Monday 16 December 2013

Why executive coaching is worth $500 an hour

By Christopher Mims, December 15, 2013
in qz.com

The most comprehensive and rigorous meta-analysis of professional coaching ever conducted was just published in print, and the results are unambiguous: Coaching in a businesses context “has significant positive effects on performance and skills, well-being, coping, work attitudes, and goal-directed self-regulation.”

Writing in The Journal of Positive Psychology, Tim Theebooma, Bianca Beersmaa and Annelies E.M. van Vianena of the Department of Work and Organizational Psychology at the University of Amsterdam conclude that “In general… coaching is an effective tool for improving the functioning of individuals in organizations.” That’s good news, considering that, as the authors note, coaching is a $3 billion a year industry worldwide, and, as the Harvard Business Review estimated, the median rate for an executive coach is $500 an hour.

Theebooma et al. are so thorough in their analysis that they spend large sections of their paper outlining the flaws of many of the studies of the effectiveness of coaching, and their discursive style, while dense, yields a number of important takeaways.

But we don’t know why coaching works
Plenty of studies have established, to one degree or another, that coaching makes people measurably more effective at their jobs, yielding a quantifiable, positive return on investment for most investments in coaching. But there is a great deal of variability between studies in terms of how effective coaching can be. Is this because some coaches are better than others? Because some employees are more amenable to coaching or to different styles of coaching, than others? (There is even a term in the psychological literature for this trait: “coachability.”)

The authors elaborate: “Future research could investigate whether solution-focused coaching is indeed more effective than other coaching approaches and whether specific coaching effects also depend on significance and/or complexity of coaches’ problems.” By borrowing from fields with deep pools of literature, such as mentoring, training, therapy and education, the authors argue that professional coaches could begin to figure out which aspects of what they’re doing are particularly effective.

For example, effective coaching may be, like good therapy, primarily a product of the connection between the coach and coachee: “Recent work in the field of executive coaching indeed suggests that non-specific factors such as understanding, encouraging, and listening behaviors of the coach may be better predictors of coaching effectiveness than specific factors such as the coaching methodology.” 

Of course, coaching is a highly subjective experience, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The authors note that while many studies of the outcomes of coaching rely on self-reported results (versus evaluations by the coach or by others working with the person being coached) there is evidence from other areas of psychology that simply believing that a therapeutic intervention is working—whether that’s mentoring, teaching, psychotherapy or coaching—inspires a positive feedback mechanism that is key to the kind of deep, lasting, underlying behavioral change that is the goal of most coaching. So when choosing a coach, a good rule of thumb could simply be: Does this person make me feel more effective?

Monday 30 September 2013

Sir Alex Ferguson. Coach Extraordinaire...

Some call him the greatest coach in history. Before retiring in May 2013, Sir Alex Ferguson spent 26 seasons as the manager of Manchester United, the English football (soccer) club that ranks among the most successful and valuable franchises in sports. During that time the club won 13 English league titles along with 25 other domestic and international trophies—giving him an overall haul nearly double that of the next-most-successful English club manager. And Ferguson was far more than a coach. He played a central role in the United organization, managing not just the first team but the entire club. “Steve Jobs was Apple; Sir Alex Ferguson is Manchester United,” says the club’s former chief executive David Gill. In 2012 Harvard Business School professor Anita Elberse had a unique opportunity to examine Ferguson’s management approach and developed an HBS case study around it. Now she and Ferguson have collaborated on an analysis of his enormously successful methods.


Alex Ferguson was known as one of the most challenging and uncompromising coaches, and this approach led to huge success. The 8 lessons identified in the HBR are very interesting and quite apt... :



1. Start with the foundation. Centres of excellence were created for promising young players. Sir Alex said “The job of a manager … is to inspire people to be better.” Probably the only EPL manager who tried this seriously.

2. Dare to rebuild your team. Sir Alex constantly looked to rebuild the team and said “… we tried to visualise the three or four years ahead…”

3. Set high standards, and hold everyone accountable to them. Sir Alex demanded his players worked extremely hard, and never be satisfied. He is famous for letting stars go for not giving it their all.

4. Never, ever cede control. Ferguson responded quickly and forcefully, maintaining control, e.g. sacking or selling star players if they became a negative influence. He said “It doesn’t matter if the person is the best player in the world. The long-term view of the club is more important than the individual.” Hmmm...

5. Match the message to the momenttailor your words to the moment. Ferguson varied his approach saying “You can’t always come in shouting and screaming. That doesn’t work.” On feedback Ferguson says “Few people get better with criticism; most respond to encouragement.”

6. Prepare to win through regular practice and repetition of skills. Sir Alex said “If we were down – say 1-2 – with 15 minutes to go, I was ready to take more risks.”

7. Rely on the power of observation. My favourite one, and resonates in our coaching practice as well. Over time Ferguson switched from hands on coaching to observing. “What you pick up by watching is incredibly valuable.” 

8. Never stop adapting, Ferguson said “I believe you control change by accepting it … The most important thing is to not stagnate”.


Hindu Business Line: Games Executive Coaches Play




Good article, on the "games" some coaches play. And like the typical "game" in TA, the play is often unconscious and repetitive. It is critical for Coaches to recognise and work towards overcoming the same...

