And the OSKAR goes to…
Reaching the final stages of our university life in the Department of Communication, Media & Culture in Panteion University, our professors gave us the opportunity to better understand the requirements of the job market nowadays. In “Leadership & Emotional Intelligence Lab”, with Mrs. Dimitra Iordanoglou as our course instructor, we have analyzed several interesting concepts up until now, which are of course included in the wide range of what we call Leadership and Emotional Intelligence. Simultaneously, with the contribution of Mrs. Valia Karatosidi, psychologist and PhD candidate, and Mrs. Zoe Lioliou, EMCC certified coach, we explored new practices in a short period of time, got a better understanding of ourselves and the roles we are taking up, and laid the foundations in order to improve not only ourselves as units, but also our roles in a team and as a whole.
Shortly after the start of our lab sessions, we slowly took our first steps in the field of behavioral theories. After having already evaluated the leaders of the modern world based on them, we were asked to evaluate ourselves as well.
Our Personal Development journey begins…
Firstly, we were given a Personal Development questionnaire by Mrs. Karatosidi to complete, individually. The questionnaire had mainly scale and a few closed questions. At first, no one could imagine the complexity and the difficulty of having to evaluate yourself — from the first questions we had to be objective, rational and strict. We automatically entered the process of delving into parts of our personality that were unknown to us up until now, and we treated ourselves as external observers. Following the questionnaire, we were asked to answer questions about the complexity and combinability of our way of thinking, leading us to think and act as much as possible — something that gave us a huge boost. Our participation in this questionnaire however, was not limited to only giving our own personal answers; we were given the opportunity to be evaluated by the other members of our team through a series of questions, which gave us a more objective way of looking at the final results.
A week later, we all met up again in order to have the detailed results of our answers. Based on our answers, our course coordinators, Mrs. Lioliou and Mrs. Karatositi, gave us feedback on how developed the 5 Key Factors (The Big Five) are that determine our personality. These factors are:
1) Extroversion (which relates to sociability and self-confidence).
2) Conscientiousness (the tendency of an individual to show self-discipline and be organized).
3) Agreeableness (the tendency for compassion and cooperation).
4) Neuroticism (the tendency to experience negative emotions and the degree of emotional stability of the individual).
5) Openness (the intense curiosity and preference for innovation and diversity).
At this point, most of us were surprised since the results that emerged were able to put in paper elements of our character that affect all areas of our lives. After having the detailed feedback of our results in our hands, and also having had a long discussion during the course, we were able to get to know our own selves in depth, understand our strengths and weaknesses more clearly, and recognize the situation in which we are at this present moment, whilst being able to set goals as well in order to evolve. Finally, we were given the chance to compare our results with our fellow students, through a very fun and pleasant discussion process. We were able to perceive the differences in our characters, possible causes of conflict, and also find ways to overcome them. The importance of the team became immediately obvious since one is able to fill the gaps of the other and when together, a complete/perfect whole is created.
From individual, to collective development
After completing the individual questionnaires, it was time for the group ones. Now, having a better grasp of ourselves and our abilities, it was our turn to evaluate ourselves as members of a team. We filled another questionnaire, the Belbin Questionnaire, that concerned issues of the roles of each member within a group. It included 5 question sections where each section had 10 questions. In each session, we had to distribute 10 points according to the degree we thought each sentence represented. In the end, we summed the points we found in specific answers in order to understand which was our most active role in a team, and which one needed a little boost. The roles were 10: the Resource Investigator, the Teamworker, the Co-ordinator, the Plant, the Monitor Evaluator, the Specialist, the Shaper, the Implementer, the Complete Finisher and the Leader.
For once more, we discovered unknown paths of our personality, especially for our role and position in the team, and we entered the process of judging our contribution to it. Next, a group project followed, during which we discussed our results with the other members of the team and realized the room there is for improvement and evolution of the group dynamics, and also the fact that the role-sharing should be more constructive from now on.
Through these processes, we were able to get to know each other better and in depth, to recognize our strengths and weaknesses, and as a result, to use them as a tool for the future.
The Coach, the Coachee & the Observer: the recipe to success
In our next “Leadership & Emotional Intelligence” sessions we learnt more regarding the term coaching. With the guidance of Mrs. Zoi Lioliou, we discovered the meaning of this term, the differences between coaching, training, mentoring, consulting and the advantages of coaching for the individual, the team and the organization. Coaching is a co–creative process in which the coach supports the coachee (the client) and offers him the necessary help to reach the goals and the results he expects in a personal and professional level.
Moving from theory to practice, during the class, we formed short teams of 3 in order to gain a real coaching experience with the use of the model OSKAR. According to this model, the coachee has to clarify which is the desired outcome. Afterwards, they have to make clear at which level they have reached their goal through scaling and in the end, they need to explain in what way they will be closer to succeeding their objective (Know–How). Lastly, the coach affirms and rewards the practices — methods that the client has already applied or is about to apply, while several actions that will lead to the goal are being organized (Affirm & Action). The meeting reaches an end with a review of all the stages of the session.
The main objective of this exercise was to write down skills we want to develop, and organize small sessions by role-playing the coach, the coachee and the observer, each time exchanging roles. During each session, the coach asked the coachee questions, always following the OSKAR model, and in the end, the observer made sure to give useful feedback.
It goes without saying that when this process was over, all the students, full of emotions, realized that they got to know their fellow students better while making a step forward to reaching their goals. This process of coaching not only gave us the opportunity to reach a greater intimacy with the rest of the team members, but also led us to discuss the skills that each one of us desired to develop, and the ways to do it. Finally, this exercise gave us enriching and useful knowledge for our personal and professional life while making us feel proud for all the efforts we make to reach our goals. An example of our work can be seen through the Powerpoint we made and submitted at the end of this article.
An important part following the end of the coaching session was to respond to questions regarding the development stage of our team, our progress in our team development, the dominant roles that exist in our team, but also the lack of certain roles and the methods we consider to adopt so as to improve our team’s efficiency. The stages for team development and formation are 4:
- Forming: team members get to know each other.
- Storming: there’s still unwillingness between team members for collaboration and small conflicts may still be present.
- Norming: team members get deeply connected and are ready to collaborate efficiently.
- Performing: team members are prepared to reach directly their goals by managing and overcoming possible obstacles.
Heading to the second part of our presentation, we analyzed more accurately the term team coaching and learned more on the SMART goal–setting (Smart, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time bound). At this point, we collaborated once more with our teams to apply the T-GROW model (Goal, Reality, Options, Willingness) so as to practice coaching and goal–setting. This model helped us set new goals for our team, review our progress, and discover the ways that each member can improve on a personal level. Of course, we made sure to consider the time we would like to have our objectives fulfilled.
The Coaching Experience trilogy comes to and end…
In conclusion, we consider ourselves extremely lucky to have had the chance to develop our skills and get useful knowledge during this workshop, even if it were online. We are proud that we discovered our difficulties and at the same time ways to improve on a personal and a professional level. It’s important to highlight that we managed to review our team and its elements, the roles in our team and the ways to improve and, as a result, to collaborate more efficiently. The analysis, also, of terms such as coaching and team coaching, helped us build stronger bonds with our team members and at the same time develop our communication skills.
Konstantina Angelidou, Grasiela Varkari, Myrto Galanopoulou, Margarita Kammenou, Ioannis Kogias, Ina Makrydaki, Katerina Somi
