How to Conduct Effective Counselling?

 Counselling techniques are pro-actively used as means of Staff Development or to remove barriers to development.

Counselling is likely to be most effective method of managing a situation in which a subordinate is coming to terms with strong feelings, facing up to reality, and deciding on a course of action which may need a lot of commitment to sustain. The counsellor's role is to provide environment, stimulus and support which enables the subordinate to achieve this on her/his own.

How to Conduct Effective Counselling?

Before you plan to begin with the Counselling session, do take care of following:

• Allow sufficient time and ensure that there are no interruptions from any source.
• Pick a venue that is informal, quiet and comfortable.
• Spend atleast 10 minutes, before counselling session, to review your knowledge of the person.
• Detach your image of the person from common stereotypes.

During your counselling session:

• Do not take not take notes during the interview, as it will create communication barrier. Hence, it will destroy the atmosphere of trust and frankness.
• Your opening remarks have to be warm and general. Prior Rapport will be an added advantage.
• It is important to tune into each other.

There after the Counselling interview can flow through Four stages:

1. Identifying The Problem: Ask them to tell you about the problem. Let them take their time. If necessary, help with simple questions. Listen carefully i.e. Employ Active Listening, which means maintaining regular and friendly, but not piercing, eye contact. So, you need to be aware of non-verbal communication as well. While listening you should not be thinking about - What to say next.

Frequently, the first problem identified and described is the one which they are able to recognize more readily, but there may be underlying problem they have either not realized or they have been avoiding.

Encourage them to look more deeply at the situation, with such questions as:

• What else you think might be causing this?
• Why is it a problem to you?
• What have you tried doing so far?

Working out why earlier actions have not resolved the problem/s, will reveal deeper causes.

Never at any stage in the interview criticize anything that the other person has said or has done by saying. Your intention is to help your subordinate get to the root of his/her problem. Hence, to make judgements about what is revealed in the process is an abuse of trust amounting to Psychological Violence.

It is helpful throughout the interview to paraphrase what has been said occasionally. This reflects back to subordinates the picture they are putting together, and it can help you guide them into next stage. if you think they are ready.

2. Accepting Feelings: Help the individual to recognize and accept the feelings being experienced as a result of the problem with such questions as:

• What did you feel like When.........?
• How do you feel now about..........?

Try to put yourself in other person's shoes with intent of helping the person.

3. Exploring Alternatives: Using the same kind of 'Open Questioning Techniques', encourage the individual to identify alternative responses to the problem. Also, the realistic implications of each alternative. Some of the useful phrases you can use are:

• Have you considered.........?
• What do you thing would happen if......?

But don't rush into solutions/ suggestions until the other person has put in great amount to effort and time to think of as many themselves. They should determine the direction they should follow. Too much direction from you may prevent further development.

4. Making The Decision: This has to be done entirely by the person you are counselling, because he/she has to be fully committed to it. You can help with such questions as:

• When do you have to make the decision?
• What do you think, you will do now?
• When / Where/ How do you think you might do that?

Of course they may decide not to take any action. They may wish to go away and give consideration to option.. But, No advice should be given, or pressure as to How they should decide and act.

There should be enough time to wind down the interview without abrupt stop. The person you are counselling feel satisfaction of having fully explored the problem, and know what personal follow up they need to be doing.

Counselling is not easy, but with practice and training will make you better with sessions and time.

Why and How to Know your Staff Better?

 We Can MANAGE – Whom we Know, With How much We Know and What We Know !!

Ask any number of bosses if they know their subordinates and they will say off-course they do. Do you know:

• About your Subordinates’ birthdays?
• The names of their children?
• Important anniversaries in their lives?
• What date did they join you, get last promotion, achievements at work?
• Their aspirations for the future?

Why to know?

Bosses who walk around their patch regularly. Stop to chat briefly at coffee time and take a personal interest in their staff generally have good rapport with their staff. This in turn leads to positive Assertive Behavior.

Even with small number of staff, it is useful to keep a notebook or a card index of important personal details, interests and major achievement to help you to build up a picture of the whole person. Without this positive effort, we see only the tip of the iceberg of each individual.