By C.Mahalingam


Executive coaching has caught up big time in India. There is a realisation that leadership talent is in short supply and that playing a ‘buy’ strategy has serious limitations. The focus, therefore, has shifted to a ‘build’ strategy where organisations are investing in setting up leadership academies for grooming a cadre of internal leadership bench. Senior leaders are called upon to invest their time at these academies sharing their “teachable points of view” to the high potential internal candidates so that they can be prepared for higher responsibilities. Leadership competency frameworks are leveraged to focus the development and assessment/development centres are used to do the assessment that forms the basis for fast-track development.
It is now fairly well-established that people development follows a certain pattern. No more than 10 per cent of development is attributed to class-room training. Almost 70 per cent of learning happens through mentoring on the job or other work-related assignments. This leaves us with 20 per cent of development that happens through relationship-based strategies, such as mentoring and coaching. It is in this context that coaching has assumed importance in organisations. A few organisations have the foresight to build coaching competence internally as they have clear expectations from their managers that they double up as coaches. Managers as coaches are very powerful but managers need systematic training and role-plays before they can shift gears between the roles of a manager and a coach.

THE TWO SIDES

Senior managers who are being groomed for higher responsibilities are given the benefit of external executive coaches, who reach a clear understanding with the sponsoring organisation and the executive to be coached on the developmental need and focus their coaching around the same. Usually coaching contracts for such purposes are for six months and sometimes longer. They key success factors for such intervention to work would be (a) clear understanding of the developmental need; and (b) if the need so identified is something that coaching can address. The overarching success factor is the right choice of the executive coach.
Over the last two years, we have seen a dozen or more executive coaching certification/credentialing organisations that have come up in India to fill the gap in helping create a competent cadre of trained executive coaches. Their efforts are laudable. However, a caveat would be in order at this juncture. Not only in India, but even globally, it is both interesting and worrying to stomach the fact that these institutes have rarely ever failed any candidate, who has enrolled for the program. In other words, anyone who enrols rolls out as successful! This leaves the onus completely on the corporate house to discern the “men from the boys.” Executive coaching is an expensive developmental intervention not just in terms of coaching fees, but the opportunity cost of six months of time being spent by the coachee.
The author, himself an executive coach, has been a keen observer of what is going on in this wonder world of executive coaching. Borne out of this observation and conversation with corporate houses is this discovery that if not done carefully, executive coaching can turn out to be frustrating for the coachee and an investment wasted for the sponsoring organisation. Coaching is a craft and not just an art and science. Great coaches are trained, get their unique value from rich experience and keep the coachee’s interest uppermost in their mind. While training provides them with useful frameworks and dos and don’ts of coaching, effective coaches bring value through their intelligent and practical approach to helping the coachee overcome their challenges.

GAMES PLAYED

Like with any growing profession, coaching has its challenges. The biggest challenge is when coaches play games without realising they do. This arises out of lack of strong fundamentals in coaching. With credentials as a license, they unleash these games on the unsuspecting coachees. I have captured many such interesting “games that coaches may play” and how organisations can guard against such possibilities by carefully screening potential coaches and by periodical review once a coach has been signed up.
Traffic cop: This game emanates from the psychological disposition of the coach that “I’m only trying to help.” The manifestation of this game is through generous suggestions to try this or try that from the coach drawing upon either their experience or extensive ‘Googling’ on the net. Professional coaching is anything but prescriptive, although an occasional tip in the form of “have you thought about this possibility” is permissible to break a situation of “impasse” or “no noticeable progress.”
Psychiatrick: Coaches are not psychiatric professionals. And there may be occasions when the coach recognises (hopefully) that the coachee may need professional help from qualified counsellors or psychiatrists. Ideally, this is recognised right at the beginning of the “getting to know” discussions and professional coaches stay out of a coaching contract once they recognise the need for a referral to a professional help. This game plays out when the coach assumes the role of a psychiatrist and begins to “treat the coachee” with his “techniques”. This causes more damage than good.
Cheery-blossom: This game is all about the coach believing and communicating to the coachee that everything is “bright and shiny.” A coaching contract has been entered into because the sponsor believes that the coachee needs help. Positive reinforcements are needed from time to time but based on progress made. Half-baked coaches take to this game just to create a sense of “feel-good” so that the coachee may report positive impact of coaching to the sponsor. Eventually, this leads to frustration for the coachee, who reports to the sponsor what the coach least wanted — that the coaching was a waste!
War hero: When coaching conversations drift from the a meaningful course and move into the coach reeling out how they solved the problem of Mr X or Ms Y and this happens meeting after meeting, this game is in full play. War stories are shared, which are of interest initially, but become a burden for the coachee eventually as the coachees are interested in their challenge being addressed and not stories of how coaches solved the world’s miseries!



Forbes: 5 Things To Look For When Choosing An Executive Coach

Forbes came up out recently with a timely article on 5 Things To Look For When Choosing An Executive Coach. For us, this has been a key question we have answered often, and well. Happy that we can tick off all five check-boxes!

by Erika Andersen







Over the past week, four different colleagues sent me a link to the same Stanford study about executive coaching – and two other people mentioned it to me as well.  Boiled down, the study shows that not many CEOs are being coached, and that most would like to have that opportunity.


