Hello, I’m Charlie Janes with FocalPoint Business Growth and Value Advisory.
Almost every business owner and leader that I talk to struggles with how to get the most out of their employees: they are looking for ways to get more accountability, to have them be more fulfilled, to have greater retention, and they want people thinking in terms of how to absolutely delight customers.
So I’m going to talk to you about a simple coaching method that you can use to develop your people and spend less time doing the work for them and more time helping them become stronger employees: it’s called Navigational Conversations.
Navigational Conversations to Empower Employees
When an employee comes to you with a problem, it’s very important that you ask them clarifying questions about the nature of the problem and why it matters. Usually, it’s at this point that the owner just jumps in with the solution just to move on with it. But there’s merit in having the employee define the issue.
Clarify the End Goal
Once they define what the issue is, you want them to find what the ideal state is. A lot of times they don’t even know that. The difference between the two after you’ve clarified it is the gap: and that’s really – through a coaching relationship – what you’re trying to minimize.
Brainstorm Solutions
So once you’ve identified what the gap is, the next step is to brainstorm: and with any given problem there are a lot of different ideas or ways of solving it. A lot of times, the employee or the manager will just jump in with the first thing that comes to mind – and obviously, if it’s a small little issue then that makes sense.
But if it’s something of consequence it’s good to at least come up with a couple of ideas. If it revolves around strategic planning or something really important like revenue increases or brand new programs, sometimes I have my clients go through and generate a list of 20 ideas: it’s an actual facilitated session called the 20 Idea Method. If you’re interested in learning more, just text me and I’ll send you a video on how to do it.
But getting back to brainstorming: have your employee come up with a couple of ideas at least – have them thinking about it, and then once you come up with a couple of ideas, then you can jointly select the one that seems to be the most promising.
If it’s a junior employee, maybe you’ll choose it but for the more experienced employee, you’re going to want to have them choose it so that there’s some accountability, and frankly, so they feel more fulfillment.
Planning Projects for Success
So once they have chosen what the best solution is, you want them to plan how they’re going to implement it. If it involves teamwork, then they have to communicate it with other people. It may require some amount of documentation: so you want them to lay out a project plan – and the better that they get at laying out projects and planning them, the higher value employees they are and the more they’re taking a step towards being your next manager.
Anticipate Possible Obstacles and Scenarios
Once the plan’s in place though, we want them to anticipate what could go wrong. That’s probably why they’re coming to you because you’re probably good at that – poking holes in ideas and that’s still something you can do, but let them do it first. Then you might – if they’re really missing something – then you might go ahead and add in some commentary on that.
So once we’ve identified what could go wrong, we confirm the overall plan: particularly the schedule, the milestones, and any constraints that you want to apply. Do they need to check back in to verify the budget, or if there’s a major decision point where you want to check with them, you need to make that clear during the meeting.
Summary of the Navigational Conversations Process
So that’s our overall process:
- Find your gap by discussing where you’re at and where you want to be.
- Brainstorm.
- Create a plan.
- Anticipate what could go wrong.
- Confirm.
I’d love to hear how it goes for you – and if anybody’s interested, we actually offer an open enrollment class and I do on-site programs for entire teams. So I’ll be glad to talk to you about that as well.
I’m Charlie Janes at FocalPoint Business Growth and Value Advisory, and my phone number is 650-867-0207. Goodbye, and I look forward to helping you build a team of professionals and leaders in your business.
