Coaching for Leaders

This week I was listening to the HBR IdeaCast and a recent interview with Dr. Heidi Grant Halvorson about her book: 9 Things Successful People Do Differently*.

I've also been reading Get Rid of the Performance Review! by Samuel Colbert

Examples of actual ineffective goals:

"Communicate more effectively"

"Develop leadership skills"

"Communication skills to be improved (writing) and get your point across more clearing and concisely"

"Improve quality and completion of assigned duties"

"Begin working outside of their comfort zone towards new opportunities and/or subject areas"

SMART Framework

S - Specific

M - Measurable

A - Attainable

R - Relevent

T - Time-phased

Examples of more effective goals, utilizing the SMART framework:

Establish procedures with vendors to reduce year-over-year error rates by 20% before June 30th

Become a subject matter expert on departmental software use by achieving Microsoft Office Specialist Certification by the end of the year

Develop skill in departmental training activities by facilitating one training class in Q1 of 2012 and receive participant satisfaction scores that are 80% or higher

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

"There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." Shakespeare's Hamlet, Act 2

Four stories from my career of leadership lessons I've valued:

McDonald's and the value of humility

How I utilize this in daily client interactions now

Orientation and the value of excellence

I utilize this in teaching and production of this show

My first job and the value of consequences

Today I utilize this to have courage

"Our chief want in life is someone who shall make us do what we can." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

My friend and colleague and the value of love

In tough situations, find something to love about the other party

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

What do we mean by a strong culture?

Strong culture: consistent throughout the organization and thus has a strong influence on individuals

Weak culture: do not have as strong an impact on individuals because of inconsistencies (does not mean it is not effective)

In Organizational Culture and Leadership, Edgar Schein (2004) defines culture as, "…a pattern of SHARED BASIC ASSUMPTIONS that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to PERCEIVE, THINK, and FEEL in relation to those problems" (p. 17).

We accidentally referred to Schein's book in the episode as "Making Sense of the Organization" which is actually a book by Karl Weick and also an excellent read on organizational culture, though the Schein book is an easier read, so we recommend that first.

We discuss Schein's three indicators of culture:

Artifacts

Espoused beliefs and values

Underlying assumptions

We also referenced the model below from The Character of a Corporation by Goffee and Jones:

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Courage (n) as defined by Merriam-Webster's Dictionary: Mental or moral strength to venture, persevere, and withstand danger, fear, or difficulty

Eleanor Roosevelt is famously attributed to having said, "Do one thing every day that scares you."

"If you're the king of your world, you're playing in the wrong world." -Unknown

5 Pieces of Advice:

1) Have a mentor - for me, it's been my wife (and past managers)

2) Educate yourself on the issues - for me, it's reading and RSS feeds

Check out Shelfari.com.

Six Ways to Get Smart and Stay Smart

3) Surround yourself with people who will empower you.

4) Have direction - a personal vision

Michael Hyatt's life planning e-book is a great way to start

5) Lean into discomfort

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

You can't create a shared vision without having your own vision first. It's inappropriate for us to be dependent on others or independent from them. Rather, we need to have relationships of interdependence. Bonni mentioned a clip from the movie Spartacus which captures the power of interdependence:

Two key elements of a shared vision:

The people involved have a shared picture of what the future looks like.

Everyone is committed to achieving the work and working towards it together.

We discussed four steps for leaders to take when creating a shared vision:

A few books that we mentioned on this episode:

The Fifth Discipline* by Peter Senge

The Leadership Challenge* by James Kouzes and Barry Posner

We also mentioned Linda Krall, our favorite strategic illustrator

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

In his book What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, leadership coach Marshall Goldsmith warns against the habit of leaders adding too much value and stifling the motivation of an employee’s independent ideas. He says that when we start improving an employee’s idea, “You may have improved the content of my idea by 5 percent, but you’ve reduced my commitment to executing it by 50 percent, because you’ve taken away my ownership of the idea.”

Does it even make sense to give someone feedback? Here's a helpful guide.

Minor issue?

If the person is aware: ask what they plan to do to resolve it

If the person is unaware: let it go

Major issue?

If the person is aware : ask questions and help brainstorm

If the person is unaware - redirect by using EXPECTATION -> EXAMPLE -> EMPOWER

Saying something "nice" first can get us in trouble as a leader:

It doesn't sound sincere, since it's often done only before constructive feedback

It's not credible since the leader will often fail to cite evidence and examples

The leader ends up gliding over the real issue and the person never really hears the constructive feedback

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Weddings are an interesting place to watch people give positive feedback to others. I give a few examples.

The problem with feedback is that intentions are good, but that sometimes feedback still comes out awkward…sometimes it would have been better if the person said nothing at all.

I share a story about someone who heard "good job" just one too many times.

Here's the model you want to use:

ATTRIBUTE-EXAMPLE-THANK

An example of it in action:

“Helen, I appreciate how much diligence you brought to this project. Just two weeks ago, I remember you telling me that one of our vendors was very concerned about being able to make our final deadline. I noticed that you had two conference calls with them and worked late one evening last week to help get them back on track and ensure that both they and our campus looked good in the end. Thank you for putting forth the diligence to bring this project to a very successful close.”

You're done - don't go further than the above.

Who could use feedback from you on a job well done this week? I challenge you to take action both professionally and personally.

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Bonni Stachowiak: Teaching in Higher Ed

Bonni is the host of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast, Dean of Teaching and Learning and Professor of Business and Management at Vanguard University, and my life partner. Prior to her academic career, she was a human resources consultant and executive officer for a publicly traded company. Bonni is the author of The Productive Online and Offline Professor: A Practical Guide*.

One of the biggest challenges I hear from leaders today is how to coach this new generation of young people entering the workforce. We cite current statistics from the Fall 2011 edition of the Leader to Leader Journal.

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

Gilbert Fugitt: Concordia University

One of the biggest challenges I hear from leaders today is how to coach this new generation of young people entering the workforce. We cite current statistics from the Fall 2011 edition of the Leader to Leader Journal.

Gilbert mentioned the book Not Everybody Gets a Trophy by Bruce Tulgan as a resource for leaders.

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.

I begin the episode by speaking about my first job out of school and revisiting our coaching definition from episode #2.

If you want to know what is important to people, look at their calendar and in their checkbook.

Why don't we make time to coach?

People don't know the correct way.

Perception that things take too much time.

I cited some of Larry Bossidy's comments and lessons from the book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done.

Coaching takes time. Are you investing time into coaching? Here are four ways to get started:

Contract with the other party on development priorities

Plan out the schedule of when to meet and what to do - book it

Follow-through on your coaching commitments

Be flexible and yet consistent

You make life easier during review time as well if the above four things are done consistently. Make a commitment this week to do one of these things above.

Discover More

Activate your free membership for full access to the entire library of interviews since 2011, searchable by topic. To accelerate your learning, uncover more inside Coaching for Leaders Plus.