incorporates an additional interesting perspective – avoidance – pointing to the notion that people are sometimes motivated by something because it helps them avoid having to face or do something else.
This model includes categories similar to Maslow’s (above) and incorporates an additional interesting perspective – avoidance – pointing to the notion that people are sometimes motivated by something because it helps them avoid having to face or do something else.
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Motivator
Achievement Power Affiliation Avoidance |
Example
Opportunity personally to make a real positive difference Opportunity to influence or exercise control over events Opportunity to build positive relationships with other people Opportunity to avoid less-palatable tasks or experiences |
Activity 1
What motivated you to get involved in this field of work? What motivates you to stay involved?
Activity 2
What motivated you to get others involved, whether staff or volunteers? What is it that you want from and for them?
Activity 3
How can you tell what another person is motivated by? What signs might you notice? Think of actual people in your workplace – what motivates them?
Activity 4
What could you do practically to motivate a person motivated by each of the motivations you have identified? Apply to actual (or key) individuals in your own work environment.
How to manage and develop people
The idea of managing people can feel alien to people in some churches and Christian organisations where words such as lead, guide or nurture feel more familiar. If you feel uncomfortable with the word ‘management’ because of unhelpful connotations it carries for you, we are using it here simply to mean something along the lines of ‘making best use of the resources God has made available to us to achieve the things God has called us to achieve’. In particular, we are thinking about human resources – that is the people whom God has entrusted to us and for whom we hold leadership responsibility.
As we explored earlier, church leaders can find themselves carrying two different agendas which may at times feel difficult to reconcile:
How to get important jobs done well through the right people (e.g. teaching, pastoral care, maintaining the
building) and carried out in a responsible manner (e,g. those involving children or other vulnerable people; those
involving financial accountability) and, at the same time…
How to involve everyone in building up the church and community, bearing in mind different God-given gifts and
talents and, in the process, enabling people to become all God has called them to be
In this workshop, we will focus primarily on the first agenda above because that is where the need for good management is most paramount, whilst recognising the second agenda is also very important. We will focus on employees (i.e. paid staff) and volunteers (i.e. unpaid staff) who carry a substantial on-going role in the church or organisation. We will not be thinking primarily of those people who provide occasional albeit valuable support, although some of the same principles would still apply.
There are a number of factors that can make a real difference to effective management and development of people in the workplace. These include:
Being clear about role and responsibilities
Being clear about goals and what needs to be done to achieve them
Providing on-going coaching and supervision
Evaluating performance together against agreed goals
Being clear about roles and responsibilities
One of the simplest and most effective ways to ensure that everyone is clear about a person’s role and responsibilities is to create a job description. Misunderstandings and conflict can arise when responsibilities have been assumed rather than clarified and so this simple measure can help build and sustain positive relationships, ensure the right things get done and that important jobs don’t get forgotten. A job description doesn’t need to be overly-complicated and could simply include, for instance:
A summary statement describing the role and its purpose.
Name of whom the person reports to.
Key task areas the person holds lead responsibility for.
Key knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviours needed to perform the role well.
Any other requirements relevant to the role (e.g. availability to travel).
Activity 5
Draft a job description for each person for whom you own leadership responsibility, using the list below to create a template.
Name
Job title
Reports to
Job purpose
Key responsibilities
Key attributes required
Any other requirements
Share what you have drafted with another person – is each section specific, clear and unambiguous?
When you return to the workplace, discuss with the person(s) for whom the job descriptions have been drafted and see whether what you have described fits with what he/she understands of the role too. Alternatively, ask the person to draft his or her own job description first and see if what they describe fits with what you think their role is. Make sure you communicate the job description with wider colleagues so everyone is clear about what the person’s role is and where it fits within the wider team.