Reflect for a moment on following suggestions:

• A good boss/subordinate relation is is often the most important factor in job satisfaction.
• “The Boss” is a powerful influence in most people’s lives.
• The power of shared values as motivators and developers cannot be over-estimated and they can only be transmitted through sound relationships based on mutual knowledge and understanding.
• Your subordinates probably have same ‘hang-ups’ and worries that you have.
• They want to know you too, because they can relate better to someone they can understand as a person.

How to know?

The better we know people, the easier it is to engage their interest in the work and goals of the department, and to develop their abilities and intent to achieving them. Effective Communication, whether verbal or written, always begins with putting yourself in other persons shoes.

You typically almost half of the week with your staff. Hence is is important to know your staff at least half as well as you know your family. Some of the activities are suggested below:

• Do not delegate interviewing your staff.
• Be part of their induction process.
• Do create weekly and monthly interaction/training/development platforms.
• Water Cooler and Coffee break chats are very good and effective tool. Never undermine.
• Periodic family meetings or get-togethers do wonders. One a quarter or twice annually.
• Do create a process, where you have recorded information and timely updates on staff’s important dates – Birthdays, Anniversary, promotion, achievements etc….
• Do make sure that you wish them or congratulate them on their special dates..

Can you think of any more? Please do share what you can think of.

You can’t relate to the unknown, and you cannot develop what you don’t relate with.

Relationship Management - Confronting The Unacceptable Behavior

The key to ensuring that confrontation produces positive outcomes - key to handling CONFRONTATION skillfully.

In most of our working environment, stress is laid on building better relationships with teams and individuals.And most of us make conscious effort to build and nurture relationships across. Despite your efforts and the efforts of your team members, someone may initiate or continue unacceptable behavior serious enough to warrant corrective action.

A final communication tool to ensure course correction of the unwanted behavior is that of CONFRONTING unacceptable behavior assertively. How you handle such situation is critical to your effectiveness and your goal of encouraging accountability.

How do you respond to the word CONFRONTATION?

For most people the word conjures images of unpleasant, angry, combative sessions in which participants are accusatory, judgmental, defensive and uncooperative with one another. Few people have positive associations with Confrontations.

Positive Side of Confrontation

As you would have realized, confrontation can benefit all concerned. If someone's behavior is creating problems for others, chances may be that the person may be completely unaware of it. And if no one is willing to say anything to him, his undesired behavior continues and possibly damages relationships.This lack of discussion and awareness can explain why "Ignore the undesirable, and reinforce the desirable" strategy may have failed at changing the behavior.

The key to ensuring that confrontation produces positive outcomes is handling the confrontation skillfully. Most people do not know how to do that because they have not received any training and they have not had any good role models from which to learn the skills. 

The CARING CONFRONTATION process involves four steps:

 1.  Identify the Behavior: Did you describe the situation in relation to te other person's characteristics?Did you use adjectives such as arrogant, lazy, passive, stupid...... If yes, you did what most people do. Typically, when we have difficulty dealing with another person, we consider the person to be a problem.

         If we define the person as the problem, we are likely to set out to change the other                 person in some way to resolve the difficulty.But we cannot change the people's                     personalities.We cannot change their core values or their lifelong attitudes.

        The behavior is where the problem lies. It is what the person does that we wish he did         not do, or it is what that person doesn't do that we wish he would do. It is basically                doing or not doing the behavior.

        You must identify the specific behavior and describe it to the other person in factual,            non-blaming language.

2.  Identify the Tangible Effects: Why is the other person's behavior a problem for you? Because the behavior results in or could result in undesirable impact upon you. How does the behavior affect you?Does it cost money that comes from your budget? Does it take time and effort away from the activities? Does it affect the quality of product you produce or the quality of service you provide? Does it distract others from being productive? and so on........

        More that one or two tangible effects often result from person's unacceptable behavior.         It is these concrete results that make the behavior unacceptable.

        If you can think of no concrete, tangible effects of the person's behavior, then you                probably disapprove of the behavior just because it is different from what you consider         appropriate. You are judging the behavior by your own standards, which is normal                human tendency, but it gives you much less reason to ask someone to change his                    behavior. People don't like others beliefs and standards imposed on them and there's a            strong probability that they might refuse to comply (heard of Teenager's Rebellion?)

