“People support best that which they help to create”, a fairly well known phrase and one, if youve been at the sharp end of managing people and teams you will recognise instantly. If they didn’t have a good part in deciding what needs to be done, what the next steps are, and who needs to take them, then you can almost guarantee that some part of it wont happen, if not all of it. Its a strange old thing people management; the father of statistical process control W. Edwards Deming said “management is the problem.” I think he has point.

No creation, no ownership

I have found working with lots of people, from night shifts in a Lancashire textile mill to one-to-one coaching of senior executives, that if you try to deliver the answer (the common trap brilliantly elucidated by my colleague Ned Skelton and calling it “mentoring as the escape clause!”), then because theyve not been involved in creating ‚ the solution often the actions that have been discussed will not actually get done.

Pizzas

In my days as a manager we were always taught to get the instructee to repeat back the instruction, to check they had understood. Good if you’re ordering a pizza you get what you want, but when the person involved is actually going to eat the pizza, then they might not be as committed to the implementation as instructed. They will certainly not support best the eating of something they did not order or maybe even did not want. And some people like to create pizzas with strange toppings.

Coaching is the answer

And here is why I believe so: I have worked with a number of MDs and their teams. I recall working as a strategy consultant with one MD a couple of years back. He was trying to significantly grow his business. I diagnosed that in order to grow he first needed to develop a clear sense of the mission, vision and strategy that he wanted for the business. Over a series of sessions I facilitated his development of these, clarifying and capturing the outputs, engaging and challenging as we went. I summarised the strategic map at the
end and left him to it.

I recently visited him again as a coach rather than as a consultant and found, to my disappointment, that he had implemented next to nothing of the work we had agreed. While I was there he pulled it out again, and this time on reflecting, he rejigged it to get to the answer to his current challenges. In other words, now he owned it, it was his not mine, and he is now implementing with a real gusto.

Their answer

The whole process of coaching is aligned with, and aimed at, helping the coachee arrive at their answer, and the action(s) necessary to take the next steps. They cant get any more
involved.

What happened in my example was that I had arrived at the answer for him, starting with diagnosing what he needs is... However this approach did not build his ownership.

Coaching the asking of the right questions at the right time on the other hand, helps the coachees into an understanding of what to do, and because they are thinking about the solution to their problem they own it, and will be motivated to act upon it.

5 steps to strengthen ownership

You can enhance the likelihood of successful implementation by coaching your team members, colleagues and clients and helping them

1. create their own actions
2. make these solutions real and engaging
3. investigate what the effects of their actions are likely to be
4. consider how they might mitigate against variations or failures
5. examine options and alternatives and potential scenarios to define and give depth and breadth to the potential solution(s)

Truly, they will support best that which they helped to create and with a bit of luck they will more likely actually get it done. They might even eat the pizza 😉

What is your experience?