Being clear about goals and what needs to be done to achieve them
Goals are aims or end-points. They sit somewhere between vision and task objectives. At best, they’re more specific than broad-sweeping vision and more visionary and aspirational than simple task objectives. Goals provide a sense of purpose and direction: ‘this is what or where we’re aiming for, even if how we get there has to change on route.’ They also provide a basis for prioritising and helping avoid distracting secondary issues: ‘let’s remind ourselves of what the goal is…’
Goals should be motivating. Motivating goals are those that have an element of stretch or challenge and contain within them the possibility to do something beyond the horizon of what one would have ordinarily thought possible. The real skill in goal-setting involves helping a person to set their own goals, and this is often best achieved through a coaching approach (see next section). The risk is that when a manager sets goals for someone, they can be experienced by that person as imposed (demotivating), under-stretching (boring) or over-stretching (demoralising).
It can be helpful to identify, alongside goals, key factors that will need to be managed (e.g. information, resources, relationships) if the goal is to be achieved – and signs of success (i.e. indicators that the goal has been achieved or things are on track). This approach can prove very helpful for a number of reasons, e.g. by helping ensure the manager and staff member are thinking along the same lines, that the most important things are focused on, that proper plans are put in place, that both can monitor progress and that success can be celebrated. For example:
What motivated you to get involved in this field of work? What motivates you to stay involved?
Activity 2
What motivated you to get others involved, whether staff or volunteers? What is it that you want from and for them?
Activity 3
How can you tell what another person is motivated by? What signs might you notice? Think of actual people in your workplace – what motivates them?
Activity 4
What could you do practically to motivate a person motivated by each of the motivations you have identified? Apply to actual (or key) individuals in your own work environment.
How to manage and develop people
The idea of managing people can feel alien to people in some churches and Christian organisations where words such as lead, guide or nurture feel more familiar. If you feel uncomfortable with the word ‘management’ because of unhelpful connotations it carries for you, we are using it here simply to mean something along the lines of ‘making best use of the resources God has made available to us to achieve the things God has called us to achieve’. In particular, we are thinking about human resources – that is the people whom God has entrusted to us and for whom we hold leadership responsibility.
As we explored earlier, church leaders can find themselves carrying two different agendas which may at times feel difficult to reconcile:
How to get important jobs done well through the right people (e.g. teaching, pastoral care, maintaining the
building) and carried out in a responsible manner (e,g. those involving children or other vulnerable people; those
involving financial accountability) and, at the same time…
How to involve everyone in building up the church and community, bearing in mind different God-given gifts and
talents and, in the process, enabling people to become all God has called them to be
In this workshop, we will focus primarily on the first agenda above because that is where the need for good management is most paramount, whilst recognising the second agenda is also very important. We will focus on employees (i.e. paid staff) and volunteers (i.e. unpaid staff) who carry a substantial on-going role in the church or organisation. We will not be thinking primarily of those people who provide occasional albeit valuable support, although some of the same principles would still apply.
There are a number of factors that can make a real difference to effective management and development of people in the workplace. These include:
Being clear about role and responsibilities
Being clear about goals and what needs to be done to achieve them
Providing on-going coaching and supervision
Evaluating performance together against agreed goals
Being clear about roles and responsibilities
One of the simplest and most effective ways to ensure that everyone is clear about a person’s role and responsibilities is to create a job description. Misunderstandings and conflict can arise when responsibilities have been assumed rather than clarified and so this simple measure can help build and sustain positive relationships, ensure the right things get done and that important jobs don’t get forgotten. A job description doesn’t need to be overly-complicated and could simply include, for instance:
A summary statement describing the role and its purpose.
Name of whom the person reports to.
Key task areas the person holds lead responsibility for.
Key knowledge, skills, attitudes, behaviours needed to perform the role well.
Any other requirements relevant to the role (e.g. availability to travel).
Activity 5
Draft a job description for each person for whom you own leadership responsibility, using the list below to create a template.
Name
Job title
Reports to
Job purpose
Key responsibilities
Key attributes required
Any other requirements
Share what you have drafted with another person – is each section specific, clear and unambiguous?
