Reflective Entry Leninka

I think the assignment of this week was successful done for both. This work helped us a lot to have a reflection about high performance teams and the abilities and skills of a good leader.  This time we created the most inviting & supportive coaching environment this time. We were to a place very quiet that we used the last time and it worked a lot for us.

As a coach, the subject of the week was very helpful for me and also for Patrick. Therefore, I listened to him very attentively. In this session, I took notes of the important points because I wanted to remember them and discuss them more. When I had the most important insights, I started to ask him about his opinion his expectations about the work of his teamwork. How he felt at the beginning of the work in order to discover his expectations. I think it was important to develop the mirroring part so he can know what to improve.

 In the summarizing part, I emphasized his expectations of the meeting and which points he considered it was necessary to improve in order to have a successful meeting. For the questioning part, I felt more comfortable about asking.  I think this step is very important to me. Actually I can question with more freedom than before. This session was the best for me because we could talk in a very open way about the subject.  The questioning part was very helpful to discuss the catalyzing part. For me it’s very hard this part because it’s the time to help Patrick to find new opportunities and new discoveries. So, I think this coaching assignment help him understand more how to manage conflict. When you want to have the best performance of an assignment, it’s important to know the strengths and weaknesses of each member.  All of these findings helped us for the catalyzing part. This part helped me in the same way as Patrick I think. It’s important to know your group, to work as a team and have a scheduled of all the work.

As a coachee, I think Patrick helped me a lot to understand more about resolving a conflict. For me, it’s very difficult to deal with confrontation. So, It’s a part we discuss a lot with Patrick. Sometimes, I need to put some order in the group work. Sometimes, I feel so stressed about the work that I don’t delegate to others member of the group. Patrick listened to me a lot and he helped me to catalyze this problem. He saw how stressed I was with the academic load and he made me to realized that I need to organize my teamwork. So, avoiding confrontation and not organizing myself was affecting the teamwork. I think these sessions were very helpful to me because I also I win an excellent coach and a special friend. When you have trust with your coach and you see him also as a friend, it’s so easier to discuss our problems and discover more of ourselves.

Reflective entry about the last coaching session - Patrick St-Pierre

There was the last session of coaching and I started it with some good expectations. Indeed, it was the fifth coaching session and the others before went very well, so I was confident this session should go well too. In general, it was a good coaching session. But there is one thing that didn’t really exceed my expectations. Let starts from the beginning. Like the last, the listening process went very well. I’m really starting to be better to just listen the other person in a conversation and to wait the good moment to talk. But in this coaching session, I also discovered that the action of listen is not all in the listening process. Indeed, listening the conversation is important, but you also need to keep in minds the most important things that the person said and to do a mental work about it. So, this process also demand an important effort of memorisation and an important effort of analysing. Indeed, in a conversation, you need to “process” the information that you received and using it later to go deeper in the conversation. Also, I realized that the listening process is really the “base” of the coaching process. If this process not go well, all the other process cannot really reach a higher level.

After, I found that I did a great job with the mirroring process. Indeed, I really felt that, with my suggestions, I helped Leninka to have a better view about her situation and herself. I also notice that this part of the coaching is simpler when you used your own experience in the subject of the coaching session to improve the view of the coachee. Indeed, with you own experience, it’s easier to have a better understanding of the situation and to bring another point of view.

To continue, I think it’s the first time I went deeper in the summarizing process and I didn’t expect that this process could be difficult. Indeed, a lot of information was given in the listening process and I had more difficulties to select the points that they are more important. Also, I noticed that to ask really pertinent questions in the next process, you need to have done a good job in the summarizing process. Indeed, relevant questions need to be related to what is really important in the communication. To finish, as a coach, I think I did a good job with the catalyzing process. At the end, I could feel that the communication with my coachee was different from the beginning, in the way we can notice that this coaching session made a difference for her.

As a coachee, from session to session, I could also notice that Leninka was more confident in her coach role. Indeed, I really feel that I can express myself without judgements and interruptions. Also, with her questions, she succeeded to improve my view on the situation and to make me see different perspectives of it. Brief, I can see how a coaching session could really help me in a situation.

An effective team leader - Leninka Lazo

I would like to discuss about a leader who inspired me a lot. This leader was my first boss. I worked with him many years since I finished the University. He was the first leader who influenced me to become a better person too. Even now, every time I go back to Peru, I met my boss even once.

