David Creelman

Accountability seems to be a simple enough idea. For example, a manager tells Joe to bring the coffee and Jane to bring the donuts. They are held accountable for delivering the goods. For professional jobs we usually talk about accountability in terms of big outcomes, such as hitting a revenue target or delivering a project on time. Something needs to be achieved and someone is held responsible for achieving it. But if it’s that simple, why are accountabilities a perennial challenge even for experienced managers?

In this topic we will:

• Look at the methods for making accountability work.
• Discuss where our attempts to create accountability cause problems.
• Develop insight into the ambiguities which inevitably surround accountability.

Pixar has made a string of great movies including Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Finding Nemo. Pixar’s CEO, Ed Catmull, says one of the reasons for their success is candor. People have to be willing to say they feel if a plot line is confusing, if a character looks wrong, or if a joke is not funny. This can be difficult to do, especially after a writer or artist has put their heart into the work.

People have to be willing to speak up if a process is not working, if a manager isn’t giving clear directions, or if politics are undermining productivity. This can be difficult to do too, especially when you want to maintain good relationships with colleagues and do not want to offend your boss.

A ceaseless effort to enable candid conversations is necessary in every organization. Let’s look at how you can bring candid conversations to your work.

The objectives of this session are to:

• • Learn techniques to enable candid conversations.
  • Practice candid conversations.
  • Appreciate how you can personally contribute to a culture of candor.

Having a high IQ (Intelligence Quotient) is important for managers but so is having a high EQ (Emotional Quotient), or what is called emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence is not so much a thing in itself as a convenient label for a range of interpersonal skills. Our ability to manage emotions, both our own and those of others—can play a critical role in determining our happiness and success at work.

Can you develop emotional intelligence? Many people think so—or this would be a very short topic!

The objectives for this topic are to:

• Reflect on how well you know yourself.
• Consider how you relate to others at work.
• Determine how you can support others in increasing their emotional intelligence.

Most people like the idea of being on a team—although working on a team can be another matter. Not only can frictions create problems; the teams we work on rarely match up with the ideal vision we have of teams. When we think of a team we draw on images from sport: a small stable group of people working towards an important common goal. In organizations we might be on several teams, they may have dozens of people, and not be aligned. And many teams are now virtual, so we may never even meet face-to-face, or are at least a hybrid team.

In this topic, we will look at the world of teamwork and give some tips to navigate through the challenges.

The objectives of this topic are to:

• Increase your understanding of the different sorts of teams you might work on.
• Review some of the research on what makes teams work well.
• Identify some specific things that you can do to improve how your teams function.

Work is not just about making brilliant decisions. It is also about how we manage our time and energy, individually and as a team. Almost everyone feels there is not enough time in a day, but there are days when we feel “Wow, we got a lot done”. How do we make that happen more often? Sometimes the problem isn’t lack of time at all, it’s lack of energy. When we are at our best we can zip through a project, but when we are tired or uninspired the hours go by but not a lot is accomplished.

The objectives for this session are to:

• Identify how we currently manage our time.
• Learn how to work with our natural rhythms so we can maximize creative and productive work.
• Reflect on ways we can work to make the most of time and energy.

Instead of developing your talent equally across the board, you must recognize that certain jobs and tasks are pivotal. This topic goes beyond your organization’s HR strategy. It’s about how well your entire organization connects decisions about talent to its strategic interests. Talent decisions lie not so much with HR as with executives, managers, and supervisors. They make decisions about who to hire, what skills to develop, what results to reward, and generally where to invest time and money in improving talent. This topic provides you with opportunities to determine unique ways to nurture talentship within your organization and not just mimic what has worked for others.

Today’s topic will provide you with an opportunity to:

• Appreciate that the best place to invest in talent is sometimes non-intuitive.
• Learn methods for determining where an investment in talent will yield the highest return.

This CoachingOurselves topic challenges you to diagnose and clarify your own talent “mindset”. How can you best maximize the talent around you and build on your employees’ strengths? Discuss and create strategies with your colleagues to bring the talent mindset into action.

The objectives for this topic are to:

• Understand what talent management is.
• Appraise your own talent mindset.
• Decide what you can do in your day-to-day work to get the most out of the talent in your unit/ organization.

One of the basic conundrums of good management is that you must become less involved as you take on more managerial responsibilities. Inherent to effective managing is the skill of delegating. Yet delegation can prove to be a perennial problem for new and experienced managers alike.

Delegation is not a short-term solution but rather a consistent strategy of communicating effectively and developing your team. It increases your leadership capacity and that of your colleagues. So let’s take some time today to look at how you deal with delegating.

Today’s exploration will:

• Introduce you to the three most common reasons for delegation problems.
• Ask you to reflect on where you can improve.