When you return to the workplace, discuss with the person(s) for whom the job descriptions have been drafted and see whether what you have described fits with what he/she understands of the role too. Alternatively, ask the person to draft his or her own job description first and see if what they describe fits with what you think their role is. Make sure you communicate the job description with wider colleagues so everyone is clear about what the person’s role is and where it fits within the wider team.
Being clear about goals and what needs to be done to achieve them
Goals are aims or end-points. They sit somewhere between vision and task objectives. At best, they’re more specific than broad-sweeping vision and more visionary and aspirational than simple task objectives. Goals provide a sense of purpose and direction: ‘this is what or where we’re aiming for, even if how we get there has to change on route.’ They also provide a basis for prioritising and helping avoid distracting secondary issues: ‘let’s remind ourselves of what the goal is…’
Goals should be motivating. Motivating goals are those that have an element of stretch or challenge and contain within them the possibility to do something beyond the horizon of what one would have ordinarily thought possible. The real skill in goal-setting involves helping a person to set their own goals, and this is often best achieved through a coaching approach (see next section). The risk is that when a manager sets goals for someone, they can be experienced by that person as imposed (demotivating), under-stretching (boring) or over-stretching (demoralising).
It can be helpful to identify, alongside goals, key factors that will need to be managed (e.g. information, resources, relationships) if the goal is to be achieved – and signs of success (i.e. indicators that the goal has been achieved or things are on track). This approach can prove very helpful for a number of reasons, e.g. by helping ensure the manager and staff member are thinking along the same lines, that the most important things are focused on, that proper plans are put in place, that both can monitor progress and that success can be celebrated. For example:
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Signs of success
The building is occupied by community groups for at least 50% of the week by 30 June 2008; the building is used by at least 3 different community groups by 30 June 2008 |
Most organisations add a second section (‘personal development plan’) concerned with personal and professional development. Personal development priorities are new knowledge, skills, attitudes or behaviours the staff member will need to develop personally or professionally in order to achieve the goal. Development methods are methods to achieve them; signs of success are, again, indicators that the person is developing well or in the right direction. Following on from the example above:
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Signs of success
Able to brief church leaders on relevant legislative requirements; posters and flyers are produced that attract potential user groups; potential user groups are able to articulate the church’s key messages |
Although working through this process to articulate each goal so clearly can take some time, the advantages of working each section with the person to ensure mutual clarity and buy-in can well outweigh the costs. This will be particularly important when the leader moves onto the next steps of providing coaching, monitoring progress and evaluating performance.
Activity 6
Create a ‘goals’ table as below for each of your own goals for the forthcoming year. You should focus on 3-5 key goals that you plan to achieve – by God’s grace – by the end of the next 12 month period.
Goals Factors to manage Signs of success
1
2
3
4
5
Development priorities Methods to address them Signs of success
1
2
3
Providing on-going coaching and supervision
Coaching and supervision are at the heart of good performance management and development. They are about working with, enabling, walking alongside, ensuring accountability, providing support. At heart, coaching and supervision are about establishing a special quality of relationship and conversation that engenders awareness-raising, learning, responsibility and commitment that extends well beyond simple task achievement. It demands conscious attention to personal intention, ethos, empathy and relational climate.
Whereas coaching is concerned primarily with goal achievement, supervision is concerned with making sense of one’s experience in order to learn and develop through it. We will look at coaching and supervision separately below but, in practice, they often draw on the same skills and often intertwine. As a broad principle, it is helpful to set aside special time with each staff member (e.g. once a week for one hour) specifically for coaching and supervision. Although this can feel like a heavy time commitment for busy managers, the benefits in terms of motivation, engagement, development and effectiveness invariably outweigh the costs.
It is also valuable to engage in supervision as a manager in order to develop your own insights and skills in this area. This could be with your own manager, a professional and experienced peer, a respected mentor or with an independent consultant with expertise in this area.
Without the safe environment of a genuine and positive relationship, it is hard for people to address fears or weak areas that may be blocking personal effectiveness, even when highly-refined coaching skills are deployed. In this respect, coaching is at its best when informed by psychological, emotional and spiritual insights reflected in other related fields such as counselling and mentoring. Short and longer-term courses in these fields are often available through local education colleges and universities.