It makes complete sense that people would have sent this to me: High-level executive coaching is one of our core offers at Proteus, and I’ve been a leadership coach for many years.  Interestingly, though, this has never happened before – people very occasionally send me links to articles or posts about coaching, but having a bunch of people mention/direct me to a particular resource: brand new.


I think this flurry of referring happened partly because this study is a particularly compelling and well-researched chunk of information, and the Stanford name adds cachet.  I also believe people sent it to me because they felt we could use it to market the value of coaching (which we can).


But I think it’s mostly because this study demonstrates that executive coaching has finally become legitimate.  Stanford is doing studies on it: CEOs want it. My colleagues find it exciting to have data showing that so many executives recognize the benefits of and want the opportunity to engage with a coach.


For those of us who are practitioners, and who believe in the (potential) efficacy of coaching, it’s an important and long-awaited moment. Just to provide some context, here’s my quick and dirty summary of the evolution of executive coaching in the US over the past 25 years:
  • Late 1980s: “A coach? What’s a coach?”
  • Early 1990s: “A coach? You mean, like…a corporate shrink?”
  • Mid-to-late 1990s: “A coach? Am I in trouble?”
  • Early 2000s: “A coach? Thanks – I think. ”
  • Mid-to-late 2000s: “A coach? Great!”
  • Now: “A coach? How long can I work with him/her – and do I get to choose the one I want?”
In other words, the good new is that most corporate executives now see coaching as an investment their organization is making in their success, and are even beginning to become informed consumers. The bad news is that, as with anything that gets popular, there are now many many people jumping on the coaching bandwagon, hanging out their shingle and offering themselves as executive coaches.


It’s really the wild wild West.  Anyone can claim to be a coach.  Just a few weeks ago, a client of mind told me that her HR had person recommended a ‘coach’ for one of their executives, someone who said he’d been doing “executive development” for over a decade.  I actually knew the guy: he had been an HR generalist – a good one – and had certainly counseled employees informally on many occasions.  A qualified executive coach?  I think not.


So, since there aren’t really any universally agreed-upon standards for executive coaching at this point, how do you know what “good” looks like?  If you’re fortunate enough to be offered the opportunity to work with a coach, here are 5 qualities to look for that will help to assure it’s a great investment..rather than a huge waste of time and money:


Clarity about the process: Really skilled coaches will be able to walk you through their process.  That process should include helping you define your core challenges, see where you’re starting from, and where you want to go.  It’s also essential that they can describe how you’ll learn new skills and behaviors, and how they’ll support you to transfer those skills back to work. If the coach is evasive, telling you that it’s “hard to quantify” or “up to you,” or if he or she is all enthusiasm and no practicality (“people love it!”  “It’s life-changing!”  It will galvanize you to be your best!”), it’s a good bet there will be no there there.


More than your point of view:  A good coach will tell you that his or her approach includes gathering feedback about you from those who work with you most and ‘patterning’ that feedback to draw a clear picture of how you’re seen by them, and then working with you to decide the areas where the two of you can have the greatest positive impact on how you’re viewed, your capabilities and your success.  If the coach doesn’t include feedback from those around you, that’s a problem; we all have blind spots, and it’s important for you and the coach to get a sense of how others see you and interact with you.


Real skills: If a coach, when asked how he or she will help you, says, “I’m a sounding board,” or “we can talk through the things that keep you up at night,” or “I’m the person who’s on your side,” odds are that you could have some interesting and/or moderately useful conversations with this person – but he or she won’t do much to help you grow. Great coaches will let you know that they can offer you useful new skills, awareness and knowledge, and help you integrate what you’ve learned into your day-to-day life.  They will be able to describe very specifically how they have worked with others to improve their leadership, management, and or business operating capabilities.


Confidentiality: This is huge.  I recently spoke with an executive who started working with a coach provided by her organization – and later found out that person was sharing everything that happened during her coaching sessions with her boss and the head of HR.  Good coaches make very clear agreements about confidentiality upfront with their coachees, and they keep those agreements.  If a coach is at all evasive or unclear about what’s being shared and what’s held in confidence, or if you find out that he or she has shared confidential information – please end the engagement.  Working with this person could materially damage your career. 


Actual success: Effective coaching enables clients to be better at their jobs, and to create the future they want for themselves.  Good coaches help their clients get clearer about how they can best contribute to their organization’s success, and then to achieve better results and become more highly promotable (if that’s what they want). If a coach can’t point to actual coachees who have improved in demonstrable ways as a result of being coached….why are you thinking about working with them?


Having an executive coach can be enormously helpful.  A good coach can help you see yourself more accurately; get clear about how to best play to your strengths; and grow in the highest leverage and most feasible ways.  He or she will be illuminating, strengthening and trustworthy.  Make the choice carefully and you’ll benefit for years to come.

For more information on our Executive Coaching practice, contact us! info@thepaintedsky.com

Saturday 23 March 2013

Forbes: The Thinker Interview: Marshall Goldsmith, by Neelima Mahajan, CKGSB









by Neelima Mahajan | CKGSB | Oct 22, 2012

Marshall Goldsmiths brand of leadership appeals to everyone from corporate CEOs to the lay man. What makes him so popular?

