How can you help people to do their best? One model is to encourage, educate and enable them to reach their goals. Whilst this approach appears humanistic – which it is – it also based on what actually works. It has proved effective when working with people in education, sports, business and many other fields. It can also be used with individuals, teams and whole organisations. You will, of course, adapt the model in your own way.

Imagine that you have a ‘formal’ role in which you encourage people. You may be a leader, manager, teacher, mentor, coach or whatever. Let’s explore how you can help people to achieve their picture of success.

* Start by making a clear working contract.

You will obviously start by making the person feel welcome. Some mentors, for example, aim to create a stimulating sanctuary. They provide an encouraging environment where people feel at ease and able to talk about their goals. Let’s assume you have clarified the person’s aims. The next step is to make a clear working contract. This sounds rather ‘formal’, but it is a key step in helping people to achieve success. Be crystal clear on:

a) The specific goals they want to achieve.

b) Their role in working towards the goals.

c) Your role in working towards the goals.

d) The specific things that will be happening that will show they have reached the goals.

You can then encourage, educate and enable them to achieve their picture of success. Let’s explore how to make this happen.

1) You can encourage people to achieve success.

Good encouragers create an environment in which, if appropriate, they help people to work towards achieving their goals. Imagine you are facilitating such a session. Depending on the topic that is being explored, there are many different tools you can use to help people to develop their inner resources. For example:

a) You can provide a stimulating environment, focus on when people ‘come alive’ and then give them specific encouragement.

This is the route followed by many good educators. Building on the learner’s interests, they provide lots of stimulating ideas, materials and tools. Looking for when a person ‘comes alive’ - when they show energy, enthusiasm and enterprise – they help the learner to explore this particular theme or activity. Good educators then provide specific encouragement.

First, they focus on what the person does well. They highlight the specific things the person does right on the route towards achieving their goals. They then encourage them to continue following these principles.

Second, they focus on what the person can do better and how. Sometimes they simply leave the person to explore these challenges and find their own answers. Other times they ask the person if they want help. If so, they will offer ideas, knowledge and practical tools in the way the learner can accept.

Good educators then help the person to flow, focus, finish and, as a by-product, find fulfilment.

b) You can encourage people to build on their strengths.

If you are working with individuals, you may ask them some of the following questions to clarify their strengths.

“What are the activities in which you deliver ‘As’, rather than ‘Bs’ or ‘Cs’? When do you feel in your element – at ease and yet also able to excel? When do your quickly see the destination - the picture of perfection? When do you go ‘A, B _____ then jump to ____ Z’? Where do you quickly see patterns? When do you experience a sense of flow? Where do you have natural self-discipline? What are the activities in which you have a track record of being a good finisher? When do you go from 7/10 to 10/10?”

If you are working with a team or organisation, you may do a proper SWOT analysis. Recently I worked with a marketing company that took this approach seriously, rather than as a quick, superficial exercise. Looking at the Strengths aspect, they asked the following questions:

“What are our real strengths? What are our ‘A’ talents? What do we deliver brilliantly? What do our customers really buy from us? What do they buy in terms of our product – or service – our people and other factors? How do we deliver this service or product? Who are our perfect customers? What is their specific profile? What are the challenges they face? What is their picture of success? How do we work well with them? What is the kind of spirit, the strategy and the skills we use when helping our customers? What are the specific things we deliver to help them to achieve success? Bearing these answers in mind, what are our real strengths?”

c) You can encourage people to find and follow their successful style.

If you are working with individuals, you can help them to clarify how they work best. Everybody has a positive history. They have done superb work, overcome crises or achieved certain goals. Looking at this history, you can help people to find their preferred way of working – their successful style. If appropriate, invite them to explore the following topics.

“Looking back on your life, describe what for you have been three satisfying projects. Here are we using the term ‘project’ in the broadest sense. You may have got great satisfaction from designing a web site, launching a product, organising a charity run, leading a team, helping somebody to master a skill or whatever. After describing these projects, let’s move on to the next stage.”

