muniBLOG: Administration

Are you practicing SITUATION AWARENESS?

Situation Awareness is a skillset that should be practiced daily and is a valuable tool for staff.

Increasing situation awareness, through constant development and use increases security, protection of staff, protection of assets and overall resiliency of staff and the organization.

Training Situation Awareness benefits every department across the organization.

This training can take many forms. The focus however should always be the same. Elevate the staff member’s capability of being aware of their surroundings and the different influences, factors, items, and people that make up the environment they’re in. Situation Awareness is a mental image of what is happening all around you. Hearing, seeing, feeling for information and the various cues and clues that those influences, factors, items, and people are making in that environment and piecing them together so that they can have a good idea of what is happening and then using that information to predict what happens next.

There are many reasons why we need to be situationally aware.

  • Personal Safety & Security
  • Crime
  • Workplace Safety

 

Personal Safety & Security

Situation Awareness training can greatly improve an individual’s personal safety and security, regardless of if they’re at work, home or at play. Being aware of the environment you’re in reduces the risk of placing yourself in harms way or removing yourself from harms way. Being aware of the individual that wants to or is about to cause you harm or steal some of your personal belongings, unfortunately in some locals, environments and situations is much needed. Unfortunately for most, we traverse through many different environments on a daily basis that vary in degrees of safety.

 

Crime

Levels of crime or criminal activity vary geographically and from environment to environment. Unfortunately, criminal activity affects many of us, especially crimes against a person, theft, verbal abuse, physical abuse all the way to the far end of the spectrum of terrorist events. In efforts to be continuously aware, individuals should keep themselves abreast of local news and events and equally important when travelling, their destinations local news and events.

Workplace Safety & Security

It is everyone’s collective and individual responsibility to make and improve workplace safety and security. Law enforcement organizations, Crime Stoppers chapter always encourage us to “See something. Say something”. This very same message applies equally from our personal lives to our working environment. “That’s not my job” just doesn’t cut it anymore. Situation Awareness training assists organizations in bettering the safety, security and overall resiliency of their employees resulting in a more safe, secure and resilient organization.

 

Situational Awareness Training Delivery

There are options for organizations when seeking out Situation Awareness training.

  •          In Person
  •          Virtual Classroom

 

In Person Training

It has been said that In Person training is the best delivery method and most beneficial for the participants. It can create an environment of interactivity between the instructor, the participant and with the other participants also. Our delivery of this training will only take up to half a day.

 

Virtual Training

The recent and ongoing pandemic also allowed us to pivot the training and provide it in the virtual world in the varying platforms of virtual meeting spaces. Virtual training offers benefits also in that, we can bring together staff from geographically challenging locals where costs to bring them together is prohibitive making an even larger training group more feasible.

Benefits

The benefits of Situation Awareness training are many for al individuals. Increased personal safety and security, increased security culture in the workplace and increasing the individual’s knowledge of the environment around them. Whether it is a high or low risk environment, situation awareness belongs there.

The value of the training, the value of the results shouldn’t be overlooked or underestimated.


Should your Municipality need assistance, contact Michael White Group International today, and we will be happy to answer your questions. Visit michaelwhitegroup.com/contact/

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CAMA’s Political Acumen Toolkit: Politics and the Role of the Senior Administrator

CAMA’s Political Acumen Toolkit

 POLITICS AND THE ROLE OF THE SENIOR ADMINISTRATOR 

Recognizing the importance of political understanding in the role of senior municipal administrators, also referred to as political acumen, the Canadian Association of Municipal Administrators (CAMA) launched a Political Acumen Toolkit. This resource can be found at politicalacumen.camacam.ca  

 

Today’s featured category is the role of the senior administrator in politics. 

 

The role of a CAO is apolitical, and therefore, it is imperative that the CAO and other administrators remain impartial in all matters.  At a high level, the role of Administration is to implement the policies of elected officials. This creates an interesting relationship between the political and the non-political in municipal activities. To successfully navigate this nebulous territory, it is important that municipal leaders understand the politics of a situation as well as have a firm grasp on their role.  As much as the CAO and other administrators work in the political realm and need to have a solid understanding of political influences, these roles require that you stay neutral to be able to act effectively on behalf of your municipality. 

