Tag Archives: Consulting

6 Top Reasons Leaders Seek Coaching

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Why do leaders seek coaching? Over the past twenty years of coaching, I have found that leaders seek to a coach for six main reasons, and more urgently when two or more of these reasons combine:

So just what can a coach do for you?

A coach can help you:
  • Gain insight – particularly about how current behaviour is PERCEIVED by others through providing feedback and assessment.
  • Get Clarity of Purpose – Extroverted people who are outer directed (and rewarded behaviours in this world) tend to get their self-esteem from satisfying others’ expectations of them. This may cause them to lose touch with what is truly important for themselves. Without clarity of purpose, you may tend to rush through days not knowing what you want to achieve. Often asking what others want rather than seeming to have opinions of their own. Reflection and review through coaching can help here.
  • Help you improve relationships – changing behaviours in relationships changes their perception of the other party and you’ll get more open and honest feedback. Coaching that helps you conduct planned conversations with colleagues is especially useful here.
  • Broaden your perspectives – we all play a role and have a preference of the way we process…. increasing the diversity of opinions we consider in decisions broadens our perspective leading to improved and more acceptable decisions.
  • Develop your leadership skills – developing the skills each individual needs for their new position or a future role.
  • Help you Identify and overcome barriers to change – change occurs over time, unlearning is often resisted, especially deeply rooted habits, and stress causes us to revert to preference. Self-righteousness is often the biggest barrier. Coaching can identify and discuss the roadblocks developing strategies and new ways of thinking to overcome them.
  • Improve your ability to learn – dependence on your coach for feedback is a disservice. Internalizing the ability to learn and continuously grow, sustaining behaviour and results. Coaching uses a cyclical process, making this process explicit, the coachee becomes more skilled at using the same process on their own.

When is Coaching needed?

There are times in life and work when we would benefit from the experience, wisdom and knowledge of people who have been in similar situations. If you are looking for one such person, then you are looking for a coach. Most coaches are professionals, people with considerable experience in one or more sectors, more often than not trained in coaching skills. They choose to become coaches as they are willing to help others by sharing their experience and by helping their coachees to find solutions to their issues, following them through a plan of action.

According to a report published by CIPD (Chartered Institute of Personnel Development), one in five chief executives claim that having had a coach was critical for their success.

Young graduates report to have found their feet in the organisation thanks to the help of their most experienced colleagues. Even people coming up to retirement have been eased through this difficult stage of their life through people who have “been there before”. Within a work environment there are many situations where the help of a coach would be appropriate.
Typical Situations when having a coach will really help you
  • Starting in a new job/position when you are expected to hit the ground running.
  • Taking on a new role or responsibility, or starting in a new industry where you have little experience, but need to gain the skills and experience quickly.
  • When needing a personal assessment to determine your strengths and weaknesses, and consider what you should be doing in order to maximize your potential.
  • When striving for promotion or a new position.
  • When needing to talk through your thought processes, strategies, and plans in order to move forward.
  • When struggling with certain skills and performance areas and you wish to improve.
  • When feeling you have reached a plateau in your career and want to explore options.

 

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DrJohnMcGinn.com | Executive Coach | Leadership Consultant

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Values-based decision-making is a concept I use both in my executive coaching and in my life choices. As an executive coach working with clients, one of the first steps that I do is to help the client identify their values. Probably even more important than organizational values are the individual’s personal values. If there is a lack of congruence in the individual values and the organizational values, an individual’s employment becomes work. When an individual’s values are congruent with the organizational values, employment takes on a sense of calling and can be very fulfilling for the individual (and profitable for the organization).

via DrJohnMcGinn.com | Executive Coach | Leadership Consultant.

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Impress Your Customer: 7 Easy Strategies

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The following basic tips aren’t news for seasoned sales pros, but you’d be surprised how many novices either don’t know them or aren’t following them:

* Strategy #1: Tune your first impression. A bad first impression is almost impossible to overcome. Make certain you look like someone the customer will want to work with.