        

        When you can explain to someone hos his behavior causes a tangible negative  impact         upon you, ten he is much more likely to change it. Idea is to provide a rationale rather            come up as an overbearing parent figure.

3.  Identify your Own Feelings: Whenever someone's behavior creates a problem, you are likely to respond emotionally. It is important to be aware of your feelings and to communicate to the other person.

        Many people find this aspect of confrontation challenging because few people learn            much about the emotional part of being human. Many people are unaccustomed to                identifying their own emotions or feelings.

        You may get a better feel for your emotional responses if your realise there are only            four basic human emotions - Mad, Sad, Glad and Scared. All the other words words         we use to describe feelings are simply degrees of intensity of one of these four, or                combination of two or more of these basic emotions.

4.  Identify the Change You Desire:  The final step is to identify - What kind of Change you Want. Do you simply want the person to stop using the behavior? Do you want a different behavior in place of unacceptable one? Do you want the other person to suggest a solution?

        The last question above is important. People are most likely to follow through and                implement a change they thought of themselves. If you allow other person to suggest a         solution after you have presented your case, you may discover that the other person            may come up with a better and acceptable solution. This is then ideal, since the other            person will have sense of ownership and is likely to be comfortable in implementing            the same.

As a Thumb Rule - Avoid using commands in a confrontation situation. Even directing or guiding personalities, may get the other person to rebel against your telling them what to do.

Most people will react more cooperatively when you ask them to change a behavior or ask for their ideas.

The Job, No Leader should Delegate..

Having Right People in the Right Place.

Given many things that businesses' can't control, from the uncertain state of economy to the unpredictable actions of the competitors. From environment to  disease outbreak resulting to forced lock down, most of us witnessed during recent worldwide pandemic.

You would think companies would pay careful attention to one thing they can control - the quality of their people, especially those in the leadership pool. Any corporations' human beings are the most reliable resources for generating excellent results year after year. Their judgments, experiences, and capabilities make the difference between success and failure.

Yet some leaders, while they talk of people as their most important asset, usually do not think very hard about choosing the right people for the right jobs.

Why The Right People Aren't in the Right jobs?

Common sense tells us that the right people have to be in the right jobs. Yet so often the aren't. What accounts for the mismatches we see every day? Following are a few of my observations and learning, through out my Corporate career of decades of working with various large corporations:

1). Lack of Knowledge: Leaders often rely on staff appraisals that focus on - may be the wrong criteria, or they might take a fuzzy and meaningless recommendation for someone a direct report. Direct report recommends to the leader- "Bob's a great leader and a great motivator". The leader fails to enquire about the specific qualities that makes Bob a right candidate for the job. May be the job has not been defined by the leader himself to his direct report before asking for his recommendations. He has not defined in terms of three of four non-negotiable criteria.

2). Lack of Courage:  Most people know someone in the organisation who doesn't perform well, yet manages to keep his job year after year. The usual reason, we find, is that the person's leader does not have emotional fortitude to confront him and take decisive actions. Such failures can can do considerable damage to a business. If the non-performers are high enough in the organisation, it can be destroyed.

3). The Psychological Comfort Factor: Many jobs are filed with the wrong people because the leaders who promote them are comfortable with them.Its natural for executives to develop a sense of loyalty to those they have worked with over time, particularly if they have come to trust their judgments. But it is a serious problem when the loyalty is based on wrong factors. For Example- the leader may be comfortable with the person because that person thinks like him and does not challenge him, or has developed a skill of insulating the boss from conflict. Or the leader may favor people who are part of same social network, built up over years in the organisation.

4). Lack of Personal Commitment: When the right people are not in right jobs, the problem is visible and transparent. Leaders know intuitively that they have a problem and will often readily acknowledge it.But an alarming number of leaders do not do anything to rectify this problem. Leader cannot simply fix this problem by issuing directives.

Leaders need to spend at least 40-45% of their time  effort,and emotional energy to - Selecting, Appraising,and Developing people.

BOTTOM LINE

The foundation of a great company is the way it develops people - providing the right experiences, such a learning in different jobs / departments, learning from other people, giving candid feedbacks, proving coaching , education and training. If Leader spends substantial amount of time and energy developing people and assigning right people to right jobs, the payoff will come in form of  Sustainable Competitive Advantage.