 

To learn more about the politics and role of the senior administrator visit CAMA’s Political Acumen Toolkit. 

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Are Your People Being Poached? It Might Be Time for a Leadership Check-up.

In the 2016 Ontario Municipal Chief Administrative Officer Survey, CAOs identified “poaching” of their employees as a significant problem. One CAO bluntly summed up the issue,

“It feels like the succession plan of some of my neighbours is just to recruit my best people with higher comp.”1

In 2022, the challenge of keeping good people continues and it is not limited to municipalities. While compensation is certainly a consideration in luring people away from their current employer, there is another variable that plays a significant role in employee retention. If the adage of “people leave managers not companies” is to be believed, it is prudent for an organization to consider current leadership health when addressing the talent retention issue.

In conversations with my clients confronting this challenge, I lead with this question:

In order to avoid the stiff competition of the current talent market, what are you doing to keep your good people?

This question is followed by a probing of their current leadership health.

·      Are your leaders self-aware and willing to set aside their own biases in their daily leadership practice?

·      Do your leaders have an objective understanding of what motivates each member of their team?

·      Do your leaders have the resources to lead effectively?

·      Do you collect data on a regular basis that provides insight into leadership successes and challenges at all levels, and do you create action plans in response to the story of this data?

I. Are your leaders self-aware and willing to set aside their own biases in their daily leadership practice?

There is no shortage of evidence reinforcing the importance of self-awareness in leadership.  Getting to that self-awareness through honest introspection, however, can be a humbling experience but at the same time, self-reflection is a powerful lever in recognizing one’s biases and realizing greater leadership potential. Ensuring that the organization’s leaders are provided with objective, frequent and reliable feedback about leadership behaviour at all levels can be a powerful strategy in retaining great employees.

II. Do your leaders have an objective understanding of what motivates each member of the teams they lead?

 All members of the team are “wired” differently and therefore require a differentiated leadership approach. Understanding what motivates and demotivates team members and applying this knowledge in the leader- team member relationship demonstrates the leader’s willingness to recognize and respect team members as individuals. Respect and understanding of unique qualities are powerful motivators for an employee’s loyalty to their manager and their desire to remain with the team (and the company).

III. Do your leaders have the resources to lead effectively?

There is an entire industry that has grown out of leadership development. In my own professional experience and that of my clients, there are three metrics that separate “one day wonder” leadership development efforts from those that gain traction and become hardwired into company culture.

1.     Simplicity – Leadership training and materials that are overly complex and require significant amounts of time and effort will not get used. Full stop. The measure of success for simplicity is the ability of leaders to immediately understand and apply new knowledge and materials in their daily leadership practice.

2.     Relevance – Leaders must see a direct connection between leadership development initiatives and their current situation. Moreover, they will need to be convinced of the benefit for themselves and their team.

3.     Accountability – Many leadership development initiatives fail because participants know they won’t be held accountable for implementation.  Perhaps the most powerful accountability strategy is for all levels of leadership, from front-line managers to the C-Suite, to embrace, model, and set an expectation for the implementation of a leadership development strategy.

IV. Do you collect data on a regular basis that provides insight into leadership successes and failures in your organization?

In the same way that leader self-awareness affirms areas of strength and challenge so too, does organizational self-awareness. How do employees feel about coming in to work every day? How do they feel about their boss or the people they work with? Do they have a sense of satisfaction in their job?  The answers to these and other important people-related questions will have impact on the success or failure of the organization because every business problem inevitably includes a people problem.

There are important considerations when conducting an organizational self-assessment:

1.     Measure what matters.  Specifically target those people areas that have the greatest impact on the achievement of organizational objectives

2.     Select the tools and strategies that will yield the most useful objective information and provide a macro view of the entire organization as well as a micro view of each department. These dual perspectives shed light on the performance of all leaders in the organization.