 I think a key factor to become a good leader was the trust.  Even when you make a mistake, I knew he would help me fix it. It was not just the mistake of one of the team; it was a mistake of the group.  For me this is very important because I began to work as a team and I felt I was in an excellent teamwork and also friends.

In addition, he has the personal skill of working under pressure. He taught me how to work with a high amount of pressure and still have the time to continue my personal life.

He always tried to motivate me even when the work was very hard. I think it is very important to have the motivation of your boss and that affects your performance too.  He gave me a lot of empowerment even when I was so young for the job.

Another factor was the empowerment. The team knew what our mission was in the company and we were very motivated to do to our best job. We felt free to make decisions even when we made mistakes in the process. The good thing is we learned in the process.

 Also, the personal skills are very important, he had empathy when someone of his team was passing through very difficult moments. He knew how to tell me to take a break from work in order to fix my personal problems.

 He had a lot of organization in his work. He taught me how to organized my job. At first, for me was very hard to plan things. I didn’t have a schedule about my work. However, he put pressure on me in order to organize my team and me.  

Finally, I think a good leader is someone who is going to last with the time because of all the influence he has in you. Even, when you work in different companies, all his learnings helped to become yourself also in a better leader.

Description and analyze of a real teamwork - Leninka Lazo

This session was very important to me because it was my first session of the MBA. The last autumn, I was very scared about the courses and the academic load; therefore, I decided to quit many courses. 

One factor of this fear was the teamwork.  Then, when I began this session and I noticed that I had nothing to be scare about. It was me who had the negative thoughts before the session began.

In this coaching assignment, I would like to analyze my team of the course: Distribution Strategy. It was my first course in French, so I had many prejudices before it started.  When I began to work with this group, I was so shy because I thought that my language skills were not enough. However, after the first presentation, my fear was gone. The entire group supported me with every assignment. Nevertheless, I found some attributes that we could improve such as:

-       Extraordinarily high quality

I think our work was very standard because they didn’t try to do their best performance. However, we obtained good grades but we didn’t do an extra effort.

-       Coordinated, shared work roles

I think we could work more as a group. Even we had a lot of coordination between us; we didn’t discuss our opinions in order to improve other’s part.

-       Specific, shared purpose and vision

I think our vision was limited. We didn’t share the same vision about the job. We did just our parts but we could improve the purpose of the job as a whole.

Even of all the attributes we could improve, I felt it was a great experience for me. I was totally comfortable with my group because they helped me a lot. In the personal factor, I didn’t have any problems. Therefore, I feel more confidence about myself and totally prepared emotionally to pursuit my mba degree.  I think it was important the trust of the group. Also, they were very gentle and they supported me with all my questions. I learned that everything was in my mind and I hope I can find a group with that level of empathy in the future.

Description and analyze of a real teamwork - Patrick St-Pierre

The team that I chose to analyze is composed of 5 members and it was formed for a big and important teamwork in the beginning of my MBA. In general, the work in this team went well, but, like other things, it sure that there were some elements to improve. To start, for all the members, we didn’t really have the same purpose and vision of the work to do. Indeed, we didn’t take the time, at the beginning of the teamwork, to sit together and to only talk about that, because we thought that it was not really necessarily. So, we started with a too general purpose of work and we realised later that our work was not efficiency.  At that time, we were obligated to have a meeting only about that and the meeting was very long. We should have done this before starting to work.

Also, at the beginning, we didn’t know well the other members of the group and we didn’t give enough importance to the strengths and the weaknesses of all the members. But, a better understanding of that is very useful, because it facilitated the separations of the different tasks and, when a member have a problem in his/her tasks, that understanding could help him/her to know which other member could help him/her. So before the separation of the tasks, I think that the best thing to do is to take time for each member to present themselves and to talk about his/her strengths, his/her past realization, his/her current or past job and field of studies. Indeed, a lot of different information could be useful.

 To finish, the deadlines of the teamwork were very short and we underestimate the necessarily of coordination in a teamwork. We didn’t plan the work very well and the result was that each member of the group did a part of the work. So, there was a lack in the coordination and, for the result, we obtain more like some pieces of individual works than a teamwork. To improve that, we should have done a better planning of the teamwork and give more importance to the coordination by establishing some measures in the work. Like an example, a subject of the teamwork need to be covered by two people and not just one. Also, after that a part of the work is done, each other members that didn’t work in that part need to read it and to add some information and commentaries. 