At first glance, Marshall Goldsmith, a bald, sprightly man with icy blue eyes, a fringe of white hair and ears that stick out, looks like a pixie. He darts around the room with the energy of a two-year-old. It’s fun to watch him walk – not an easy walk to imitate. When he teaches, he bounces from one end of the room to another, while his head stays stiffly in place and his arms straight. On most days, you’ll find him wearing a green Polo shirt and khaki pants, his trademark attire somewhat akin to Steve Jobs’ black turtleneck and blue jeans. His face breaks into an easy smile as he talks about his favorite subject, leadership and executive coaching. The words ‘no’, ‘but’ and ‘however’ do not exist in his vocabulary and if you make the grave mistake of mentioning any of these words in front of him, he’ll probably grab your hand mid-sentence and reprimand you for that.

When you meet him the first time, it’s hard to take him seriously–and easy to dismiss his teachings as cloying, and him as just another self-help guru. But when you look deeper, you’ll realize there is more to him than meets the eye. Goldsmith has the CEOs of many Fortune 500 companies eating out of his hands. People like Ford CEO Alan Mulally swear by him and pay through their nose to have some face time with him. He has worked as a consultant for companies like 3M, IBM, Philips and American Express. Over the years, Goldsmith, one of the world’s foremost executive coaches and a “philosophical and psychological Buddhist” by his own admission, has built a stellar reputation in the leadership firmament and rubs shoulders with the likes of superstar coaches like Ram Charan and Gary Ranker. He was ranked among the top five executive coaches according to Forbes magazine, and has consistently featured in the Thinkers 50, a ranking of business and management thought leaders.

More here: http://knowledge.ckgsb.edu.cn/2012/10/01/management/the-thinker-interview-marshall-goldsmith/

Forbes: The Key To Effective Coaching





Center for Creative Leadership

Candice Frankovelgia, 04.28.10, 12:37 PM ET

Business coaching has gone from fad to fundamental. Leaders and organizations have come to understand how valuable it can be, and they're adding "the ability to coach and develop others" to the ever-growing list of skills they require in all their managers. In theory, this means more employee development, more efficiently conducted. But in reality, few managers know how to make coaching work.

According to the 2010 Executive Coaching Survey, conducted by the Conference Board, 63% of organizations use some form of internal coaching, and half of the rest plan to. Yet coaching is a small part of the job description for most managers. Nearly half spend less than 10% of their time coaching others.

With such limited time devoted to coaching, organizations need to be sure their managers know how to do it right. To improve the quality and impact of your coaching efforts, start by giving your individual managers tangible information about how to coach their direct reports. Typically, managers meet their coaching obligations by giving reviews, holding occasional meetings and offering advice. For coaching to be effective, they need to understand why they are coaching and what specific actions they need to take.

Coaching focuses on helping another person learn in ways that let him or her keep growing afterward. It is based on asking rather than telling, on provoking thought rather than giving directions and on holding a person accountable for his or her goals.

Broadly speaking, the purpose is to increase effectiveness, broaden thinking, identify strengths and development needs and set and achieve challenging goals. Research from the Center for Creative Leadership has boiled down the skills managers need to coach others into five categories:

1) Building the relationship. It's easier to learn from someone you trust. Coaches must effectively establish boundaries and build trust by being clear about the learning and development objectives they set, showing good judgment, being patient and following through on any promises and agreements they make.

2) Providing assessment. Where are you now and where do you want to go? Helping others to gain self-awareness and insight is a key job for a coach. You provide timely feedback and help clarify the behaviors that an employee would like to change. Assessment often focuses on gaps or inconsistencies, on current performance vs. desired performance, words vs. actions and intention vs. impact.

3) Challenging thinking and assumptions. Thinking about thinking is an important part of the coaching process. Coaches ask open-ended questions, push for alternative solutions to problems and encourage reasonable risk-taking.

4) Supporting and encouraging. As partners in learning, coaches listen carefully, are open to the perspectives of others and allow employees to vent emotions without judgment. They encourage employees to make progress toward their goals, and they recognize their successes.

5) Driving results. What can you show for it? Effective coaching is about achieving goals. The coach helps the employee set meaningful ones and identify specific behaviors or steps for meeting them. The coach helps to clarify milestones or measures of success and holds the employee accountable for them.

You should seed your organization with coaching role models. All managers need some guidance on the whys and hows of coaching, but most organizations can't afford to train them on a large scale, so the least you can do is make an effort to create a culture of coaching. The key is to create a pool of manager-coaches who can be role models, supporters and sustainers of a coaching mindset.

When you select the right people and invest in their development and position them as coaching advocates, you plant the seeds for expanding coaching well beyond the individual manager-direct report relationship. Your role models demonstrate effective coaching both formally and informally, and they help motivate others to use and improve their own coaching capabilities.

Always link the purpose and results of coaching to the business. Managers have to know the business case for coaching and developing others if they're to value it and use it effectively. Where is the business headed? What leadership skills are needed to get us there? How should coaches work with direct reports to provide the feedback, information and experiences they need to build those needed skills? Set strategic coaching goals, tactics and measures for the organization as well as including coaching as an individual metric.