3.     Administer the assessment and collect the data in a timely manner.

4.     The process does not end with the assessment! Analyze the data and create an action plan with key performance indicators and timelines. Everyone in the organization needs to feel that their contribution made a difference.

It takes courage for an organization to “hold up a mirror” to itself, but the payoff is understanding current employee sentiment which is a powerful data point in strategizing for employee retention.

The best option for avoiding the current “war on talent” is to keep your good people from leaving. A talent strategy that includes asking the right questions about leadership health, conducting an objective assessment of current leadership practices, and creating an action plan informed by the story of the data, will be instrumental in the engagement and retention of great employees.

 

1Ontario Municipal Chief Administrative Officer Survey 2016,  A Candid Look at the Issues on the Minds of Ontario CAOs, SurveyCorp, Spring, 2016

Mitch LePage, a former public sector leader, is a Managing Principal with Predictive Success Corporation and leadership partner to private and public sector clients including municipalities. To discuss your talent strategy or challenges, you can reach Mitch at [email protected].

 

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What is Boolean Logic?

Girl encircled by search icons and AI

What is Boolean Logic?

Have you ever wondered how a computer can do something like balance a check book, or spell-check a document? If you want to understand the answer to this question down at the very core, the first thing you need to understand is something called Boolean Logic.   [i]

Why do you need to understand Boolean Logic?

Well, as the use of artificial intelligence (AI) increases, it will be important for us all to understand it.  I am no expert on it by any means, but here’s my take on what I understand to be the very basic fundamentals of it, in the simplest and broadest of terms.

The term “Boolean” refers to a system of logic developed by the mathematician and early computer pioneer, George Boole.

A Boolean search is a query technique that utilizes Boolean Logic to connect individual keywords or phrases within a single query.
Boolean searching allows the user to combine or limit words and phrases in an online search in order to retrieve relevant results.  Boolean searching includes three key Boolean operators: AND, OR, and NOT which are used to limit, broaden and define the search results.
When these “operators” are used between two keywords, the search will result as follows:
  • A Boolean search for “Cats AND Dogs” will retrieve all documents that contain both words
  • A Boolean search for “Cats NOT Dogs”, will retrieve only documents that contain the word “Cats”
  • A Boolean search for “Cats OR Dogs”, will retrieve documents that contain either the word “Cats” or the word, “Dogs”
Wildcard Characters (? and *) are also used in Boolean Logic. 
  • “?” matches a single character (i.e. the search string “re?” will match both rest and rent)
  • “*” matches multiple characters (i.e. the wildcard search “res*”, will match rest, rested and resting.[ii]
Quotation marks require words to be searched as a phrase, in the exact order you type them. For example, when searching for posts about Asset Management, using the quotation marks will search for the phrase exactly as it appears (i.e., “Asset Management”).  It would not return  documents that contain both the words, Asset and Management, in any other combination.
There are other elements to Boolean Logic, but I don’t want to get you too far into the weeds.  
The main thing I wanted to achieve with this article is; a) to provide an introduction to Boolean Logic, for those of us who are new to it and, b) for you to understand that combining Boolean strings with AI-powered search filters to conduct a search, utilizes a search engine to its fullest, most comprehensive potential for optimum search results.
Susan Shannon, CEO
muniSERV.ca

[i] How Boolean Logic Works, by Marshal Brain, Science Direct

[ii] Gnowit Guide to Boolean Logic – Boolean Primer

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CAMA’s Business Partner Program

The Canadian Association of Municipal Administrator’s Business Partner Program allows companies to showcase their products and services to CAMA members and their employees. 

Facts about CAMA Membership:  
⦁ As a national association, the CAMA membership offers a wide geographical appeal to potential business partners and has a membership of over 650 local government professionals.   
⦁ Canadian municipalities spend in excess of $40-billion annually and CAMA members represent over 85% of the nation’s population.   
⦁ CAMA members are the most senior appointed officials in their municipalities including Chief Administrative Officers (CAO)/City Managers and any person employed in a senior management position that reports directly to the CAO (Deputy CAOs, Directors, Departments Heads, General or Chief Commissioners, City Clerks, etc.)   