* Strategy #2: Develop a friendly greeting. If you’re in sales, your smile, handshake and eye contact should be top quality. Rehearse these with a colleague who’ll give honest feedback.

* Strategy #3: Always get the name right. Be fanatical about pronunciation with unusual names. Prospects will appreciate it and it will communicate that you care.

* Strategy #4: Focus on the customer. If you find yourself talking too much about your weekend, your golf game, your family or your job, then you’re probably not listening enough.

* Strategy #5: Remember personal information. Record interesting information, like the names of family members and birthdays. Then show your customers that you remembered.

* Strategy #6: Always speak positively. Whatever the temptation, avoid criticizing anyone, even a competitor, in front of your customers. Criticizing others makes you look underhanded.

* Strategy #7: Stay appropriately upbeat. A positive attitude, fueled by honest curiosity, energy and enthusiasm, makes people WANT to work with you.

via Impress Your Customer: 7 Easy Strategies | Sales Machine | BNET.

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Giving away my power

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This month has been an interesting and taxing struggle for me. I delegated work!

Not just any work, but the type of work that I quite honestly enjoy a great deal. I’m quite happy to delegate the stuff I don’t really enjoy doing, but the things I love to do and that I’m pretty good at doing?

The first major shift for me this month was delegating a number of coaching clients to my team. Not unusual in itself, but for the first time, delegating the whole of GAPPS3 feedback.

The second major shift is our new website. Now I’ve been pretty good at creating websites, programming fancy things, building communities and so on, and secretly I thoroughly enjoy doing it and seeing what else the technology can do and how it can help our clients. The trouble is, 90% of the widgets and gadgets never actually get used, and sometimes, people can’t find the important things when they are looking.

So, this time I’ve got in a pro to help. Pam Siow, is an expert at website design and comes highly recommended. The only difficulty for me has been ‘letting go’ and empowering her to do the job.

Does she do things the way I would?
No way!

And whilst that’s why I asked her to do it… oh it’s been tough to just allow her to do her job. I’m glad I did by the way, check out the result for yourself, and do tell us what you think.

So here’s what I learned.

Delegation

Delegate [del-i-geyt]: to send or appoint (a person) as deputy or representative; to commit (powers, functions, etc.) to another as agent or deputy.

I probably spend about a third of my coaching hours helping leaders delegate effectively and empowering their staff. Of course, I have all the theory and ‘proof’ and do have considerable experience of delegating (it is kinda difficult to run hotels, restaurants and pubs or a B. School without using at least some of the staff to help).

Delegating to someone successfully needs the leader to:

1. Establish exactly what to delegate to whom
2. Clarify the specific results you want
3. Clearly define responsibilities
4. Communicate the scope and authority
5. Establish a time frame
6. Monitor progress

So far so good. I knew what to delegate and to whom. Number 2… now that was more difficult, but having chosen to delegate to a professional, I was well guided. Then the erst was easy. Keeping to my side of the deal… well that was a test of willpower smile

Delegation is not that difficult is it?

Not when the person to whom you are delegating knows what they are doing, has the right experience, attitude, motivation and process. So why did I resist it so much? Why was I so uncomfortable?

Partly it’s pride I admit, mostly though, its about power! I’m giving power over my business, my marketing, my public face… to someone else!

Empowerment

Empower [em-pou-er]: to give power or authority to; authorize, esp. by legal or official means; to enable or permit.

Last month in my newsletter, I shared about “Trust” (You can sign up here) – which perhaps is a precursor of empowerment, or for many “trust” is something that comes after the result. You either reduce uncertainty by trusting without certainty, or you reduce uncertainty by shifting the burden.

trussed.jpg

Empowering someone though is much more than delegation and trust. Empowering is giving away your power!

Now if your level of influence (read my article on Influence Level here when you want to know more) is on the lowest rung, “Position”, you will always struggle to empower because ‘power’ is all you have and if you give it to someone else, well how will you influence them?

The key to empowerment is in the second definition above: “Enable” – to make ready, to equip, to make able.

