The in-service development format: job shadowing

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Do the following situations sound familiar to you?

In your leadership role, you “function” in your day-to-day business. You do your best in terms of organization, delegation, escalation and communication. Nevertheless, you are confronted with reactions that you cannot understand or explain. Although you and your team are working flat out on challenging product developments or ambitious project goals, the atmosphere in the team is tense. Individual team members do not deliver the desired and agreed results on time, are late for joint meetings or are repeatedly absent. It is a challenge to find a joint solution in technical discussions. You observe that employees refuse to cooperate and reject suggestions within the management team without a comprehensible reason.

In addition, your own manager does not understand your fears and current challenges or is unable to provide you with sufficient support in changing deadlocked patterns of action. Such behavioral tendencies slow you down in your role and make it difficult to achieve common goals or implement changes.

A common approach is then often to attend further education or training to develop soft skills. However, these valuable offers take place in “laboratory situations” outside your everyday working life. It can often be difficult to transfer them to your real working environment. At this point, we would like to introduce you to a format that solves precisely this problem: job shadowing.

Job shadowing - an effective approach for your individual development

Job shadowing is one of the diagnostic tools in the coaching context which, as a practice-oriented approach, ensures the transfer from and into everyday work structures and processes.

An experienced coach accompanies you for one day (or over a longer period of time) in all your appointments and follows your daily work process in the background - as a shadow. Afterwards, the coach gives you detailed feedback on his or her observations, reflects behavior, communication patterns or team dynamics and identifies potential for more in-depth work through coaching or sparring.

Are you interested in a “shadow day”?

In the following article, we show you what such a shadow day can look like and what approaches our consultants use in such assignments.

During job shadowing, a coach notices things in your individual working day that are completely “normal” for you and are therefore often not questioned. In contrast to the usual personnel development methods, a neutral person experiences you in your interactions. These interactions are put into a systemic context by reflecting on the specific patterns of behavior. Patterns of communication and interaction that have become ingrained over a long period of time - both in meetings and in one-to-one conversations - become conscious and can be questioned.

A job shadowing session can be the start of a longer-term coaching process in which jointly identified areas of development are worked on, or the coaching can be concluded in a one-off session with a clear question and subsequent reflection.

Job shadowing - this is what it could look like.

1. Phase 04

Shading in everyday life

Shading in everyday life
In most cases, our qualified and experienced coach will accompany you as a manager or team member throughout your entire working day or, if you prefer, only in certain situations. The coach “shadows” you as discreetly and unobtrusively as possible in meetings or one-on-one discussions with employees, colleagues and customers, but also during telephone calls or your activities at your desk. You will be closely accompanied and observed without being disturbed in your day-to-day work or interactions.
Feedback and intensive reflection
Depending on your individual situation, you will receive brief feedback on the observed situations between the individual work phases. At the end of the “shadow day”, specific situations that the coach noticed during the day are discussed in a detailed reflection. This external reflection provides you with new impulses and insights into your external impact, automated behavior patterns, moods and reactions.
Derive and anchor options for action
From the insights gained, the consultants then work with you to derive possible options for adaptation and optimization that you can implement in practice. Depending on your individual questions and objectives, development areas are formulated with you, which are then worked on in a longer-term individual or team coaching session. In this systemic coaching, which is individually tailored to your needs, the consultants support you in discovering your own skills and resources and using them to promote your development. In the long term, you can test options for change and thus reflect on and sustainably shape your own development.
Check effect
At the end of the entire process, another job shadowing session is recommended. Here you will receive final feedback on how your new behaviors affect your everyday professional life in leadership or team situations. Depending on the individual result, the process can then be completed for your individual development or further support can be provided in the form of a sparring session. This gives you the opportunity to discuss any issues you have identified and receive neutral impetus for change.

Our experience with job shadowing

Our experience shows that job shadowing generates a great deal of motivation among our clients to tackle the development potential we have identified together and to try out changed behavioral patterns in their everyday working lives. One of the main findings of our “shadowed” clients is that they usually already have all the necessary resources themselves. They can now use these with a newfound awareness and thus achieve improvements over a short period of time.

Exemplary meeting situations:

LEITWERK Consulting's experience in job shadowing

Situation

A team leader would like to have more time together so that every team member is fully informed.

Observation

In meetings, people often skip the context and dive straight into detailed discussions. The team members have difficulty following the team leader's complex train of thought and hold back questions and ideas. The team leader interprets this behavior as skepticism and repeatedly rejects ideas and approaches in order to find a consensus that is supported by everyone.

Solution

Put ideas and suggestions into context and create space for ideas and proposed solutions. Allow the team to grow into the task and gradually take on responsibility.

LEITWERK Consulting's experience in job shadowing: poor team dynamics

Situation

A team complains about frustrating dynamics in meetings that slow down progress in terms of content. A conflict-laden atmosphere builds up.

Observation

As soon as meetings start, there is no sign of initial silence. The volume in the room rises rapidly as a result of the many discussions within the group. In addition to the hustle and bustle, individual members find it difficult to fully express their thoughts before someone interrupts and brings up an unrelated topic.

Solution

The team reflects together on the patterns of behavior that occur and establishes uniform rules that make each member feel represented and enable efficient collaboration.

LEITWERK Consulting's experience in job shadowing: Team meeting

Situation

A management team wants to standardize the appearance and communication in team meetings.

Observation

The direction in meetings is unclear and it is apparent that the managers have not coordinated their approach in advance. The team is unsettled by the different approaches, as it is not clear who makes decisions and whose position is meaningful.

Solution

The management team identifies where coordination is necessary and who takes on which role at meetings. The assignment is communicated to the team.

Individual & targeted

In order to ensure sustainable development, longer-term coaching support can be helpful and useful in addition to one-off job shadowing. Together with our clients, we determine the appropriate duration and intensity for you as an individual or for the team.

Alternatively, individual situations can also be discussed and reflected on through regular exchanges in the form of sparring in order to find possible starting points for change in your everyday professional life. In contrast to coaching, experience and specific specialist knowledge are brought in here, which you can apply and try out in your context.

Are you interested and would like to find out more? Then please contact us for a personal exchange.

JOB SHADOWING
Job shadowing is an in-service development format. By having someone look over your shoulder as you go about your daily work, you receive information about your individual development potential.
You can ask initial questions about this during the shadowing. We then take the time with you to reflect on challenges in situations and you receive open and valuable feedback from us.
This format helps you to gain a new perspective on processes and routines and to grow in your role.
COACHING
Coaching enables the development of individual problem-solving skills. By opening up new perspectives, you discover personal development potential and your own scope for action.
The coaching goal is set by you, we ensure an enabling process. In the coaching role, we encourage a change of perspective and provide food for thought. We adopt a neutral, non-judgmental point of view and hold back with suggestions for action or promises of results. You are the expert for your own actions.
Our systemic coaching approach enables you to discover your own skills and resources. By supporting you in developing possible alternative courses of action, you will be able to find the right path for you.
SPARRING
Together, we simulate real-life situations, go through processes and highlight decision-making moments that you are confronted with in your everyday life. We discuss challenges with you and reflect on specific actions.
In sparring, we slip into the role of your counterpart and at the same time contribute our suggestions, constructive feedback and ideas. This allows us to develop different options for action, test them and prepare for future challenges in a structured way.
Sparring combines specialist knowledge, feedback and advice with psychological expertise, empathy and supportive coaching methods.