What is the Cost to Become a Business Partner?
⦁ $550.00 (plus applicable taxes) for a one-year membership.
⦁ $1000.00 (plus applicable taxes) for a two-year membership.

For more information on the advantages of becoming a Business Partner visit the CAMA website.

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Considerations for Employees who are Working Remotely – Part 2

cartoon of people on a zoom call

Part 2 – Clearly outline when the employee is considered to be in the physical work environment and when they are not.

In our last article we noted that Covid-19 changed the way many organizations do business and organizations have had to learn how to navigate the many challenges of remote work: lack of face-to-face supervision, keeping employees engaged and motivated and managing the work environment are just some of the challenges with remote work. During the pandemic, many employers shifted to a full or hybrid remote work arrangement, but with COVID restrictions being lifted and life slowly returning to the pre-pandemic norm, what was just a temporary measure necessitated by the COVID pandemic is becoming a more permanent arrangement by choice.

Whether you choose to adapt to a fully remote workforce or a hybrid remote work arrangement, employee’s activities while working remotely should be subject to the same standards that are applied at the organization’s offices regarding confidentiality, security, quality, and access to business documents just to name a few. In addition, an employer must continue to comply with applicable employment legislation and continue to ensure the health and safety of employees to minimize the risks of workplace injuries while working remotely. To help minimize liabilities, employers who are considering implementing a permanent remote work arrangement should ensure that they establish and implement a clear remote work policy along with a well drafted remote work agreement between the employer and the employees.

In Part 1 we talked about these key areas to consider when creating a remote work policy; Availability and Hours of Work, Physical Environment & Security.  Here are some additional areas to consider when creating a remote work policy. 

Client Confidentiality

Some employer’s client information may be particularly sensitive. Customers have a right (both legal and moral) to expect their confidential information to be protected. Employees who are working remotely should be reminded of their obligation to take appropriate precautions to ensure that confidential information not be exposed to third parties, including family members, visitors or any other persons residing, working or simply present at the remote work location.

Health and Safety

The remote work location is an extension of the physical office. While the Ontario Health and Safety Act appears explicitly to not apply to work performed by the owner or occupant in or about a private residence, the employer should practice due diligence and it would still be considered best practice to direct employees to observe all applicable health and safety policies when working remotely.

Remote work may also be conducted in locations other than the employee’s home. This could be highlighted in the policy and employees reminded that they could consult with their health and safety representative (if applicable) in respect of best practices in setting up a remote-work location. Employers continue to be responsible to take every reasonable precaution to protect the well-being of their employees. And in the context of a “distributed workplace” employers should be clear about the employer’s and employee’s shared responsibility to ensure a safe workplace.

Injuries sustained at the employees’ homes would be treated as a workplace-related injury, so it is imperative that organizations continue to manage health and safety for employees who are working from home. To minimize the health and safety risks associated with working from home employers should ensure that the remote-work policy covers the following:

  • Define the workplace. Where does the workplace extend to and how does the workplace extend into the employee’s home?
  • Clearly outline when the employee is considered to be in the physical work environment and when they are not.
  • Be clear about break times and ensure that employees understand that breaks are time away from work.
  • Employees should be made aware that just as they are expected to maintain a safe work area free of safety hazards while in the office environment, they are required to do the same in their home workspace.

Confusion of expectations and disconnections between employees and employers from not having a clear remote work policy can result in undue risk to both parties. An effective remote work policy should establish the guidelines and expectations for performance while working remotely, along with providing a framework for monitoring and addressing situations of non-compliance. By doing so the employer may enjoy a competitive edge, even during trying and difficult times, as they provide employees the opportunity to continue to contribute to the organization’s ongoing success in an evolving understanding of how work gets done.

By Adrian Johnson, ASSOCIUM Consultants

Through our collaborative approaches, innovative HR products and customized advisory solutions we impact four leadership priorities: managing risk, driving productivity, strengthening talent capabilities and supporting your bottom line.

Let’s connect to find out how ASSOCIUM Consultants can help your organization.

