“Anything that takes out of our comfort zones for a while can act as a reminder that the past we are used to may not be our best future” (Charles B. Handy, The Second Curve: Thoughts on Reinventing Society)
I’d been working with my team to support their personal development and build the team as we navigate the pandemic. Using 350s to enable people they work with — colleagues, commissioners and partners — to give them feedback on what they’ve done well, what’s challenged them and what opportunities to grow as well as questions from the excellent Manual of Me to help them think about their career.
I used that to get people to imagine what they’d like to write in a year about what they’ve achieved and what they’d like others to write about them, a postcard from the future if you will, a method I borrowed from @enrolyourself. I’m also going to get people to visualise how they’ve challenged themselves in a year — that could be a skill they need that they want to radically improve or to experience activities that take them outside of their comfort zone.
I’ve found it can need me as a manager to use what people want to improve and use specific opportunities to get them to dive in at the deep end, while consciously supporting them through being in the “discomfort zone”. This could include a debrief after them deputising for me, or facilitating a workshop with strong characters or mediating difficult conversations, through to getting them to lead and mobilise strategies and programmes, by scoping together with the sponsor and then slowly letting them fly while I become less involved, or even encouraging them to jump into a more senior role, while coaching to lead it.
It’s an art rather than a science to help people navigate through the choppy waters of the discomfort zone. You don’t want people to sink, nor do you want them to coast. Sometimes you have to intervene to deliberately take them into that “discomfort zone” either because they’ve had issues with their performance or behaviour which need to be rectified. But sometimes, it’s where they are high performing but don’t feel confident or making the plunge.
I’ve experienced it too as a member of my team, being asked to deputise, tackle a difficult issue I’ve had little prior knowledge of or more often than not, build relationships quickly with people I didn’t know to deliver change.
I’ve also used a coach to challenge me to come out of my comfort zone and moved to different organisations every couple of years, a practice which is very common in the private sector, two years often being the minimum, but less so in the public sector.
I love to challenge myself to mobilise a new team to stretch their skills, in a new organisational culture, where you need to tackle different challenges
- Use personal development to ask yourself, in a year how will I have challenged myself?
- What are the skills and experiences I need to develop but don’t feel confident at using?
- What are the situations I find difficult to navigate and what could help me unblock them?
- What career options could I develop into which are ones that would challenge me the most? How can I experience them?
- What can I do over the next month or even week to try this out?
- Who can hold me to account and help me with this?
I’ve written before about what I’ve learnt coming into a new job and working with a new manager. How do you do this virtually, where you can’t use body language or with face to face contact to build rapport?
What’s your core work — in other words, what’s in your job description?
What’s your push work, new ways of working or tackling issues that you could introduce?
What’s your exploration work — the 5–10% of time where you can learn something new, or develop a self-initiated project?