Probably the most common coaching model is that developed by John Whitmore in ‘Coaching for Performance’. Whitmore describes this approach has having four phases: clarifying goals, mapping realities, exploring options, committing the will to a course of action (G-R-O-W). We would recommend reading a copy of Whitmore’s book which includes lots of practical ideas and examples. However, in overview, the approach entails:
Goal: helping a person to clarify their goals. This is a valuable process for ‘being clear about goals’ above and
involves enabling a person focus down on and crystallise their key goals. This avoids aiming towards vague
generalities with no clear vision or outcome in sight.
Realities: helping a person identify potential things that will either support or hinder them from achieving their
goals. This avoids committing to goals that are hopelessly unrealistic or ignoring significant show-stoppers that
will need to be overcome to achieve them.
Options: helping a person identify options that could help them move towards achieving their goals. This avoids
acting instinctively or following familiar courses of action without having explored alternative viable options
first that could prove more successful.
Will: helping a person decide on a course of action that they are genuinely motivated and committed to follow
through on. This avoids embarking on a particular course of action without the real will to follow it through to
its conclusion.
Activity 7
Select one of the goals you identified under Activity 6 and test and expand it further using the four stages highlighted above:
Goal: articulate the goal as clearly and unambiguously as you can as a statement describing your desired
outcome within a specific timeframe:
Realities: identify the most important five factors (e.g. people, money, time, other commitments) that
could help you achieve the goal or block it from happening unless addressed:
Options: list at least three different methods you could use to achieve your goal (whether they would be your
preferred methods or not), trying to be as creative and lateral-thinking as possible, bearing in mind ‘realities’
above:
Will: decide which course of action you will pursue to achieve your goal bearing in mind the ‘realities’ and
‘options’ you have explored above:
It can be helpful to discuss each step with another person, asking them to act as coach – posing questions (e.g. ‘what would that look like..?’), challenging assumptions (e.g. ‘does it necessarily follow that…?’, helping you look at the situation differently (e.g. ‘how would it be if…?’) etc. You may need to revisit and revise the goal if you can’t find a way forward that will realistically work for you. Pray for God’s leading, wisdom and discerning throughout. Once again, the discipline of goal-setting using this process can sound like hard work but our experience suggests it significantly increases staff motivation and the possibility of achieving successful outcomes.
Two of the most common books on supervision are probably Gerard Egan’s ‘The Skilled Helper’ and Peter Hawkins & Robin Shohet’s ‘Supervision in the Helping Professions’. Egan’s model is both simple to use and helpful for sense-making and problem-solving. We have found this model particularly helpful when handling difficult performance conversations in the workplace. At heart, Egan’s model involves three sequential stages:
Exploration (descriptive phase): identifying and describing a situation, experience or problem in the clearest
possible terms. For example: “X happened…”; “You did…”; “I felt…”
Understanding (explanatory phase): trying to understand and make sense of what happened, identifying
underlying issues and contributory factors. For example: “I think that happened because…”; “I believe I felt that
way because…”
Action (prescriptive phase): deciding which course of action is appropriate in light of what happened and what
issues lay behind it. For example: “I want you to…”; “I will…”
In routine supervision, it can be valuable to ask the staff member to describe a particular experience during the week; e.g. one they found particularly exciting, challenging or stressful, and then to explore it using this model to see what can be learned from it that will help develop the staff member’s future practice. The discipline of working through the ‘understanding’ phase rather than jumping from ‘exploration’ to ‘action’ helps the staff member grow as a reflective practitioner and, thereby, as a wise and increasingly effective professional in his or her field. This approach is valuable for difficult performance conversations too (see next section).