Reflective entry of Patrick St-Pierre about the fourth coaching session

In the fourth coaching sessions that we had, I think this session was the best for me. Indeed, I really think I did a great job with almost all the process of the coaching session in the coach mode. To start, the listening part was easier to do. This time, the chosen place was good and the ambiance was great to facilitate communication. Also, I was in a better mood than the last session and that helps me a lot to stay focused and concentrated. We must say that I find the topic of this week very interesting and it's easier to stay concentrated when you like the topic of the discussion. Indeed, when I think and hear about past experiences in organisational meeting, a lot of links, information and own examples come to my mind. But, this advantage could become a disadvantage because, when you really like a subject, it could be hard to just listen the other person and not add information when it's not really the time. This kind of difficulties was news for me in a coaching session and I didn't expect that before the session. Brief, even if it was hard sometime to just listen like I just said, I think I did a good job and I think I improved myself a lot. For the mirror process, also that time, I was simpler for me to help to coachee to reflect her feelings to her and to help her seeing herself differently. Indeed, like I said the last time, I feel like there is a good connection between us. In my point of view, this could be explain by the fact that, after all the coaching session we had together, a good relationship was developed between us and that relationship is very helpful in communication and, obviously, in the mirroring process.

Also, at the end of this part of the coaching session, I was really surprised that the catalyzing session went so well. Indeed, from my point of view, it's the most difficult part in a coaching process and it's for this reason that the end of this coaching exceeded my expectations. In my listening mode and my questions, I felt that it was easier for me to support and encourage my coachee to move forward in her situation. Also, I felt like I made a difference in her way of seeing the situation that we talked about.

To finish, when I was the coachee, there were not really big differences between this coaching session and the last one. Indeed, I really felt more confident to express myself and I felt like I was more receptive to listen my coach and to think in a deeper mode about what she added to the discussion. Once again, I also thinkthe friend relationship that we developed together help us to do better coaching session because we know ourself more and we are more comfortable in the discussion. So, this coaching session as a coachee didn't really exceed my expectations because I only came at this meeting with good expectations and it went well.

Reflective Entry - Leninka Lazo

In my opinion, this meeting was the best of all the coaching sessions. I think really helped the environment. We chose an inviting and supportive environment and that helped the coaching session.

The listening part was easier than before. The subject of this week was very interesting and Patrick opened himself because he has a lot to contribute to the meeting. In this part, I listened carefully. Also, I demonstrated with my eyes and physical movements that I was interested about his experience. In the mirroring part, I asked him how he felt in the meeting and how was his expectations before it began, in order to invite the reflection. I think it was important to show him, how the meeting can be transformed in an unproductive meeting and what it could produce that. In the summarizing part, I emphasized the most meaningful insights of his experience in a meeting. For example, being prepared before a meeting, and the importance of the presence of all the members of the group.   I think we discovered that our experiences in the bad meeting were similar. Indeed, we didn’t have clear objectives of the meeting before it started, so, the whole meeting didn’t have a purpose. In the Questioning part, I asked him questions to get deeper of how to conduct meeting effectively. For example, how he would do different if he had to do again this meeting? When I did this, he discovered important insights for his next meeting. In the catalyzing part, I think both found opportunities and new discoveries.  I think we found together new approaches of managing meeting such as: being always prepared, have clear objectives, the importance of all the group, how each person is a key factor for accomplish a successful meeting and all the opinions are important.

As a coachee, it was the best session for me. I think Patrick is a great coach because each time we are together, we can find new discoveries. I talked to him about my meeting experience and he listened to me all the time. He showed me that my opinion matters. He asked me a lot of questions about how I can handle better a meeting. The environment where we talked was great because we used a quite space. He asked me how I felt when all this conflict in my meeting happened and he gave me his opinion too. I think was easier for me to talk because I trust him more and I value what he said to me. Before, it was harder for me to express myself deeper and I talked in a superficial way in the coaching meetings. I think this session was better in comparison of all the others. In my opinion, the key is to have trust in your coach. When you reach that level, as a coachee is easier to talk and that helps the coach too. I think that beneficiates us because together we can find more discoveries and opportunities and that improves our coaching session.