 

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Considerations for Employees who are Working Remotely – Part 1

Office items on a desk

Part 1 – Your remote work policy should outline the importance of protecting confidential information in remote work settings.

Covid-19 changed the way many organizations do business and organizations have had to learn how to navigate the many challenges of remote work: lack of face-to-face supervision, keeping employees engaged and motivated and managing the work environment are just some of the challenges with remote work. During the pandemic, many employers shifted to a full or hybrid remote work arrangement, but with COVID restrictions being lifted and life slowly returning to the pre-pandemic norm, what was just a temporary measure necessitated by the COVID pandemic is becoming a more permanent arrangement by choice.

Whether you choose to adapt to a fully remote workforce or a hybrid remote work arrangement, employee’s activities while working remotely should be subject to the same standards that are applied at the organization’s offices regarding confidentiality, security, quality, and access to business documents just to name a few. In addition, an employer must continue to comply with applicable employment legislation and continue to ensure the health and safety of employees to minimize the risks of workplace injuries while working remotely. To help minimize liabilities, employers who are considering implementing a permanent remote work arrangement should ensure that they establish and implement a clear remote work policy along with a well drafted remote work agreement between the employer and the employees.

Below are some key areas to consider when creating a remote work policy:

Availability and Hours of Work

A remote work policy should clearly outline availability expectations. One of the disadvantages of working remotely is that employees are in various locations. This sometimes makes it difficult to have spontaneous meetings or pop by someone’s desk for a quick meeting or chat about business. A solution for this may be to incorporate schedule requirements including structured, periodic check-in times with employees. While there has been much written recently about the value of flexibility for employees who can have greater control over their schedules while working remotely, it may still be necessary to set parameters for hours of work and set rules for overtime. So, regardless of the flexibility of work schedules, the employer may want to set expectations for employees to be accessible during particular hours and to be available to respond promptly to any time-sensitive calls, emails, or other communications from the organization’s clients or other third parties critical to the organization’s purposes.

Physical Environment

If there is a preference for a physical working environment for your employees, outline these expectations in your policy. Ensure your employees know what the requirements are for a physical working environment whether it be in the employee’s home or alternative location. If necessary, the employer may require employees to provide addresses and locations from which they are working remotely and update these when necessary. Employers may wish to establish expectations for dependent care arrangements and personal responsibilities to ensure that employees are able to meet their job responsibilities without interruption or distraction.

Security

Security is a big concern with remote work. Your remote work policy should outline the importance of protecting confidential information in remote work settings. Your policy should set guidelines for working remotely to secure records and prevent unauthorized disclosure of confidential business information.

Employers should consider the processes for storing business documents, especially sensitive and/or highly confidential files, on the organization’s secure servers and not on the employee’s remote hard drives.

Your organization might consider specific policies mandating secure internet connections or virtual private networks with a strict exclusion of public wi-fi. And there should be a policy and process for reporting a security breach if the employee has any reason to believe that business information has been accessed by any unauthorized person(s).

And, of course, if budgets permit, it may be prudent to provide remote-work employees with secure computers and other hardware, owned by the organization. Related policies could then restrict the processing or storage of any of the organization’s information on the employee’s personal equipment.

This is a two-part conversation, so watch next week for Part 2 of our article, where we’ll cover, Client Confidentiality and Health & Safety considerations. 

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Through our collaborative approaches, innovative HR products and customized advisory solutions we impact four leadership priorities: managing risk, driving productivity, strengthening talent capabilities and supporting your bottom line.

By Adrian Johnson, ASSOCIUM Consultants

Let’s connect to find out how ASSOCIUM Consultants can help your organization.

 

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Why Join CAMA?

 

WHY JOIN CAMA?

Would you like to have 650 friends across the country that share the same experiences as you regardless of the size of their community? Join the Canadian Association of Municipal Administrators (CAMA). CAMA is the national Association for local government managers – the equivalent to the Federation of Canadian Municipalities (FCM) for your elected officials.