Evaluating performance against agreed goals
It can be helpful to think of evaluating performance in two separate ways: on-going monitoring incorporating periodic performance review (e.g. “How am I doing..?”; “Am I on track…?”) and overall evaluation (e.g. “How well did I perform against agreed goals..?”; “What does my overall performance say about my career potential..?” etc.). On-going monitoring is best carried out as part of on-going coaching and supervision where the manager helps the staff member reflect on his or her work, progress, issues arising etc. and provides feedback. The best feedback is clear and specific and, although some managers are reticent to give it for fear of offending or demotivating, most staff say they find it helpful and motivating - if delivered in a clear, fair and affirming way.
Managers should start periodic (e.g. 3-monthly) performance review conversations with prompts that create space for the staff member to offer their own comments first; e.g. “What have you enjoyed most over the past few months?”; “What have been the greatest challenges?”; “What did you do to overcome them?”; “How would you rate your own performance so far?”; “What would you like to focus on development-wise to enhance your own performance?” This provides a basis for the manager to offer his or her own comments too, adding to the staff member’s perspective or challenging it where needed.
Overall evaluation (e.g. annual appraisal or performance review) is at best a culmination of on-going coaching and supervision conversations and tends to take place annually. In the best systems, the manager uses this opportunity to help the staff member pause and take stock of his or her own performance and progress overall. In order to help the staff member grow in awareness of his or her performance and impact on others, the manager could use something like the following process:
1. Help the staff member reflect on his or her own performance – what has gone well, what has not gone so
well, what his or her development priorities are for the future.
2. Help the staff member identify two or three people who depend on the staff member performing well to
achieve their own goals.
3. Coach the staff member on how to approach those two or three people to get feedback on the staff
member’s performance – what they find helpful about his or her approach, what specifically would improve it.
4. Provide the staff member with your own feedback, drawing in his or her own reflections and those of people
consulted for feedback in order to create an overall summary – e.g. level of performance demonstrated,
development priorities for the future.
In handling difficult performance issues, e.g. when a staff member has failed to live up to expectations in spite of repeated corrective or developmental support or behaved badly, it can be helpful to use Egan’s model (above) to explore together what has happened, what its consequences have been, what specifically changes need to happen etc. Opening by asking the staff member to describe what they believe happened, what they believe was behind it, what they believe they need to do next to resolve it can be a motivating and fair way to start the conversation.
If you have a very different view as manager to that of the staff member, don’t shy away from the issue but be clear about what message you want the person to hear and ensure they have heard it. You may want to practice rehearsing beforehand so that your message doesn’t get lost in conversation. For example, having listened to their view: “My own view is that… and, as a result, I want you to…” Be specific and, if necessary, ask the person to summarise what they have heard to check they have heard and understood what you intended.
This is equally important where a person may be performing well in most aspects of the role but failing in a significant area that needs attention. In this type of situation, the staff member can inadvertently leave the meeting feeling demotivated in all areas, only hearing comments on what needs to be changed and missing your feedback on what is going well. Again, try crystallising your key message beforehand and ensure you emphasise it at the start, in the middle and at the end of the conversation. For example: “John, I am very pleased with your performance overall. I need you to change X by doing Y to finish everything I need you to. Nevertheless, I do think you are doing a great job in most areas of this role.”
Activity 8
Do you have proper evaluation meetings (on-going/overall) with those members of staff for whom you hold responsibility? If not, what do you need to do?
Think of a difficult performance conversation that you need to have with a member of staff, perhaps one you have been putting off or avoiding. Jot down notes below on what you need to address, how you could go about addressing it and what the key message is you want him or her to hear.
Issue:
Steps:
Message:
Plans and Prayer
Having worked through this workshop and workbook, pause and reflect prayerfully on the following points and jot down what actions you will take when you return to the workplace in order to enhance your own management and development of staff and volunteers:
Which aspects of this approach to management and development do you find most exciting and inspiring?
What will you do to apply them?
Which aspects of this approach to management and development do you find most worrying or daunting? What
will you do to address them?
What priority actions do you need to take when you return to the workplace to improve your management and
development of staff and volunteers?
Which of your own management and development knowledge or skills do you need to develop as priority?