Finally, give it time. It's not surprising that managers feel they don't have enough time for coaching. Even if you make learning and coaching explicit priorities, time is tight for everyone. But as your coaching processes and goals become more consistent and more highly valued, in-house coaching will take root. Your managers will have a new way to develop and motivate their direct reports. Individuals and groups will strive to build new skills and achieve goals. And your business will be on track to a more efficient, comprehensive system of developing people.

Candice Frankovelgia is the coaching portfolio manager for the Center for Creative Leadership.

Forbes: Executive Coaching From Prince Hal

By Nigel Roberts, London Correspondent, INSEAD Knowledge
3/12/2013


When Shakespeare was writing there were no corporations, no managers and certainly no courses in leadership.  Jung and Freud hadn’t been born and the academic disciplines of organisational change and employee engagement were not on the curriculum of the few ancient universities that existed in the 16th century. Yet the Bard managed to capture some universal truths about human nature and the complex way that individuals relate to each other which can provide useful lessons for today’s corporate leaders.

Increasing numbers of companies are using the plays of Shakespeare as templates for change. The dilemmas of ancient Kings and Princes provide a fresh perspective on the challenges facing CEOs in the 21st century.  Henry V is a case study in leadership and how to create loyalty. The Tempest a template on how to manage change without destroying the very thing you are trying to create. Julius Caesar an object lesson in how not to build a team.

All the challenges faced by today’s executive were pre-empted and laid bare by Shakespeare many centuries ago. When Henry V delivers his famous Crispin Crispianus speech on the eve of the battle of Agincourt, he is faced with a dilemma familiar to many managers: how to persuade a recalcitrant workforce of foot soldiers and untrustworthy middle managers (his noble lords) to go into battle with the French competition and put their lives (jobs) on the line.
That was the challenge facing a U.S.-based client who had a serious problem with its European operation. Poor performance and a need to cut costs meant that they dispatched the global IT director to restructure the division. The director had prepared a rational justification for the closure which made perfect sense in the Midwest of the U.S. but was likely to be explosive in Europe.
Hal’s Leadership Lessons
His prepared text for a company meeting shared many similarities with George W. Bush’s rhetoric in the ‘Axis of Evil’ speech. Here was a midwestern cowboy shooting from the hip and telling those pesky Europeans to get off the ranch. That might play well in the Midwest but would fail to impress in Europe.
Instead of modelling himself on George W. we reframed and rewrote his address to his troops by looking at Henry V’s call to action before the battle of Agincourt. We made him realise, that like Hal, he faced an almost impossible task. Trying to persuade his men to sacrifice themselves for the greater good of the company required a fundamental change to their mindset. Many of Hal’s soldiers faced certain death. Some of his workforce faced certain redundancy. How do you sell that? Certainly not by shooting from the hip and telling them they had no choice. He had to persuade not just order them to do what he wanted.
We deconstructed Hal’s Crispin Crispianus speech, examined the clever rhetorical devices that appealed to people’s emotions, and then reconstructed a presentation that pushed all the right emotional buttons with the audience. By crafting a call to action that focused on the positives rather than the negatives and appealed to a higher calling than individual self-interest, he managed to persuade them to accept the restructuring. A similar process was adopted in developing the messaging and strategy for negotiations with a pugnacious Works Council. The end result was a seamless restructuring with no sabotage or industrial action. He won a battle that he had looked like losing.
The reason why exploring the characters created by Shakespeare can help 21st century corporate managers perform better is partly because it gives them a fresh perspective on their challenges which helps them to reframe their response to events. But the other reason is that it provides a narrative that helps to communicate more effectively with their stakeholders. Don’t just transmit information and hope it is received and understood – weave that information into a story and it is more likely to persuade people to behave the way you want them to.
Telling Tales
I would argue that most companies fail to communicate effectively because they don’t tell their story effectively. They present information but fail to have a meaningful conversation.  As another playwright George Bernard Shaw said, “The problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place.”
Most companies generate a huge volume of internal and external communication with no way of knowing whether it has been received and understood. One client told me: “We’re very good at cascading information down through the company but as a management team we’ve never acquired the habit of listening. Listening and watching the lessons of Shakespeare has made me a better a better story teller and manager.”
Storytelling is the heart of communication. From the cave painters through Greek myth to the fiction factory of Hollywood, people have sought to make sense of their world by developing a compelling narrative. This serves not just to record where they have been but also to help work out where they want to go.
No executive or organisation can afford to ignore the power of storytelling. No other narrative structure can move hearts and minds in the way that a well crafted story can. Whether you are making a corporate presentation, holding a press conference, communicating strategy or leading your company in a competitive environment, stories help you engage your audience.
Stories are part of our collective unconscious.  Jung argues that, in addition to our personal unconscious (a unique personalised psychic dumping ground for all our experiences, anxieties, neuroses and repressed thoughts) we all also share the same template in the form of archetypes, which help us understand and explain the world in which we live. The collective unconscious is rather like the operating system on our computer and it is by exploring those archetypes in the plays of Shakespeare, that corporate leaders can enhance their rational and analytical core competencies.
But it’s not just individual executives who can benefit from lessons by the Bard. Companies have souls and personalities too which are made up of rational conscious processes and subconscious archetypal cultural energy. Therefore Shakespeare can be used to improve the performance of teams.
It is a sad truth of corporate life that most mergers fail to deliver shareholder value. There is much talk of cost synergies, but these often fail to materialise because cultural differences between the different personalities of the merging organisations clash and subvert the process.
Rough Magic
The Tempest is a good model to help reframe an organisation’s approach to mergers and cultural change and also to build more efficient teams.  As a business case study it operates on many different levels and Shakespeare provides Jungian insights into political and organisational dynamics.  Prospero uses his “rough magic” (soft leadership skills) to challenge and subvert his estranged brother and his court who wash up on the shores of his “island of mystery” (newly merged organisation).You can chose your friends but you are stuck with family in the same way that many executives are stuck with an uncooperative management team post-merger.
The sheer volume of unfocussed and external communication in the corporate world calls to mind another Shakespearean quote. “It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” Explore the characters and stories of Shakespeare and I guarantee that your communication will mean something and give you “….a muse of fire that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention”. Now that’s something you won’t find on an email or PowerPoint presentation.