You as the leader need to teach, coach or mentor that person with the skills, knowledge, expertise, means and resources they need to undertake the tasks you wish to delegate to them.

So, strictly speaking, this last month I’ve empowered by coaches to take on some of my clients and I delegated my website to Pam.

The result? Well, judge the latter for yourselves (and do let us have your feedback).

And I’m learning to loosen my grip to gain more control smile

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Spring newsletter

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Automn News update Spring Update

Preparing for the economic upswing
Volume 18, Issue 2 – February 2010

Welcome to our Spring Update newsletter. Thank you, our clients for an excellent start to our year. Following the launch of the new GAPPS3 we are pleased to announce that the GAINMORE™ Leadership Advantage Handbook’s 3rd Edition is being written online and will be published (in printed book form) in December 2010.

GAINMORE™ Leadership Advantage Handbook 3rd Edition

Complimenting GAPPS3 (GAINMORE™ Advantage Potential to Performance System Version 3), the Handbook including all the support material, templates, activities and resources you are likley to need in your leadership development journey is the 3rd Edition of the GAINMORE™ Leadership Advantage Handbook.

This time, the book is being entirely re-written online, as a collaborative wiki. We will publish the hard-copy version in December 2010 and until then you are welcome to vist the online version, please add your comments and share your experiences of using the tools and techniques and, if you have something critical to add, why not collaborate with us and write a page, a chapter or add your case studies.

Courageous Conversations at Jurong Executive Course

Courageous Conversations – Overcoming the fear of those ‘difficult’ conversations

DSM – the global leader in animal nutrition asked us to design a programme for the regional team to address two specific issues: finding and developing new business and having the courage to conduct those ‘difficult conversations’.

Team members back in the workshop In business, it seems that leaders are meant to be unqiuely unhuman – they are not supposed to worry about their emotions and should simply get on with those courageous conversations.

courageousconversations1Most of you receive training on how to control and hide their emotions and behave in a professional fashion. However, professionals have emotions too. These feelings and emotions are critical components of many conversations. As Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen (1999) point out in their book, Difficult Conversations, unexpressed emotions leak into conversations, take a toll on our self-esteem and relationships, and make it difficult for us to listen to what the other person is saying.

The programme and supporting coaching has yielded excellent results in the workplace. New clients, previously firmly stuck using a competitor have come on board. Poor performance within teams has been addressed. Existing clients who resisted price increases are willingly paying more, and overall customer satisfaction has improved. Well, we would say that wouldn’t we, so let us put you in touch directly with participants and hear their experiences direct.

Take Back Your Time!

It seems like I hear more and more often from our coaching clients that they do not have enough hours in a day to accomplish what needs to done.

Here is what they say:
They are being pulled into meetings at the last minute and have to cancel agenda items to accommodate. They are stretched by the needs of family and friends. The wonderful new technologies make them so accessible to the needs of others they barely have time to breath. The phone rings during lunch, so they can’t remember with whom they had lunch, never mind what they ate. E-mail systems beep to tell them of a new message breaking their concentration required to complete that important report. Their open door policy allows free access to them by their colleagues and subordinates, but little space in which to accomplish the real work at hand. The result is a frazzled, short tempered, scattered, unhappy, minimally productive, minimally appreciated, person that works long hours and is rewarded with little sleep, no real nourishment of body and spirit and a “to do” list a mile long and reaching for two. Does any of this sound like you?

If it does, read on, because I have news for you. It does not have to.

Too often we stay on the “gerbil wheel” of life feeling incapable of making the choice of taking the first jolting step off and instead we are thrown off by an illness or major difficulty.

Have we all forgotten and missed the true meaning of the simple warning given at the beginning of every flight we take: “If the oxygen masks should fall, indicating a change in cabin pressure, put on your own mask first, BEFORE helping your children or others in need.” Or, in everyday terms: If your life should get so full that you are losing control of even the most simple of tasks, take care of your health and well-being first so you have the ability and energy required to support the ones you love and accomplish the tasks required.

