This week our topic is related to motivation.

Do you do your best work when there is an incentive?  Do you work best when you are feeling intrinsically or extrinsically motivated?

In honor of Valentines Day….

What part or parts of your workday bring you the most joy?

Reach out if you would like to discuss.

In reflecting on candidate topics for this week, I wanted to talk about risk taking, tolerance for risk, handling risk, etc.  So without further framing, the discussion question is:

When you are unsure of the outcome when trying a new idea, how do you react?

If you would like to discuss this or have other topics that you would like like to have a coaching conversation about, please reach out.

If you have not seen the back story on the question of the week, the quick version is that weekly I provide a framing question for my coaching sessions with my direct reports.

This week’s question is:

Where are we talking where we should be coding?

There is some back story on this one which I will share.

A few weeks back while browsing in a book store at an art museum, I stumbled across a book called The Architect Says (affiliate link). The copy on display had a book jacket that struck me. The book jacket was a quote from Le Corbusier which said:

I prefer drawing to talking. Drawing is faster, and leaves less room for lies.

This made me smile and do the mental s/drawing/coding/g giving me:

I prefer coding to talking. Coding is faster, and leaves less room for lies.

If you have not seen the back story on the question of the week, the quick version is that weekly I provide a framing question for my coaching sessions with my direct reports.

This week my question was as follows:

Where are we not challenging assumptions?  Where have we been too accepting of the status quo?

This question was inspired by reading the book The Ten Rules of Leadership which you can check out here (affiliate link).

If you have not seen the back story on the question of the week, the quick version is that weekly I provide a framing question for my coaching sessions with my direct reports.

This week my question was as follows:

Where are we not challenging assumptions?  Where have we been too accepting of the status quo?

This question was inspired by reading the book The Ten Rules of Leadership which you can check out here (affiliate link).

If you have not seen the back story on the question of the week, the quick version is that weekly I provide a framing question for my coaching sessions with my direct reports.

This weeks question was inspired by the following article on HBR.

Where are we playing not to lose, rather than playing to win?

The grass is greener phenomenon is one of the common topics that discuss with people from time to time.  Most people that I work with have heard the saying “the grass is greener on the other side”.  Some time we do end up talking about how things are better elsewhere.  Sometimes this is because people are probing for other opportunities, or expressing their current state of dissatisfaction with how things are going in their work or personal life.  While typically my approach here is to use coaching to find what they are dissatisfied with, or what they are looking for elsewhere, sometimes I hear people describing positive aspects of things in other places, that are exactly the same where they current are.  Other times, I hear people express problems with their current state of the world, and how things might be better or different somewhere else.  In cases like these, I like to mention to them, that the grass is greener on the other side, which means that when they are elsewhere, the grass will seem greener where they currently are.  I find that this gives them enough perspective shift to then work back towards the more productive side of the discussion, e.g. what could make their current experience better.

Sure this is a retention oriented mindset.  I like the people that I work with and would like to continue to work with them.  Sometimes it works in that way and we end up having a productive conversation about what can be improved in their current experience.  It doesn’t always work this way and that’s fine as well.

If you have not seen the back story on the question of the week, the quick version is that weekly I provide a framing question for my coaching sessions with my direct reports.

I’m always curious how to motivate people, how to structure work that I need to be done with what people like to do.  This weeks question fits in the first category, and is as follows:

Which of the five categories are your primary motivations?

• Money
• Training
• Work exchange opportunities
• Work/Life balance
• Promotion

I let people offer other motivators if the wanted, but no one did.  May people felt compelled to share a bit on each topic preferring to order them rather than pick just one.

If you have not seen the back story on the question of the week, the quick version is that weekly I provide a framing question for my coaching sessions with my direct reports.

Inspired by re-reading some books on Scrum, this weeks question has been about waste.  Since my team has a diverse set of people, in our face to face discussions I tend to adjust how I express the question to suit the person.  Here are some examples:

• Where is our team creating waste?
• Where are we wasting time?
• What resources are we wasting?
• Where do you see waste?
• What things are you doing that you perceive as a waste?
• What do you as causing waste in our organization?