Top Tips for Managers - Getting Smart with Team Development

I was telling a story recently about how I got my driver’s license. It’s a common metaphor for me to describe 70:20:10. I hadn't thought much about it until I was on the plane home. You see, there’s a dimension of my learning to drive story that I don’t think we give enough credit… the role of our peers in learning.

To this day the thing I recall most about being on my 'L plates' was how to find the friction point for my clutch. It’s the thing that helped me master the dreaded hill start and ultimately pass my driving test. I learnt this from a good mate of mine at the time who sat with me in the school car-park practicing on a small slope for hours to hold my friction point on the clutch. This simple example of peer to peer learning has stuck with me for over 20 years!

In this post, we’ll explore some tips on how you can help your team get engaged in peer to peer learning. It will give you more time in your calendar and your team will be more engaged in their own development and the development of their colleagues. The motto for this post is:

"A rising tide lifts all boats!"

Top Tips for Managers No. 3 – Getting Smart with Team Development

1.     Break Down the Barriers

It’s not unusual for a little reluctance when it comes to peers actively working to improve each other’s professional performance. Whether it’s competition for future promotions or anxiety around showing others that you need help from them to develop, building openness can be tough.

I recommend taking the conversation out of the workplace so that people can learn about each other on a more personal level, focused on finding the good in each other. When we bring down the barriers, we open up opportunities for people to connect to a higher purpose. A couple of ways to bring the barriers down include:

·         Focus on strengths. Have team members complete their VIA character strengths survey, and use it as a tool to get to know each other – Use a large room and spread all 24 strengths (1 per A4 piece of paper) around the room.

Have team members stand where their signature strength is. When everybody has found their signature strength, pair up and talk about how that strength energises them to do what they’re passionate about. Doesn't need to be over-engineered, it just needs to start a different type of conversation than people are used to. You’ll see barriers come down when people understand each other on a different level.

**Important – this activity also starts to shine a light on different people’s area of expertise. It’s your opportunity to start pairing up the ‘friction point expert’ with the kid that hasn’t learnt to do hill starts yet.

·         Direct energy towards a common cause. I was once involved in a team day where we spent 4 hours connecting little squares of knitted wool together to make blankets for children living in poverty. It was a mundane, repetitive task. It was rhythmic in its simplicity, and it provided space and time for people to connect with each other in a non-work context. People that barely knew each other were walking out of that activity with new connections and similarities they had no idea about before they started. Back in the workplace, these two examples broke down barriers and increased the ‘reaching out’ behaviour across members of the team.

2.     Get Your Experts to Share

There is a purpose for bringing down the barriers. It shines a light on levels of expertise that weren’t obvious in the past. When you’ve identified the experts, find ways that they can share their knowledge for the benefit of others. Everybody’s different. You’ll have your extrovert that wants to run a team training session, and you’ll likely have a few introverts that are very open to having individuals shadow them or be mentored but not too keen to make a big song and dance about it.

Whatever the case, give your expert some structure so that they can deliver their knowledge in a real, authentic and powerful way that matches the way adults like to learn. Two tools here that will help your expert share their knowledge with others:

·         4Mat Model. Developed by Bernice McCarthy. It’s awesome and changed how I deliver anything – training, pitching, influencing, you name it. 4Mat forces you to think about your message in the frames of ‘Why?’, ‘What?’, ‘How?’, and ‘What Next?’. Check out my previous blog about this with a template example.

·         VAK Learning Styles. An introduction to the differing needs of learners. Often we set our experts up for failure by not giving some insights into adult learning. Just because somebody is a brilliant business analyst, doesn’t mean they’re brilliant at sharing the knowledge. Check out this link from James Cook University to find out more about how adults like to learn and take this VAK self-assessment to see which style you prefer for learning.

3.     Build a Coaching Culture

Last but not least, it’s time to shift the responsibility for coaching to everyone in the team to be responsible for.

As a facilitator, it is very normal for a colleague that is not delivering a session to sit in the back of the room for observation and coaching feedback. There is a culture of transparency and shared understanding that whatever one’s experience level, they should be able to provide feedback on things they observed and use those observations as a platform for a coaching discussion.

This kind of approach can only happen where trust exists, so it makes sense that any intervention to build a coaching culture is done in a strategic, planned manner – ie. A change management plan. If you don’t already have a coaching culture, you’re really asking team members to fundamentally shift the way they operate with each other. This can be difficult for people if not set up in a positive way through team building and trust building exercises along with opportunities to practice in a safe way.

The key to successful peer to peer coaching is for all team members to use a standard coaching structure to help them stick to asking good questions rather than just giving assessments, suggestions, advice and answers. A great coach asks great questions. They don’t provide answers.

The foundation for coaching that I use and has been used by countless others over the years is GROW. If you haven’t come across it before, the letters stand for:

*Graphic care of http://www.mtdtraining.com

I was at a school recently where I was being shown the new open classroom designs that meant multiple classes could take place in the one large open space. The open spaces meant that teaching was more observable among peers and also allowed for larger classes being taught in a team fashion by the teachers. Observable spaces and team teaching offer opportunities for peers to check in with each other with good quality questions that coach towards higher performance.

Summary

Sometimes it can feel like it’s all on you as the manager to make sure that people are getting development opportunities and that team performance is increasing to meet business needs. The purpose of this post was to demonstrate a couple of ways that you can shift that responsibility to the other intelligent, capable and willing adults around you – your team. There’s really three steps to master:

1.     Bring down existing barriers to peer learning

2.     Get your experts to share their knowledge

3.     Build a coaching culture between peers

You can’t just walk in and say “everyone, we’re going to get more involved in peer to peer learning. Find a partner and start learning stuff…” It takes a little planning and some change management to shift mindsets. Don’t let the little bit of work to get things set up put you off taking the plunge. With your team members engaging together in their development, you’ll be left with a more empowered team and more time in your calendar to manage a brilliant business!

If you want to talk in detail about any of the tips in this blog or explore other ideas specific to your team, connect with Lachlan at www.remarkablelearningsolutions.com.