Thursday 7 February 2013

S + B: Building the Skills of Insight

Recently read an excellent piece on 'reading conversations' for clues. Invaluable for leaders, effective for intuitive leadership, these are great insights for Coaches as well, to make more meaningful dialogues.






To eminent systems therapist David Kantor, learning to recognize the hidden patterns in conversation is the first step toward more effective executive leadership.

by Art Kleiner
Every once in a while, you meet someone who really knows how to “read a room.” This is the individual, usually a seasoned executive leader, who can walk into a tense meeting and sense why two would-be collaborators are butting heads, why a third manager hardly speaks, and why a fourth seems to be protecting some unspoken priority. Then, with a few words, the room-reader can defuse the problem, get people back on track, and move the team to a new level of productivity. When this type of work is done with an executive team, it can have invaluable impact, rippling out to the rest of the organization. At all levels, the ability to read a room and act accordingly is considered a rare and special gift, innate and not teachable. Many people who have this gift admit that they don’t know how to teach it to others.
But one man has built his career around trying to help people track their conversational interactions, understand the hidden dynamics in them, and learn how to intervene effectively. David Kantor was an innovative family therapist based in Cambridge, Mass., when, in the 1980s, he began meeting regularly with a group of noted organizational thinkers at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Kantor had the idea that the patterns he had seen in families—the recurring ways that people became stuck in groups, or fell into particular types of emotional turbulence when faced with a grave or urgent problem—might also apply to executive teams in businesses and other organizations.
Kantor began explicitly studying and coaching senior leaders, taking extensive notes on every interaction, trying to discover the combination of factors, as varied as an individual’s emotional and family history and the dynamics in the organization around him or her, that would lead some people to crack under pressure and others to thrive. Over the years, in part through working with such organizational learning experts as Peter Senge, Edgar Schein, and Chris Argyris, he’s become an influential theoretician of individual and group behavior. (He is currently launching a series of empirical studies on measuring and changing leadership behavior with the Massachusetts School of Professional Psychology.)
His book, Reading the Room: Group Dynamics for Coaches and Leaders (Jossey-Bass, 2012), assembles 40-plus years of organizational research and practice into a guide to conversational cues and meanings, with particular relevance for management interactions and executive teams. Kantor makes the case that being attuned to the signals of a conversational system—an approach he calls “structural dynamics”—is the first step toward becoming a far more prescient and effective leader. He met with strategy+business at his Cambridge office to explain the way it works.
S+B: You suggest, in your book, that most leaders need a better model of human systems. Why is that?

KANTOR: In any situation, unseen, unspoken connections among people influence everything that happens. Leaders are typically not aware of these connections, and they can’t be, unless the right conceptual lens is available. The model I’ve developed over the years is a schema for understanding how people talk while they are making decisions together. It’s actually two models—one describing everyday situations, and one for high-stakes situations like crises and conflicts. People behave differently under extreme conditions; there are breakdowns in communications, and things can move forward only if people can overcome those breakdowns. The decisions you make under that pressure are what define you as a leader.

The model is based on work I’ve done with groups—first with families, couples, and teenagers, and then with organizational teams and companies. I’ve been able to observe and track enough conversations in enough contexts that I think I have discovered a universal theory of the structure of communication. The theory suggests that communication can be deliberate; that leaders can measure and understand their impact (and everyone else’s impact) in any context where people make decisions. They can also design their own conversations to generate success or failure.
S+B: What do you mean by designing a conversation?

KANTOR: Every conversation is made up of individual acts of speech: statements and questions. The speech act is my basic unit of analysis. Every speech act can be categorized as having one of four types of action (being a mover, opposer, follower, or bystander); one of three types of content (power, meaning, or affect); and one of three types of paradigms, or rules for establishing paradigmatic legitimacy (open, closed, or random). These categories combine into 36 different categories of speech acts: the building blocks of human interaction. They can be deliberately sequenced to set the direction of a conversation. Intervening with the right speech act at the right moment can catalyze a shift in thinking or action for everyone in the room.
I’ve worked with a number of organizational experts on this, and they’ve put the model under a lot of scrutiny during the past few years. There’s a basic skepticism, especially in the fields of economics and psychology, as to whether behavioral interventions actually produce results. This model allows us to test that question. You can train a team—let’s say a business executive and a group of direct reports—to explicitly shape their language according to this model. They can experiment with speech acts and see whether they produce higher performance or a change in the right direction.
S+B: What’s the difference between, say, a mover, an opposer, and a bystander?