What will you do to develop them?
Suggested reading
Egan, G. (1994), The Skilled Helper. ISBN 0-534-21294-8
Hawkins, P. & Shohet, R. (2000), Supervision in the Helping Professions. ISBN 0-335-20117-2
Jay, R. (2001), Fast Thinking Manager’s Manual. ISBN 0-273-65298-2
Leigh, A. (2001), 20 Ways to Manage Better. ISBN 0-85292-879-3
McCurley, S. & Lynch, R. (1998), Essential Volunteer Management. ISBN 1-900360-18-7
Mullins, J. (2002), Management and Organisational Behaviour. ISBN 0-273-65147-1
Pardey, D. (2007), Introducing Leadership. ISBN 0-7506-6901-2
Pedler, M. et al (2007), A Manager’s Guide to Self Development. ISBN 0-07-711470-1
Pedler, M. et al (2004), A Manager’s Guide to Leadership. ISBN 0-07-710423-4
Whitmore, J. (2002), Coaching for Performance. ISBN 1-85788-303-9
Williams, K. (2006), Introducing Leadership. ISBN 0-7506-6880-6
Wright, W. (2000), Relational Leadership. ISBN 0-85364-996-0
Activity 6
Create a ‘goals’ table as below for each of your own goals for the forthcoming year. You should focus on 3-5 key goals that you plan to achieve – by God’s grace – by the end of the next 12 month period.
Goals Factors to manage Signs of success
1
2
3
4
5
Development priorities Methods to address them Signs of success
1
2
3
Providing on-going coaching and supervision
Coaching and supervision are at the heart of good performance management and development. They are about working with, enabling, walking alongside, ensuring accountability, providing support. At heart, coaching and supervision are about establishing a special quality of relationship and conversation that engenders awareness-raising, learning, responsibility and commitment that extends well beyond simple task achievement. It demands conscious attention to personal intention, ethos, empathy and relational climate.
Whereas coaching is concerned primarily with goal achievement, supervision is concerned with making sense of one’s experience in order to learn and develop through it. We will look at coaching and supervision separately below but, in practice, they often draw on the same skills and often intertwine. As a broad principle, it is helpful to set aside special time with each staff member (e.g. once a week for one hour) specifically for coaching and supervision. Although this can feel like a heavy time commitment for busy managers, the benefits in terms of motivation, engagement, development and effectiveness invariably outweigh the costs.
It is also valuable to engage in supervision as a manager in order to develop your own insights and skills in this area. This could be with your own manager, a professional and experienced peer, a respected mentor or with an independent consultant with expertise in this area.
Without the safe environment of a genuine and positive relationship, it is hard for people to address fears or weak areas that may be blocking personal effectiveness, even when highly-refined coaching skills are deployed. In this respect, coaching is at its best when informed by psychological, emotional and spiritual insights reflected in other related fields such as counselling and mentoring. Short and longer-term courses in these fields are often available through local education colleges and universities.
Probably the most common coaching model is that developed by John Whitmore in ‘Coaching for Performance’. Whitmore describes this approach has having four phases: clarifying goals, mapping realities, exploring options, committing the will to a course of action (G-R-O-W). We would recommend reading a copy of Whitmore’s book which includes lots of practical ideas and examples. However, in overview, the approach entails:
Goal: helping a person to clarify their goals. This is a valuable process for ‘being clear about goals’ above and
involves enabling a person focus down on and crystallise their key goals. This avoids aiming towards vague
generalities with no clear vision or outcome in sight.
Realities: helping a person identify potential things that will either support or hinder them from achieving their
goals. This avoids committing to goals that are hopelessly unrealistic or ignoring significant show-stoppers that
will need to be overcome to achieve them.
Options: helping a person identify options that could help them move towards achieving their goals. This avoids
acting instinctively or following familiar courses of action without having explored alternative viable options
first that could prove more successful.
Will: helping a person decide on a course of action that they are genuinely motivated and committed to follow
through on. This avoids embarking on a particular course of action without the real will to follow it through to
its conclusion.