CAMA hosts an Annual Conference, produces free webinars for you and your staff, an e-brief newsletter, job posting services and a host of other services meant to help us do a better job each and every day. CAMA is very focused on the role of the CAO/City Manager and other senior managers from all size municipalities and provides an amazing network from coast to coast.

We have a number of practical toolkits tailored to municipal administrators: CAO Performance Evaluation Toolkit; Political Acumen Toolkit for CAOs, Direct Reports/Aspiring CAOs, and Elected Officials; Council Orientation Toolkit, Members in Transition Toolkit, CAO Employment Contract Toolkit, Toolkit for Effective CAOs – The Right Questions to Ask – just to name a few.

To join complete the on-line registration form. The membership fee for the primary member is based on the population of your municipality and as a special offer for new members, you will receive 50% off our already great value membership fees for the first year! The second and each additional member can join for $150.00 so why not encourage some of your direct reports too. All membership information can be found on our website.

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UCaaS is critical for any authority service improvement

what is UCaaS?

Unified Communications as a Service (UCaaS)  is a network of cloud-based telephone system that controls the flow of calls coming in and out of your organization. We replace your on-premises PBXs, as well as your SIP, PRIs, and POTS lines. UCaaS enables you to use a variety of hosted programs and services (including instant messaging, video conferencing, file sharing, and email) over the Internet from any location and at any time.  In addition, UCaaS provides security, allows flexibility, and integrates well with your other software applications including MS Teams. UCaaS systems are updated frequently by the provider ensuring that your communication methods will always be up-to-date in our ever-evolving world.

Why UCaaS is critical for all customer-guided corporations?

 
GUARANTEES YOUR BUSINESS CONINUITY & SECURITY

Experteers can easily answer this for all municipalities and companies who care about their customers.

First of all we have to emphasize about the importance of continuity in all circumstances, UCaaS provides the best option to avoid your business any hiccups along the road because of any reasons. UCaaS is available on any communication device, laptop, or PC anywhere at anytime to be able to efficiently communicate with your customers.

Security is another crucial requirement for all connected networks, voice calls, video conferencing, and instant messaging are parts of all departments communications to enable them to work properly and deliver services. Experteers, as part of security provider, enable first layer of security by having all our servers in Canada, maintaining 100% availability by having four communication centers in main four cities in Canada in Montreal, Calgary, Vancouver, and Toronto, and to maintain the second layer of security by having all SOC certified centers.

INCORPORATES THE LATEST FEATURES

When you have UCaaS, you’ll be able to use all the latest functions and features without any additional cost. You’ll also have the assurance that your information is kept safe and secure in a reliable data center. Having the ability to keep your communications up-to-date allows you to remain competitive and helps to increase your overall performance.

 

OFFERS FLEXIBILITY AND SCALABILITY

UCaaS allows organizations to add and remove users (for example, temporary employees) without any significant infrastructure changes or capital investments. UCaaS also provides seamless work experiences for your employees since they are cloud-based and accessible from any location – great for those working remotely.

 

PROMOTES PRODUCTIVITY

By using a UCaaS system, your productivity increases. All of your employees have unified communications support that is sharable amongst all departments, and UCaaS integrates well with your other software applications (like CRM). UCaaS keeps communication lines open and provides ways for your employees to log into various devices to access their information (such as voicemails).

 

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

SAVES YOU MONEY

When switching to UCaaS, there are minimal upfront hardware costs – you only need phones. You will also have the ability to choose the services you need (and not waste money on the ones you do not). UCaaS allows you to concentrate on growing your business by decreasing your dependence on capital investments.

 

UCaaS

 

We at EXPERTEERS are helping municipalities, utility companies, and medical centers increase employee productivity by adding a state of the art Unified Communications Solution, enhancing collaboration and increasing employee efficiency.

  • Enable your team to work remotely (hybrid)
  • Train employees more efficiently with sentiment analysis
  • Monitor key performance metrics with automated reports
  • Boost company performance through detailed analytics & collaboration
  • .. and more

Let us help you improve your client experience, call us at EXPERTEERS to learn how we can help enable your business for success in 2022.