KANTOR: First of all, they’re not categories of people. Although everyone has speech acts that they use more frequently than others, nobody is completely a mover, opposer, bystander, or follower. These are descriptions of vocal actions. Change your vocal action, and you can change how people perceive you. Change what people perceive, and you’ll change how they respond with their own vocal acts.
Let’s start with a single speech act: a statement you make. There are four basic roles you can play in a conversation. (I also call them action stances.) You canmove: Start something new, like saying, “We need to spend less time in these meetings.” You can follow someone else’s move, by agreeing with it: “Yes, I’ve been concerned about the same thing.” You can oppose the move, raising objections or trying to stop it: “I don’t think that’s right. We need time to cover every topic on the agenda.” And then you can step back from the situation andstand by (or as I call it, “bystand”), reflecting on the actions being made, without agreeing or disagreeing: “Ian wants shorter meetings, Ralph wants to keep them the same length. What does everybody else think?”
A gifted communicator knows how to sequence these into compound actions. So if you’re dealing with fierce opposers, you don’t start off by opposing them. You bystand first. “I see how concerned you are about this decision, and it’s having an effect on the group.” Then you follow. “I think you have reason to be concerned.” Only then do you move. “It seems to me that we’ve got to change our decision and address your concerns, but we can’t lose the momentum of the original plan either.” Three different actions: bystand, follow, move.
The second dimension is called the communication domain; I also sometimes refer to it as the language people speak. Each domain is oriented toward a purpose, and you can see that purpose in the content of the speech act. Some acts of speech are in the affect domain; they involve words of feeling, seeking an increase in connection and intimacy. “This decision seems pretty heartless. I wonder how people will feel about it.”
Other speech acts are in the power domain, using words about getting things done, and their purpose is increasing competence and efficacy. “Who’s going to make sure that there’s follow-through here?”
Finally, there is the meaning domain: words about truth and reasoning, and content involving analytics and philosophy, with the goal of a higher understanding. “It is critical that the results reflect our standards for accuracy.”
S+B: And when one person talks in power while the other’s in affect, they can misread each other’s intentions.

KANTOR: That’s one of the most common reasons for breakdowns in communication. People also have preferences for specific communication domains; they do not honor ways of speaking other than their own, and this increases the likelihood that they’re going to speak at cross-purposes.
A third dimension is the paradigm about the rule of order: People have different views of the best way that human conduct should be regulated. All the governance structures in the world can be boiled down to three types. The opensystem is consensual and unregulated until it hits a point of action, and then an authority, chosen by the group, decides. A representative democracy is an open system. In the closed system, authority rests with position—the closer you are to the top of the hierarchy, the more authority you have. This system is highly regulated; a military regiment, for example, is a closed system. In a randomsystem, authority remains with those who take and use it; the group continues to expand, experiment, and move. Jazz bands are random systems, and so are most teams of innovators in an R&D department.
For most people, one of these three systems feels intuitively right. When a conversation doesn’t flow in the way they favor, they feel uncomfortable. I first saw that in my work with families—people intuitively sought out an open, closed, or random family—but I didn’t really grasp the difference until I learned about feedback mechanisms in systems theory. Closed systems rely on negative, or balancing, feedback; when something new happens, they instinctively move to regulate it and tamp it down. Random systems work through positive feedback; they reinforce novelty and make it stronger. Open systems combine the two forms of feedback; they are positive until they reach some point of dysfunction. Then the leader steps in….
S+B: “Let’s take a vote.”

KANTOR: Or, “We have to reach consensus.” Everybody must have a voice in the open system, even if it’s disruptive, but then it comes to a decision, a vote, a consensus. It shifts from a positive to a negative feedback loop.
S+B: How would I, as a leader, use all this to design a speech act?

KANTOR: Everything you say can be framed as a combination of these elements. Suppose you’re in a cold room. You could say, “Close that window now.” That’s a closed-system move in power. You could change it to an open-system statement by saying, “It occurs to me that people are wrapping their scarves around their necks. Will somebody near the window step over there and close it?” It is still in power, but now you’re open. You’re giving people a choice; you’re looking for a volunteer. You could also switch it into affect, by saying, “It would be so much nicer if the room were warmer, and people felt more comfortable.” And you could move that into bystanding by saying, “I notice that people feel uncomfortable, but nobody seems to feel like closing the window.”
The goal of structural dynamics is to increase communicative competency, which means every member of the team becomes capable of reading the room. They know which interventions will improve the conversations. They ideally have full knowledge of the limits of their own repertoire so that when a speech action is called for, if they can’t do it themselves, they can call on someone else who is capable of the act.
S+B: Is there a person alive who can speak eloquently in all 36 combinations?

KANTOR: I think so. And, by the way, this is the road to collective intelligence. The theory says that when a team is capable of communicative competency, there is an exponential leap to effectiveness. By becoming more competent, the team accelerates its ability to define new outcomes, new products, and so on. It’s a bit like improvisational theater. In fact, when I first began putting this theory together, I read a lot about how actors study their craft, and how they are taught to improvise. The theater is fascinating, but it’s not effective by itself as a model for intervention, because it’s locked in to a very small group of activities.
S+B: In your book, you also describe a fourth dimension—the heroic modes, which come out only when there’s a crisis.

