This issue describes an idea that I’d like to get feedback on, and then responds to the question: “What do you do when you think you have given someone too much responsibility/power? Or, how do you know when the person can’t handle the amount of freedom they are given?”
I’ve been busy planning and brainstorming new ideas, and I’d love to get your feedback on one of those new ideas:
Would you be interested in paying to participate in a small group live workshop on developing a coaching approach to leadership? I’m still working out what the pricing would be, but probably around $200 per person.
I’m picturing a 2 hour workshop capped at 10 or 15 participants. I’d include an overview of the coaching mindset and core coaching skills, but devote most of the time to interactive components. I’d like to include a live demo of coaching at least one participant on an authentic topic (hoping that the small group makes it feel safer to volunteer to be coached!) and some exercises for participants to practice thinking through how to ask questions in a coaching style (open, curious, non-judgmental, not leading to a presupposed response, etc.).
Many of you attended, or at least registered for, the webinar that I offered through Library Juice Academy in December. For what it was, I feel like it went really well. But it was HUGE! I don’t know if you realize this, but we had about 570 people registered! Because of the size, the LJA staff decided that it would be best to host the meeting using the webinar function on Zoom, which meant that I couldn’t even see anyone except for Ariana, the meeting host. I found out afterward that around 250 people attended live!!!
While I was thrilled that so many people are interested in learning more about using a coaching approach, that format meant that I wasn’t able to interact directly with anyone in the audience. And personal interaction is really what this approach is all about!
So, if you would be interested in a small interactive group workshop, please let me know by replying to this email! I’m still in the brainstorming phase, so I’m open to ideas for what would make it worth it to you to sign up!
And now, back to our regular content!
One of the questions I wasn’t able to get to in the December webinar was:
This is really tricky to navigate from a more directorial management style, because you risk sending mixed signals at best, or worse, making them feel micromanaged.
The beauty of the coaching approach is that it sets up a framework for you to ask your employee these questions, in a slightly different way, of course! By talking through what they’re working on and what challenges they’re having, you may be able to provide the support they need to successfully navigate this level of responsibility. And, if this really is too much for them, by asking what support they need, you create an opportunity for them to ask you to lift some of that responsibility from their shoulders, so that you don’t have to come in and effectively tell them that you don’t think they can handle this.
All of this is highly contextual, of course. The scene that’s playing out in my mind as I think through this question is actually a memory of the first major program I planned as a new librarian. During my first year of my very first librarian job, my supervisor suggested that I create a program to celebrate faculty publications across campus. I don’t remember whether this was just an idea thrown out there as fully optional or if it was an order disguised as a suggestion, but being so new, I didn’t feel like it was optional. As part of this, my supervisor wanted me to compile a bibliography of all faculty publications for the past couple of years, because there was no other unit on campus sharing a centralized report from all colleges and schools across campus at that time.
That comes to mind for me because, wow, I felt way out of my depth! Being asked/told to create this program from scratch and figure out how to get this bibliographic information with hardly any guidance was too much responsibility/power for me at that stage.
For example, I was still learning to navigate the campus hierarchy. When do you email faculty directly, versus reaching out through department chairs or Associate Deans or email the Dean or Provost directly? Who was I, this first year faculty member (or maybe second year by then?), to be emailing these leaders directly?
And then there was the decision paralysis about pretty much every part of shaping this program.
What’s the best way to collect these citations? That first time around, I wound up just emailing the all-faculty list to ask people to voluntarily take the time to submit their publications via a google form! In subsequent years, I learned that I could email the Dean’s Office for each college, because they each compiled lists for their units, there just wasn’t anyone compiling those lists for a campus-wide report.
What’s the best way to structure the event celebrating these publications? Should we have speakers, and if so, how many? And if so, how should I select who to invite to present their research?
There were so many details to work out, and I was mostly left to figure it out on my own. It turned out fine, but my annual review criticized me for procrastinating and seeming to throw things together at the last minute. And I did throw things together at the last minute, but it was due to decision paralysis with too many options and too little support, not a matter of me being lazy or disorganized.
So, if I could turn the tables and play the role of the supervisor realizing that they had given this new librarian too much responsibility in that scenario, what would it look like to use a coaching approach?
One part would be to just check in regularly and ask a lot of coaching questions – non-judgmental, open-ended, authentically curious, transparent, and not leading. If you haven’t been checking in regularly so far, then you’ll need to get a broader update before moving to this more specific focus, but if you have, then you can start with just:
- What part of the planning are you working on now?
Let’s say they’re thinking about how to organize the celebration event. Your next questions could sound something like:
- What ideas do you have for what you’d like the actual program to look like?
- What are the pros and cons of each of those ideas?
- Which sounds best to you now (after talking through the different ideas)?
- What are you having difficulty with?
- What help do you need?
- What are your next steps?
By asking these questions, you provide the support they may need without having to be the one to take any freedom away. They are still the one responsible for making the decisions, but with you there as a sounding board and able to share information that they don’t already have, so that they don’t have to learn by trial and error.
The other key part here is making sure that you build trust. My supervisor did come to check in on how the planning was going once or twice while I was working on that program, but I didn’t feel comfortable admitting that I was struggling. Some of that was in the phrasing of their questions, and some of that was due to the way I had heard this supervisor talk about others in other settings. So it’s also important to put energy into building a culture of psychological safety. If you’re still working on this, then you’ll have to be even more cautious in how you ask questions.
Of course, you handed them this responsibility so that they can take care of this project for you, so you don’t want to have to hold their hand every step of the way. This support could look like a 15-30 minute check-in every other week, or part of a monthly one-to-one meeting. But, you do need to be there to provide some support and space for them to ask for help if this really is too much for them.