The grass is greener phenomenon is one of the common topics that discuss with people from time to time.  Most people that I work with have heard the saying “the grass is greener on the other side”.  Some time we do end up talking about how things are better elsewhere.  Sometimes this is because people are probing for other opportunities, or expressing their current state of dissatisfaction with how things are going in their work or personal life.  While typically my approach here is to use coaching to find what they are dissatisfied with, or what they are looking for elsewhere, sometimes I hear people describing positive aspects of things in other places, that are exactly the same where they current are.  Other times, I hear people express problems with their current state of the world, and how things might be better or different somewhere else.  In cases like these, I like to mention to them, that the grass is greener on the other side, which means that when they are elsewhere, the grass will seem greener where they currently are.  I find that this gives them enough perspective shift to then work back towards the more productive side of the discussion, e.g. what could make their current experience better.

Sure this is a retention oriented mindset.  I like the people that I work with and would like to continue to work with them.  Sometimes it works in that way and we end up having a productive conversation about what can be improved in their current experience.  It doesn’t always work this way and that’s fine as well.

If you have not seen the back story on the question of the week, the quick version is that weekly I provide a framing question for my coaching sessions with my direct reports.

I’m always curious how to motivate people, how to structure work that I need to be done with what people like to do.  This weeks question fits in the first category, and is as follows:

Which of the five categories are your primary motivations?

• Money
• Training
• Work exchange opportunities
• Work/Life balance
• Promotion

I let people offer other motivators if the wanted, but no one did.  May people felt compelled to share a bit on each topic preferring to order them rather than pick just one.

If you have not seen the back story on the question of the week, the quick version is that weekly I provide a framing question for my coaching sessions with my direct reports.

Inspired by re-reading some books on Scrum, this weeks question has been about waste.  Since my team has a diverse set of people, in our face to face discussions I tend to adjust how I express the question to suit the person.  Here are some examples:

• Where is our team creating waste?
• Where are we wasting time?
• What resources are we wasting?
• Where do you see waste?
• What things are you doing that you perceive as a waste?
• What do you as causing waste in our organization?

If you’ve been in the business world for very long at all, you have likely experienced a new manager coming into your chain of command.  This may have been you, your boss, your bosses boss (Grand-Boss if you will) or so on.  Sometimes this new leader will come in to the team with a new idea, approach or agenda.  This may depend on their experience with the organization that they are joining, it may be why they are getting the position that they are, or it could be something else completely.  All of that aside the question for this week is:

Congratulations.  You have been appointed the new leader of either your current team, your current organization, a different organization, or your company.  What are you going to change?

If you would like to talk with me as a coach about the current weeks topic, a prior weeks topic, or something of your own design, please feel free to reach out so that we can set something up.

When I was first working through how to bring more coaching opportunities into my normal workday, one thing that I came up with was the Question of the Week. Every week I spend a bit of time researching or just thinking about a question to pose in my weekly one on ones with my direct reports.  I do this because otherwise the meetings are not well structured or they are just filled with status.  We practice SCRUM, so our daily stand-ups give me plenty of status, and meetings without some sort of agenda’s are not a good use of time.  Sometimes team members want to use the one on one time to talk about something that is important to them, sometimes its a technical discussion, maybe a design discussion, something that may be going right or wrong, or something else that they want some help with.  However if they do not have something that they want to talk about, or something that I want to talk to them about, then the question of the week is there to help.

Initially I wanted to call this the Coaching Topic of the week, but that seemed to make people suspicious of the whole thing.  I think that made it seem too formal, or that I was trying to impose some sort of philosophy or agenda on them, or that I had some sort of outcome that I wanted from the question.  None of this is true, so I dropped the coaching moniker and just call it the Question of the Week which seemed to soften the whole tone.

When I started, I would just pose the question in the meeting.  This worked fine for me as the only prep I had to do was to come up with the question, but it didn’t work for my team members.  I quickly got the feedback that they needed more time to ponder the question, and they asked if I would send them out in advance.  So each week, I send out the question usually the evening before the week’s one on ones begin.  In the weekly mail, I clearly state that the question is just one topic, and that our one on ones are their time, and that I don’t expect them to prepare for the question or even that we will talk about the topic.

This has been a meaningful exercise for me.  The feedback that I’ve gotten from my team is that it has changed our one on one discussions for the better. I’ve decided that I will post the question of the week here as well.  Some weeks the questions have some background or back story, and so I will share some of that as well when I can.

If my question of the week inspires you, I would love to know about it.  If you would like to talk with me as a coach about the current weeks topic, a prior weeks topic, or something of your own design, please feel free to reach out so that we can set something up.