 

Experteers is a system integrator SI and managed service provider MSP for the following services:

– SASE / SD-WAN: to secure all ur networking between all branches.

– NGFW: Next Generation Fire Wall centralized to keep all networks secured in almost real-time updated system.

– NMS: Network Managed System to keep your visibility on all network elements and servers to improve your systems availability.

– Cyber-Security on all endpoints and servers

EXPERTEERS CORPORATION

WWW.EXPERTEERS.COM

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Great Coaching Begins with a Foundation of Trust

A coaching relationship involves two (or more) people who make up one team. Two people, same team, sounds obvious enough. Sometimes, however, coaching initiatives will bypass this fundamental consideration and drive headlong into the transactional stuff of imparting information. People are all “wired” differently, and it is that mutual understanding of this “wiring”, as well as applying established principles of effective teams, that contributes to the success of a coaching relationship.

The 5E Coaching framework, a five-step coaching methodology first introduced by The Predictive Index, begins with laying the foundation of trust between the two partners based on an objective awareness of each other’s behaviours and drives. In the succeeding steps described below, this awareness is leveraged to:

  • Recognize patterns of gap and fit
  • Formulate coaching objectives, and
  • Establish the “rules of engagement.

Step 1 – Enroll

The objective of Enroll is to build the foundation of trust between the partners in the coaching relationship. This trust naturally flows from the vulnerability that happens when the two individuals share information about their own behavioural drives and needs. An objective behavioural assessment* is helpful in providing these personal perspectives and mitigate the possibility of bias. Understanding a person’s disposition to such workplace realities as leadership style, response to conflict, mode of communication, approach to people interaction, adherence to detail and comfort with change, will be helpful in the subsequent stages of the 5E process, and lead to greater understanding of each other’s behaviours and motivations throughout the relationship.

Step 2 – Envision

In Envision, the mentee’s behavioural information is contrasted with the behaviours required by the role or skills being targeted. From this analysis patterns of gap and fit will emerge that inform the next stage of articulating concrete coaching objectives.

Step 3 – Establish

In Establish the partners develop consensus on the specific areas of gap and fit uncovered in Envision and formulate SMART** goals to build the adaptive capacity necessary to bridge gaps, and leverage areas of natural fit. Success criteria are agreed upon, key performance indicators are identified, specific activities are planned and expectations for the accountability of each partner are clearly established.

Step 4 – Execute

The objective of Execute is to do just that, effectively execute the plan. Awareness of each other’s behaviours and drives as well as the trust created in Enroll will be essential in responding to such potential flashpoints as delivering and receiving critical feedback, getting past one’s personal bias, managing competing priorities, addressing demands on time and sustaining commitment to the project.

Step 5 – Evaluate

Any initiative worth doing is worth reviewing. Included in the formative and summative debrief conversations will necessarily be an honest analysis of each partner’s impact on the process. This very personal perspective will be greatly aided by the foundation of trust that is developed in Enroll and reinforced throughout the 5E coaching process.

Summary

Great coaches recognize that laying a groundwork of trust is the first step in a productive coaching relationship. Taking the time to be more self-aware and partner-aware requires vulnerability but, as Patrick Lencioni points out, individual vulnerability reinforces the trust of an effective team. Coaching initiatives that don’t recognize the “wiring” of the individuals involved and ignore high-yield team strategies, deprive the partners of an essential opportunity to support their relationship, establish meaningful objectives, and ultimately guide the process to a successful conclusion.

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Notes:

* In my coaching work with clients, the Predictive Index Behaviour Assessment is used to inform the process of sharing information between coaching partners.

**SMART goals – Specific/Measurable/Achievable/Realistic/Time-Bound

Lencioni, Patrick (2002). The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, A Leadership Fable. Jossey-Bass.

Mitch LePage is a former public sector leader and currently serves as a Managing Principal with Toronto-based talent strategy firm Predictive Success Corporation. Mitch supports people strategy for private, public and not-for-profit clients. To learn more about 5E Coaching or to discuss talent strategy issues contact Mitch at [email protected]

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