How we can create safety and belonging for productivity again in any industry.
If there were ever a year that coaching both in corporate and sport was extreme 2020 would be it. If there was a way of describing a year of trials and conduits of both experimentations and absurdity 2020 would also be it. I left Australia over 2 decades ago and returned bringing with me 3 decades of international experience. It afforded me the ability to found and bring very quickly a range of global contacts to the forefront of my work in sports and corporate. Often people say to me I want your job.
Working in sports and corporate with both leadership and mental health, I consider how good the job looks, and I often smile and think about what it takes and consumes from you as a person. I have a diversely inter-cultural background as a female which hasn’t always given me the easiest pathway. On that note the advice I give is that I’ve forged through one lens the what I do not’ not any other lens which has helped immensely in not getting involved in barriers. I also consider my job is a tough one. Many people also still misunderstand leadership, culture, people and mental health and this poses an often undervalued and misunderstood end of the spectrum that is essential to economics. Why?
The answer always goes back to where do we build our communities, and where do they need to most help. This is my 50th year come to the conclusions that leadership sports, and disengagement, diversity and inclusion are the areas I can give my best to, but that also consistently seem to be the areas we struggle with. To me they stand out for 2 reasons. We congregate at mass social events and most often in this era in sport, education and with leaders. Secondly if we look at the patterns of pain that occur and where we seem to have our greatest failings, disengagement, diversity, and inclusion are the social partners of congregation that take our focus for many reasons.
Apart from the skyline of simple opportunities in human beings in groups ,there also is an absence of understanding of what unifies them and how safety plays such a vital part. Like most of our snapshots of human change we often grow and understanding of where to grow ability without solving what gets ignored or put in the too hard basket. Often human emotions or differences which actually pose our greater opportunity are given to another professional as our problem.
The culture of people and teams is a great navigation tool for leadership and coaching. If we examine what breeds healthy economics, its culture. If we examine ‘positive ” culture we often end up going back to original ways to build combined values. I could not speak enough about how amazing researching the work in culture and engagement is for anyone invested in corporate, or sports coaching. One of the greatest assets and challenges to coaches both in leadership and sport, and to schools invested in education of any kind, is the population growth and transference, we see of different perspectives that have to be engaged. this has to happen “well”, so the ship of community, and industry steers in a direction, and doesn’t fall apart. But often we don’t teach leaders or coaches how to build culture in inclusive ways or to build ” well culture”. What do I meanly “well culture” you ask?
Leadership is no longer just telling, and coaching is no longer about handing down a series of technical skills and capabilities, it’s about a far greater series of skillsets. You may see this as due to population growth, migration, but its also the challenge of a technological era thats given us the greatest deficit to build a unified congregation or group who can move together.
Change and culture are what economies are built on. Technology hasn’t been enough to build culture on its own, so the era is struggling and forcing us right back to basics. Human beings are still human doings, and a need to understand why the cyber era alone still fails to engage us in culture is essential. Recent events in 2020 have forced us to screens and disjointed congregations and we have struggled. Culture as we face an era of connection through technology with more knowledge and connection through the “ web” than in person provide us with a challenge to how we do this. It has forced us to reconsider the final frontier that we have not overcome.
Ive found myself coaching the basics of how we can form and formulate culture through the microscopic lens of technology and its not that easy. We need each other and we need good old fashioned skillsets of culture coaching invested in values and a combination of skillsets that build inclusiveness, and talent growth.
The simple conversations that have built outstanding revolutions in cultures and turned them around to profit, growth, and accolade are often just the really imbedded tools of listening to what makes people tick, taking time, actually really being interested, incorporating differences and involving them, slowing things down and finding ways to be inclusive and represent what is important to all.
The coaching grids I have built over the years have been transformational, and not transactional of nature. Transformative language, adaptable behaviours and inclusive cultures in essence. Ive had the good fortune to walk beside and consult to, not just corporate and sport teams, but also government and community that have persistence, perseverance and patience, but also co-developed economics that are adaptable and healthy, mentally sound and safe. In the productivity is embedded in feeling safe. This is grounded in agreed patterns of resilient actions that can be trusted, great communication, and patient sound thinking as well as a sense of belonging. What makes any team profitable, and builds sound economics is a 7 step process. If we were to build heath inclusive, adaptable cultures in all community groups, sports teams, schools, and organisations what would global economics see?
I’m more than happy to share my tools. Feel free to pm me or write to me at graziella@theoptimisationhub.com
