Let’s turn our attention to coaching to join an organisation.
In our series on coaching to support the employee experience, we’ve looked at:
Joining or re-joining the workforce
Leaving an organisation through choice, or through redundancy
And only now do we come to joining an organisation. Does it seem odd that this is at the end of the journey, rather than the beginning? Well, you can’t have a good beginning (as William Bridges says) until you have made a good ending. So what we learned in the posts on leaving an organisation well will help us to get good closure without burning any bridges.
If we leave the “baggage” of the past in the past, then we are more able to make a great new beginning in a new organisation. That new beginning doesn’t start on day one of joining the company though. It starts as soon as we accept the offer. As a pre-joiner, there are lots of things we can do to help ourselves – and coaching can also help us to get ready for day one before we even get there.
Pre-joining, you might use your time with a coach to identify:
- What would it be useful to know before turning up on day one? How can you go about finding out this data and information – who can help you?
- How can you get yourself physically and mentally fit for the new start?
- How can you organise yourself to be effective with new systems and processes to manage your time and energy?
- Who and how do you want to be in this new role? How can you bring the best of who you are into this unique culture?
On joining, there are new things to reflect upon, such as:
- Getting clear about the new job and the contribution you are expected to make; asking questions that make the unknown quantity known
- Achieving alignment with the expectations your stakeholders need you to step up to
- Building great relationships with all your stakeholders, including your boss, your peers, your supporters and detractors, and your team members
Then two to four months in, you’ll be ready to discuss:
- Gaining early wins and then building on them; stepping up to challenges, rather than waiting for others to hold your hand.
- Making the best decisions to suit this culture and context, and for the long-term success of the business.
- Aligning priorities, culture, people, organisational structure, processes, technology to achieve the strategy and performance metrics.
Changing organisations can be a stressful time, and a place of not knowing, which can be uncomfortable. Coaching to join an organisation gives you a place to air your concerns with a neutral person and figure out your next steps, so that you can make a favourable first and continuous impression.
There is business sense in investing at this stage of a person’s employee experience too, as the new joiner is more likely to figure out in a shorter space of time how they can add value to this new culture – and then start adding that value. The alternative is people who stick out like a sore thumb, and who are rejected by the system.