“Exploring each project in turn, describe the specific things that made them fulfilling. On one project, for example, you may have chosen to follow your passion; build a ground breaking prototype; get backing from your boss, with whom you had a values-fit; made clear contracts about the ‘what’ – the specific goal; had freedom, within parameters, regarding the ‘how’; co-operated with kindred spirits; followed a daily discipline; tested the pilot with customers; incorporated the improvements; then produced a successful prototype. On the other hand, your pattern may be completely different. So let’s explore each of your satisfying projects.”

Invite the person to consider each project in turn, asking them to describe these in great detail. For example: How they chose the project; how they set it up; how they defined the goal; how they got support; how they organised their days; how they tackled challenges; how they encouraged themselves; how they kept working to reach the goal. After covering this ground, invite them to explore the following theme.

“Looking at each of the projects, can you see any recurring patterns? If so, is it possible to identify your successful style? Looking at this style, how can you follow it in future?”

This exercise provides masses of information for finding a person’s strengths and successful style. Clarify what works for the person. Bearing these principles in mind, you can help the person to translate these into specific goals.

“That sounds useful,” somebody may say, “but how do you apply a similar approach when working with a team or organisation?”

Appreciative Inquiry

There are many ways to build on an organisation’s successful style. One of the most effective is Appreciative Inquiry. AI invites people to learn from their best experiences. It asks them to build on their positive core – what works well for them as individuals, teams and organisations – and do it more. It does not ask them to change. AI starts by inviting people to define a challenge they want to explore. During the past few months, for example, I have used it when working with organisations that tackled the following questions:

“How can we continue delivering excellence and also do work that is extraordinary? … How can we use this crisis in a positive way? … How can we define what we as a company really offer to our customers?”

After defining the topic, people go through four stages. 1) Discovery. They look back at specific times their organisation has performed brilliantly when tackling a similar challenge. They then identify the principles they followed to achieve success. 2) Dream. They build on these principles to create a stimulating and stretching goal. This is the ‘what’ and ‘why’. 3) Design. They design the action plan – the ‘how’, ‘who’ and ‘when’. 4) Destiny (or Delivery). They pursue their chosen principles to deliver the goal.

Appreciative Inquiry works. People feel uplifted and follow their successful patterns to achieve ongoing success. You can explore more about AI at the following link.

Appreciative inquiry

Let’s return to the art of encouragement. So far you have made a clear working contract and agreed on the person’s – or people’s – goals. You then aimed: a) To provide a stimulating environment and specific encouragement; b) To build on people’s strengths; c) To build on their successful style. Let’s move onto the next step – expanding their repertoire for achieving their goals.

2) You can educate the person to achieve their picture of success.

Looking back on your life, who have been your greatest educators? What did these people do right? How did they help you to develop in your life and work?

Good educators make learning personal, practical and ‘profitable’. They start by focusing on the person’s agenda - what they want to learn. They offer positive models and practical tools that work. They then help the learner to practice the learning in a way that is ‘profitable’. It helps the learner to achieve success. Let’s explore three steps you can take to pursue this path in your own way.

a) You can provide positive models that work.

You are clear on the learner’s goals. Bearing these goals in mind, what are the approaches that are likely to help them to achieve success? What are the models that you know work? Certainly people must eventually settle on their own approach, but it can help to share knowledge from what has succeeded elsewhere. So how can you pass-on these positive models in a way the person can accept? They will then have more information they can add to their map for reaching their goals.

b) You can provide practical tools that work.

Move from the concept to the concrete. People enjoy theories, but they also want practical tools that work. So you might ask the individual to consider, for example:

“Looking ahead, there are various options you can follow to reach your goal. Option A is: To ________. Option B is: To ________. Option C is: To _______. Each road has both pluses and minuses. Looking at these options, which is the route – or the routes - you want to follow? Bearing in mind your chosen route, are there any strategies or skills you want to develop to increase your chances of success? If so, what are the tools you would like us to explore to help you to reach your goals?”