Activity 7
Select one of the goals you identified under Activity 6 and test and expand it further using the four stages highlighted above:
Goal: articulate the goal as clearly and unambiguously as you can as a statement describing your desired
outcome within a specific timeframe:
Realities: identify the most important five factors (e.g. people, money, time, other commitments) that
could help you achieve the goal or block it from happening unless addressed:
Options: list at least three different methods you could use to achieve your goal (whether they would be your
preferred methods or not), trying to be as creative and lateral-thinking as possible, bearing in mind ‘realities’
above:
Will: decide which course of action you will pursue to achieve your goal bearing in mind the ‘realities’ and
‘options’ you have explored above:
It can be helpful to discuss each step with another person, asking them to act as coach – posing questions (e.g. ‘what would that look like..?’), challenging assumptions (e.g. ‘does it necessarily follow that…?’, helping you look at the situation differently (e.g. ‘how would it be if…?’) etc. You may need to revisit and revise the goal if you can’t find a way forward that will realistically work for you. Pray for God’s leading, wisdom and discerning throughout. Once again, the discipline of goal-setting using this process can sound like hard work but our experience suggests it significantly increases staff motivation and the possibility of achieving successful outcomes.
Two of the most common books on supervision are probably Gerard Egan’s ‘The Skilled Helper’ and Peter Hawkins & Robin Shohet’s ‘Supervision in the Helping Professions’. Egan’s model is both simple to use and helpful for sense-making and problem-solving. We have found this model particularly helpful when handling difficult performance conversations in the workplace. At heart, Egan’s model involves three sequential stages:
Exploration (descriptive phase): identifying and describing a situation, experience or problem in the clearest
possible terms. For example: “X happened…”; “You did…”; “I felt…”
Understanding (explanatory phase): trying to understand and make sense of what happened, identifying
underlying issues and contributory factors. For example: “I think that happened because…”; “I believe I felt that
way because…”
Action (prescriptive phase): deciding which course of action is appropriate in light of what happened and what
issues lay behind it. For example: “I want you to…”; “I will…”
In routine supervision, it can be valuable to ask the staff member to describe a particular experience during the week; e.g. one they found particularly exciting, challenging or stressful, and then to explore it using this model to see what can be learned from it that will help develop the staff member’s future practice. The discipline of working through the ‘understanding’ phase rather than jumping from ‘exploration’ to ‘action’ helps the staff member grow as a reflective practitioner and, thereby, as a wise and increasingly effective professional in his or her field. This approach is valuable for difficult performance conversations too (see next section).
Evaluating performance against agreed goals
It can be helpful to think of evaluating performance in two separate ways: on-going monitoring incorporating periodic performance review (e.g. “How am I doing..?”; “Am I on track…?”) and overall evaluation (e.g. “How well did I perform against agreed goals..?”; “What does my overall performance say about my career potential..?” etc.). On-going monitoring is best carried out as part of on-going coaching and supervision where the manager helps the staff member reflect on his or her work, progress, issues arising etc. and provides feedback. The best feedback is clear and specific and, although some managers are reticent to give it for fear of offending or demotivating, most staff say they find it helpful and motivating - if delivered in a clear, fair and affirming way.
Managers should start periodic (e.g. 3-monthly) performance review conversations with prompts that create space for the staff member to offer their own comments first; e.g. “What have you enjoyed most over the past few months?”; “What have been the greatest challenges?”; “What did you do to overcome them?”; “How would you rate your own performance so far?”; “What would you like to focus on development-wise to enhance your own performance?” This provides a basis for the manager to offer his or her own comments too, adding to the staff member’s perspective or challenging it where needed.
Overall evaluation (e.g. annual appraisal or performance review) is at best a culmination of on-going coaching and supervision conversations and tends to take place annually. In the best systems, the manager uses this opportunity to help the staff member pause and take stock of his or her own performance and progress overall. In order to help the staff member grow in awareness of his or her performance and impact on others, the manager could use something like the following process:
1. Help the staff member reflect on his or her own performance – what has gone well, what has not gone so
well, what his or her development priorities are for the future.
