The jazz greats including John Coltrane, Charlie Parker and Louis Armstrong also understood collaboration; they knew that a great jazz performance requires more than individual excellence. Members of their combos listened carefully to the others and played in a tightly integrated and collaborative group environment. Not only did they work collaboratively, but they distinguished their [...]

In many professional service teams it is not only the team leaders who coach. Other senior colleagues frequently supervise the work of trainees and less experienced people. Some coaches, or supervisors as they are called in some professions, do an excellent job. They have a talent for the task and deploy first-class skills. They may [...]

The motivational benefits of positive feedback were explored in Creating the Conditions for Outstanding Performance . Acknowledging and recognizing good performance is a strong reinforcement of behaviour and encourages people to continue to strive for first-class results. There are also occasions, of course, when it is necessary to give feedback about the things that people [...]

When you are in your coaching role you may find yourself helping a team member to decide on the best way to learn a new skill. This is likely to be in response to a need that has been identified in an earlier or current coaching session. Research by Honey and Mumford (1992) shows that [...]

Those who coach for a living develop a wide repertoire of useful skills. As a busy leader of a professional service team you are probably looking for a few basic ideas to help you to enlarge your natural talents to help others to learn. Asking effective questions is the starting point. John Whitmore in his [...]

Mutual respect and trust are at the core of a good relationship between a coach and a learner in any field of endeavour. Team leaders in professional service firms earn their respect by doing their leadership job well. That includes coaching. Their competence and achievements as professionals also play a part. It is probably true [...]

Coaching is about helping other people to learn and to put their learning into effect. Notice the emphasis on the word ‘helping’. Managerial leaders do not always see their work in this light. One said to me ‘I leave that sort of thing to trainers, teachers and counsellors. I have a job to get on [...]

I like to think that the same holds true for tennis strokes: that the perfect strokes are already within us waiting to be discovered, and that the role of the pro is to give a nudging encouragement. One reason I like to think this is that when my students think of strokes as being discovered [...]

Various pieces of research, including those by Frederick Herzberg (2003) and Harry Levinson (2003), have shown clearly the importance of distinguishing between extrinsic incentives like pay and conditions and the intrinsic ones that lie deep within human nature. Ask people what makes them dissatisfied at work and you hear about poor pay, irritating bosses, uncomfortable [...]

Most professionals enjoy their technical work. After all, they chose the career in the first place primarily because they were attracted to the work involved and felt that it suited their abilities and personalities. Of course most people get bored if they do the same work for too long. That is why it is so [...]

Good leaders can inspire team members to excel by fostering optimism and a positive outlook. Here are some practical tips: Create a virtuous circle of positive expectations. Expect your team members to perform well. People are then more likely to live up to them. Lead by example. Make sure that your own professional work and [...]

Most professionals enjoy their technical work and get a kick out of serving their clients well. However, when I visit some offices where groups of professionals are at work, I notice that the atmosphere is rather leaden. Conversations, few and far between, are serious. There is very little smiling. There are lots of heads down [...]

I have noticed that many leaders of professional service teams do a lot of the formal things that are required of them. They hold meetings to review performance, they conduct performance review interviews, they keep their people informed about major changes, they involve their teams in objective setting and so on. What they don’t do [...]

Most professionals and support people welcome the opportunity to provide ideas for doing new things and for doing things better. These may be concerned with services, processes, systems or structures. They may be relevant to client service, marketing, organization, information technology, management, relationships or the firm’s culture. Tapping the ideas that people have about improving [...]

In professional teams responsibilities vary in terms of range and complexity. However, everyone is part of the team. Everyone’s work is important. It is a sad fact that in professional environments this is not always recognized. Sometimes a ‘them and us’ attitude between professionals and support people is evident. Sometimes professionals do not acknowledge sufficiently [...]

A failure to delegate properly is not uncommon, especially, but not exclusively, in law firms. In other words a large proportion of the professional work time of more senior people is spent doing things that more junior team members, with the right coaching, supervision and support, could handle. This not only means lower profits as [...]

In professional service teams the more senior people, for instance partners and associates, usually have all of the responsibility and authority that they need to undertake their work. On the other hand the more junior professional employees and the support people may feel over-controlled and consequently dissatisfied. Often, in these circumstances, people respond very well [...]

It is sad but true that many people, senior as well as junior, go through their working lives without receiving any kind of personal appreciation or recognition. Whenever I speak with leaders of teams of professionals it is clear that they are perfectly well aware of the importance of positive feedback but in many cases [...]

Energetic and enthusiastic leaders who demonstrate a vigorous drive for results have a positive effect on their team members. They act as role models. There are a number of things that you can do: Make sure that your team members, individually and collectively, have a clear sense of direction and challenging objectives for the more [...]

When you cease to make a contribution, you begin to die. — (Eleanor Roosevelt) Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are truly endless. — (Mother Teresa) The drive to behave in a particular way comes from within. Because this is well understood, many leaders of professionals believe that they [...]