Bearing in mind what the learner wants to focus on, you can provide practical tools, tips and techniques they can use to work towards their picture of success.

c) You can expand people’s repertoire for achieving their goals.

Good educators offer people ideas, knowledge and tools that they can use in their daily lives. People then have more options and, hence, more freedom to shape their futures. Some educators we meet personally; others we ‘meet’ through their books, films or other media. So how do you want to pass on your knowledge? For example, you may do this through modelling, teaching, coaching, mentoring, writing, making films, creating an inspiring web site, building prototypes that work or whatever. You will, of course, find your own way to offer people more choices for reaching their goals.

3) You can enable the person to achieve ongoing success.

“Education is all about the ‘E’ words,” said one of my teachers. “It is about encouraging and engaging the learners. Focusing on where they show energy and enterprise, you work together with them to achieve excellence. You can then equip and empower the students to develop, even when you are not around. Great educators enable the students to keep improving and, if they have the ability and application, to do something exceptional.”

Let’s explore how you can encourage people to take this step towards achieving ongoing success.

a) You can enable people to integrate the learning.

Great educators focus on the 3 Is: inspiration, implementation and integration. They create an inspiring environment, offer implementation tools that work and enable people to integrate these in their lives and work. This final step is crucial.

People must ‘own’ the knowledge to apply it successfully. This is a crucial step - whether they are developing skills in computing, cookery, creativity, dancing, engineering, economics, football or whatever. How do you know when somebody has integrated an idea? They use their own language and methods to explain what they are doing and make things happen. Certainly they may follow ‘eternal principles’. But they do so by using their own strengths, performing superb work and sometimes doing something exceptional.

Some teachers are good at inspiration - they fire people with enthusiasm. Some are also good at implementation - they offer practical tools. Some are good at both these steps – but go even further. They enable people to integrate the learning and apply it in their lives and work.

b) You can enable people to find creative solutions to challenges.

People will encounter difficulties on the road towards reaching their goals. So it can be useful to help them to find solutions to challenges. You can do this by enabling them to use the 5C model for creative problem solving.

Whenever faced with a decision to make, they can focus on:

* Clarity. What are the real results I want to achieve?

* Choices. What are the potential options for tackling this challenge?

* Consequences. What are the consequences – the pluses and minuses of each option?

* Creative solutions. What are the potential creative solutions?

* Concrete results. What are the conclusions? What are the route – or routes – I want to take towards achieving the results? What are the specific steps I can take to achieve concrete results?

Helping people to apply this model can provide them with a gift for life.

c) You can enable people to achieve ongoing success

Much depends, of course, on the person’s hunger. Great workers follow their passion, translate this into a clear purpose and do everything possible to achieve peak performance.

“Working with footballers can be challenging,” said one coach. “Some have enormous talent but, because things have ‘come easily’ for them, they may have not developed good habits. They produce occasional pieces of magic, but many times lapse into delivering 6/10. Some lesser talented players keep themselves healthy, focus on their contribution to the team and consistently deliver 7+/10. Sometimes you find that rare combination: the gifted player who is committed to constant improvement. They are more likely to become the truly great players.”

You cannot instil hunger: that comes from within the person. What you can do is encourage them to build on their strengths, follow their successful style and set specific goals. They can do superb work, find solutions to challenges and achieve their picture of success. After they have reached their goals, you can help them to develop the habit of constant improvement. One approach is to encourage them to reflect on their work and describe:

1) The specific things I did well on this piece of work were:

*

The specific things I can do to follow
these principles more in the future are:

*

2) The specific things I could do better next time are:

*

The specific things I can do to take these steps are:

*

People who develop this discipline are more likely to achieve and maintain peak performance.

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There are many models for helping people to do their best. This article has focused on the art of encouragement. Encouragement is just one approach. You will, of course, apply this approach in your own way.

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