This column is aimed at those who develop managers to show they can coach as well as manage
This issue: Jackie Keddy shares her recipe for helping managers make short, sharp but sweet – and sticky – interventions
The idea for JAM – Just A Minute – moments came about because I was once challenged by a very senior leader to demonstrate if coaching could work in five minutes.
Coaching was all very well in a one-hour cosy session – “wonderful in theory” – but time was of the essence and quick results essential.
It’s true that managers often complain most to coaches about the pressure of dealing with staff, while juggling targets, deadlines and watching their backs. “If only I had more time” is a universal cry.
So JAM is a short, sharp, five-minute intervention designed to help managers make the best use of the precious minutes they can offer. It’s useful in setting a scene that is played out every day in all organisations, when a pressurised manager is asked if they can spare “just a minute”.
JAM is a menu based on seven simple principles – or ingredients – that come together to create a recipe for success:
- Just ask more
- Just accept more
- Just acknowledge more
- Just agree more
- Just aim more
- Just affirm more
- Just achieve more
When offering a moment, a manager might actively clear their computer screen, look up and say something like “I’m listening”. However, we often listen with intent to reply, forgetting the reason we have been blessed with two ears and one mouth. The golden rule is to use them in equal proportions.
JAM does not deliver ‘purist’ coaching, nor should it be applied willy-nilly. It merely takes what works in coaching and distills it into conversations of five minutes or less.
The approach
So how does a JAM approach to brief conversations compare with more common responses?
The familiar response
- How can I help you?
- What’s the problem?
- What can I do you for?
- Tell me what’s wrong?
- What exactly is it that’s going wrong?
This type of language may seem overly exaggerated in a negative sense yet many of us will have heard it – or used it. JAM, however, is a suggested dialogue to be adjusted as you see fit.
The JAM response
- Tell me what’s happening?
- Describe where you want to be?
- What’s going well? (Tell them what you’re impressed with)
- So what do you need to do, when you leave here?
- What’s the first small step you will take?
- What else?
Make sure what’s said is authentic and acknowledges what’s been achieved so far: authentic appreciation is a powerful motivator.
By responding favourably to a request for ‘a minute’, a manager immediately creates a wonderful listening space, respecting that an individual who has sought their help probably knows the answer, and knows a manager is a sounding board.
Giving a person undivided attention shows the worth a manager credits to them and justifies their contribution (a powerful but oh
so simple managerial tool). In my view this is a touchstone of true leadership.
Please let me know what you finds work for you – and if JAM or anything else doesn’t, then stop and do something different.
Jackie Keddy is a Solutions Focus coach, a coaching implementation specialist and a former very pressurised manager.
www.keddyconsultants.com
jackie.keddy@keddyconsultants.com
With thanks to Julie Starr for her suggestion of a new name for this column.
Coaching at Work, Volume 5, Issue 5