2. Help the staff member identify two or three people who depend on the staff member performing well to
achieve their own goals.
3. Coach the staff member on how to approach those two or three people to get feedback on the staff
member’s performance – what they find helpful about his or her approach, what specifically would improve it.
4. Provide the staff member with your own feedback, drawing in his or her own reflections and those of people
consulted for feedback in order to create an overall summary – e.g. level of performance demonstrated,
development priorities for the future.
In handling difficult performance issues, e.g. when a staff member has failed to live up to expectations in spite of repeated corrective or developmental support or behaved badly, it can be helpful to use Egan’s model (above) to explore together what has happened, what its consequences have been, what specifically changes need to happen etc. Opening by asking the staff member to describe what they believe happened, what they believe was behind it, what they believe they need to do next to resolve it can be a motivating and fair way to start the conversation.
If you have a very different view as manager to that of the staff member, don’t shy away from the issue but be clear about what message you want the person to hear and ensure they have heard it. You may want to practice rehearsing beforehand so that your message doesn’t get lost in conversation. For example, having listened to their view: “My own view is that… and, as a result, I want you to…” Be specific and, if necessary, ask the person to summarise what they have heard to check they have heard and understood what you intended.
This is equally important where a person may be performing well in most aspects of the role but failing in a significant area that needs attention. In this type of situation, the staff member can inadvertently leave the meeting feeling demotivated in all areas, only hearing comments on what needs to be changed and missing your feedback on what is going well. Again, try crystallising your key message beforehand and ensure you emphasise it at the start, in the middle and at the end of the conversation. For example: “John, I am very pleased with your performance overall. I need you to change X by doing Y to finish everything I need you to. Nevertheless, I do think you are doing a great job in most areas of this role.”
Activity 8
Do you have proper evaluation meetings (on-going/overall) with those members of staff for whom you hold responsibility? If not, what do you need to do?
Think of a difficult performance conversation that you need to have with a member of staff, perhaps one you have been putting off or avoiding. Jot down notes below on what you need to address, how you could go about addressing it and what the key message is you want him or her to hear.
Issue:
Steps:
Message:
Plans and Prayer
Having worked through this workshop and workbook, pause and reflect prayerfully on the following points and jot down what actions you will take when you return to the workplace in order to enhance your own management and development of staff and volunteers:
Which aspects of this approach to management and development do you find most exciting and inspiring?
What will you do to apply them?
Which aspects of this approach to management and development do you find most worrying or daunting? What
will you do to address them?
What priority actions do you need to take when you return to the workplace to improve your management and
development of staff and volunteers?
Which of your own management and development knowledge or skills do you need to develop as priority?
What will you do to develop them?
Suggested reading
Egan, G. (1994), The Skilled Helper. ISBN 0-534-21294-8
Hawkins, P. & Shohet, R. (2000), Supervision in the Helping Professions. ISBN 0-335-20117-2
Jay, R. (2001), Fast Thinking Manager’s Manual. ISBN 0-273-65298-2
Leigh, A. (2001), 20 Ways to Manage Better. ISBN 0-85292-879-3
McCurley, S. & Lynch, R. (1998), Essential Volunteer Management. ISBN 1-900360-18-7
Mullins, J. (2002), Management and Organisational Behaviour. ISBN 0-273-65147-1
Pardey, D. (2007), Introducing Leadership. ISBN 0-7506-6901-2
Pedler, M. et al (2007), A Manager’s Guide to Self Development. ISBN 0-07-711470-1
Pedler, M. et al (2004), A Manager’s Guide to Leadership. ISBN 0-07-710423-4
Whitmore, J. (2002), Coaching for Performance. ISBN 1-85788-303-9
Williams, K. (2006), Introducing Leadership. ISBN 0-7506-6880-6
Wright, W. (2000), Relational Leadership. ISBN 0-85364-996-0