Managing and Your Point of View

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From the course by University of California, Davis

Managing as a Coach

443 ratings

University of California, Davis

Managing as a Coach

443 ratings

Course 1 of 4 in the Specialization Coaching Skills for Managers

Do you (or do you want to) manage employees? Have you ever wondered how to get better performance out of those you manage? Are you unsure if you are communicating effectively with your employees? If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, then this course – and its associated specialization – is for you! Leadership and management responsibilities have changed dramatically, particularly in the last decade. In order to be an effective manager in increasingly fast-paced and complex organizational environments, coaching has become essential. In this course, you will learn what coaching is and learn how to differentiate between it and all of the other myriad roles managers are expected to perform – managing, mentoring, leading, and training. You’ll learn about the importance of strong leadership and learn to describe your current point of view as a leader, and evaluate when to adjust your thinking in order to be more effective in managing and leading in a rapidly evolving workplace. And finally, you’ll be introduced to the Thought Model, a coaching technique you can use to develop better thinkers and better performers. So if you’re ready to learn all about how to be a more effective and valued manager using coaching techniques, join us as we explore more successful managing through coaching!

From the lesson

Points of View of Leadership

This module is all about exploring how your life experiences influence your management approach. In lesson 3, you'll learn how to differentiate between facts about experiences in your life and the stories you tell yourself about those facts, identify your own point of view in a situation, and analyze how that may influence decisions you make. And in lesson 4, we'll discuss the interrelationship between point of view and belief systems and introduce you to the Thought Model.

Module 3 Overview2:09

Facts vs. Stories6:25

Values Influencing You8:21

Manager's Point of View10:01

Managing and Your Point of View6:53

Meet the Instructors

Kris Plachy
CEO and Founder & Instructor, Leadership Coach, LLC &
UC Davis Division of Continuing and Professional Education

[MUSIC]

Now that you're aware of how powerful values are, and hopefully you are more

aware of your own values, it's time to see how that applies to you as a manager.

In this lesson I describe how point of view is used and

give examples of how it affects the workplace.

We discussed the importance of identifying your values and

understanding your point of view and assumptions.

Finally, we discuss why it's important to investigate

facts when managing and coaching.

And we believe that our point of view is the truth about the world.

But what we soon start to realize when we start working with other people is that

other people think different things about the world.

And think different things about how people should be in the world.

And because we believe that what we believe is true,

then we think other people should think the same way as we do.

[LAUGH] That's not the case, right?

And so then we put ourselves into this right and wrong judgement position and

we use our point of view to judge others and

make assessments about their intention or their behaviors.

So, as a manager, your point of view is not really what's relevent.

What's relevant is the goals, the accountability, the outcomes, and

how do we help people get there?

Your assumptions get in the way.

So point of view can influence how managers perform.

It can influence your decision-making,

it can influence your beliefs about why people do and don't perform,

it can influence your perception of what you think is hard work, it can influence

the assessments that you make about why people are working or not working.

It greatly influences who you think is easy or difficult to work with.

I do a lot of work around coaching managers to coach difficult people,

and I also coach people on how to work with difficult people.

At the cornerstone of calling someone difficult

is a difference of perspective of how we communicate and connect with each other.

Point of view also influences what we believe is acceptable in

the workplace, right?

Some places, you can do pretty much anything at work.

Other places, it's much more rigid.

That's a point of view, influence, decision.

So, some examples of how point of view, influences managing.

As I mentioned in the previous lesson, tardiness and absenteeism.

We make assumptions about why people don't come to work on time or

why they miss work, and when we coach from our assumption, we miss.

We need to coach from their perspective, not ours.

All we have to do is hold the expectation of being to work on time.

When people don't perform.

When they don't meet their goals, we have a point of view, right?

So many people who are managers are exceptional performers.

That's why they became the manager.

Because they're really, really good.

And because of that, when you are dealing with somebody who is not performing,

a lot of managers don't even know what to do.

To deal with that because they can't understand why somebody

wouldn't be working hard to do well.

But their reasons for

not doing well are very different than what your reasons would be.

And that's where that coach role is so

important because we have to investigate, we have to understand,

we have to diagnose which we're going to talk about in the future course here.

But if you're stuck in your assumption about why someone is not performing,

you can't help them.

We make assumptions about people's level of effort.

We make assumptions about people's level of urgency.

We make assumptions about how people should or shouldn't communicate.

Eye contact, tone of voice, speed of voice, frequency of communication.

We have all sorts of perspectives on how communication should look.

And just keeping in mind that everybody else has a different and

unique perspective, but when we hold ours as the right way,

we miss the opportunity to understand their perspective.

And the last place that a lot of us get stuck as managers, in terms of our point

of view, is when we believe that someone should have known something already.

I know that's a English term, should.

You should know and so for those of you who are listening to this,

I know there's a lot of you who speak different languages.

When we say that someone should know something,

we're assuming that it's already in place.

And then when it's not in place, so let's say I assume that anybody who works for

me should be able to organize themselves.

So I assume that that skill is already in place.

But a lot of times it isn't.

But if I believe that they should have already known how to do it,

then I get frustrated that they don't.

Right, so my point of view that tells me that something should be done and

it isn't is actually negatively impacting how well I can coach them.

Because what I really have to address is that they don't have the skill.

I don't have to address that they should have already known it,

that's not relevant, they don't know it.

So, now I just have to coach them from where they are.

So, our point of view is going on all the time,

our job as managers is to recognize how it's influencing us.

Right? And because so many of us don't know what

our point of view is, it's very hard to even communicate it.

And what we want to recognize is that oftentimes, because we don't know what our

point of view is, we don't share it and we don't communicate it.

Oftentimes even once we know what our point of view is, we don't share it,

we don't communicate it.

Then what happens is,

we hold people accountable to uncommunicated expectations.

I have all these thoughts about how people should be in my office but

I don't tell them.

As a result I make assumptions about behaviors that I observe in people without

discussing anything with them I just go with my assumption and

ultimately it causes significant breakdowns and communication and

in performance and engagements.

So keeping in mind that a point of view is reasonable, we all have one.

The goal is that you have to recognize yours first and

not be coaching and managing from perspective, from your point of view.

Once we can recognize that we have a point of view, then we can move forward and

really help the employee.

So in summary, most of us don't know our perspective, our point of view and

what we value because we've never really been thoughtful about it.

We just know when things are compromised, when our values are compromised,

when our belief systems are compromised.

But because so many of us are taught, and learn from such a young age, that what we

believe to be true about the world is what everybody else should think, can cause

a lot of discomfort for us, especially once we get into a management role.

Part of supervising our own point of view is to clearly understand what our values

are and how they are influencing us in our management role.

So our values are playing out everyday.

Sometimes the values that we have are really effective outside of work and

maybe not as effective inside work.

So that's something to think about and we all have a point of view.

We can learn to understand it, we can learn to modify it,

we can learn to employ it properly.

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