So what can you do to soften that first step off the “gerbil wheel” of life? First: stop thinking it is out of your control. You can and do have control, but you have to choose to exercise it. Second: Begin to look at all the areas of your life that are out of control or on the verge of being out of control and choose just one to look at, for the present. Third: Take one small step to gain back some time for you.

Here are some suggestions:
1. Maybe it is closing your door for two hours each day and not answering the phone, so you can concentrate on that important project.
2.Perhaps forwarding your calls or putting a message on your answer service that you will be out of range for an hour and a half and you have a relaxed business lunch or lunch with a friend.
3. You could take the alarm system off your computer e-mail and set 2 to 3 periods a day when you will read and respond to your e-mail. A time of your choosing. If this is a big change, make sure people know this and tell them when they can expect a response.
4. Set a boundary with your family or work staff and colleagues that a certain time each day is off limits time. They are not to disturb you for any reason. Then define emergency very clearly! Kids of a certain age love to be made the guard and reminder. Tell them what time you need and that it is their job to remind you and then be sure no one interrupts it. It will be a game and can be fun!

All of these ideas will help you focus on what is real and necessary and will begin the process of your taking back your time. This is just a beginning, think for yourself where you can make a difference in your life. After all, you didn’t give away your time all in one day, it probably happened gradually. Expectations were built, but these too can be modified.

Be sure to explain your changes to all the people that they may effect, this is part of the remodeling of expectations. Also set up stopgaps for problems that may arise. Get someone to cover for you if that is possible. If not, make sure people know when you will be available again to help them.

As you begin to gain some time for clarity and focus, you will notice your energy improves and your productivity will increase. You will gain even more time. Be sure you allocate some of that time for self care of your physical, personal and spiritual being.

Bryan Dyson, the former CEO of Coca-Cola explained that he feels we juggle 5 different balls: a health ball, a family ball, a friends ball, a work ball and a spirituality ball. Four of the five are made out of crystal. If we drop them, they are going to shatter. Only one ball is made out of rubber and bounces back: the work ball.

Coaching Challenge: Find one area in your life to which you are willing to apply these principles and go for it!

New Associates

We’ve been fortunate to continue growing our business in spite of the economic situation. Partly, we (and our clients) believe, because our interventions have direct and real business impact. Partly because we have a great team of associates supporting our clients. four new full time associates join the CELSIM team:
Melissa Beveridge – who specializes in helping you keep a healthy life as well as great business leadership.
Rajesh Krishnan – based in Sydney, Australia, a respected leadership trainer in his own right, Rajesh adds our GAPPS3 to his already strong portfolio.
Pippa Jamieson– Based in Nelson, New Zealand, Pippa was with the NZ Economic Development Agency and havign recently completed her ground-breaking thesis on the Glass Cliff that women ion the workforce now face, brings another dynamic addition to our associate group.
Edmund Tan – a serial entrepreneur who is now helping others emulate his success.

GAPPS 3 for Recruitment

Gettign the right fit One incentive for us to radically update our GAPPS assessment tool was the increasing number of clients asking us to help them with their recruitment.

Working with clients and currently two renowned headhunters in China and Singapore, Potter Consulting and Gary & Pearl, GAPPS3 brings additional dimensions to your recruitment process.

As with all use of our GAPPS assessment, every candidate receives feedback coaching. This has multiple benefits for the recruiting firm:

  • An objective review of the candidates leadership strengths and development areas.
  • A detailed understanding of each candidates competency and organization cultural development needs.
  • Excellent brand building as an employer.
  • Detailed competency based questions presented to the interviewer for deeper probing, reducing time and vastly improving the success rate for recruitment.

As part of our Assessment Centre design for more effective recruitment strategies, GAPPS3 for recruitment is part of our commitment to support our clients across all areas of the employee life cycle. Call us today and learn more about how we can help you.
Copyright © 2009 CELSIM http://celsim.com/ +65 62450908
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