KANTOR: A perceived crisis. When the stakes are raised through stress or difficulty, people shift into more urgent, less thoughtful forms of conversation. Someone prone to affect shifts to being an advocate—from “I feel” to “we should,” arguing for passion’s sake. A power-oriented person becomes like a prosecutor: from “let’s do” to “you must do,” forcing others to perform. And a meaning-oriented person becomes an adjudicator: from “I think” to “I decide,” imposing a framework of logic.
If the stakes get raised even higher, these stances become even more pronounced; they turn into what I call “heroic modes.” The advocate is now a protector, doing whatever must be done to shield others from harm. The power-oriented prosecutor becomes a fixer, out to conquer all enemies and win at all costs. And the adjudicator retreats into being a survivor, intent only on manifesting the cause and getting through all the oppression and aggression.
Everyone unconsciously favors one of these heroic modes. They’re all morally neutral; none is more virtuous or vicious than the others. But they lead people, especially leaders, in directions that are counterproductive. At the start of a crisis, people enter the heroic modes in mild form, but they can gradually become more extreme: Fixers become aggressive, protectors feel wronged, survivors withdraw and endure. When left unchecked, they lead to the same basic attitude: The ends justify the means. And then the crisis accelerates. The fixers discover they can’t win, or can’t solve every problem; the survivors discover they can’t really withdraw; and the protectors find they can’t keep everyone from getting hurt. So they start to blame one another.
General George Patton was a classic fixer—and a hero until after World War II. Then all the stories about his vicious side emerged, about him slapping soldiers and so on.
S+B: What’s your advice for the leader—not the professional intervenor, but the person actually leading a group in a company?

KANTOR: There’s always a shadow side to human behavior. These shadows come from people’s childhood stories—from ways in which they weren’t loved. Greed is one kind of shadow, especially when it involves lack of care about anyone else. The crisis is often a manifestation of these shadows, and the enterprise and the industry will be threatened if the shadows are not contained. At that moment, a hero is called for: a leader who can find a way to transcend his or her own shadows, and also transcend the shadow-driven behavior of the systems around him or her.
Leaders are a special category, because what they do and say and the decisions they make affect many others. If shadow behavior is evident, and the leader is not willing to acknowledge it and take responsibility for it, he or she is a dangerous leader. He or she does not have control over the shadow side of the system.
On the other hand, if a leader becomes aware and conscious, in the moment, he or she can direct the system away from its shadow side, moving it in a far more powerful, and more beneficial, direction.
So, for example, a business team hits a crisis point, and the key members of the team are driving one another crazy. They are polar opposites. One is a fixer: “We have to move fast and cut 30 percent, with no nonsense about the damage to morale.” The other is a protector: “My God, do you really believe that? We’ll lose our best people, and the larger culture is going to suffer.” And then the survivor chimes in: “I’m going to keep our morale up, even if I have to do it all myself. I’ll work twice as hard, 24 hours a day. And we’ll get it back.”
If the leader of the team can read these moves in a high-stakes situation, he or she knows how to be a competent bystander. “If we listen to ourselves,” the leader might begin, “It’s clear we all want the same thing, but we’re going after it from different directions. Let’s focus on what we want to have come out of this mess.”
Given enough skill and experience at reading the room, a leader can make some moves that bridge the gap—that don’t just assuage the intuitive needs of the heroic modes of the individuals involved, but that make strategic sense. An individual who can do that is obviously a superior leader. 

AUTHOR PROFILE:

  • Art Kleiner is editor-in-chief of strategy+business.

Wednesday 30 January 2013

Leverage Leadership Strengths and Mitigate Weaknesses


A good post from Working Resources, an Executive Coaching firm in the San Francisco Bay Area.

 Maynard Brusman
30th January 2013


Leadership Strengths and Weaknesses 


To become a successful philosopher king, it is better to start as the king than as the philosopher. -- Nassim Taleb in "Antifragile" 

I recently spoke with the VP of Talent Management of a company regarding providing executive coaching for the company CEO. She asked some very pertinent questions to determine fit. She specifically wanted to know how I worked with different personality styles, and my methods for initiating behavioral change. 

The VP of Talent Management and I spoke about my approach to coaching, and my belief that possessing a psychological understanding of human behavior and business acumen are important competencies for coaching executives. We also spoke of the need for her organization to create a strengths-based culture where innovation flourishes. 

The VP of Talent Management is interested in partnering with me in helping the CEO to become a build on his strengths and mitigate perceived weaknesses by the Board. We further discussed how company executives can benefit by working with a seasoned executive coach. 

I believe leaders are successful by leveraging strengths, and mitigating weaknesses: by taking prudent risk in the hope of significant reward; and by realizing, as Churchill did, that success is never final and failure rarely fatal—it’s courage that counts. 

I am a strong advocate of helping my executive coaching clients leverage their strengths. I also strongly support the importance of individuals mitigating their weaknesses. Frequently, I stress how much of our success in life comes from utilizing our strengths -- your intellectual strength and determination, for example, may have enabled you to complete your college degree or another significant achievement. However, challenges we face in our future may involve you doing things that are difficult for you -- especially if one's goal involves advancing to a higher level of leadership. 

I'm a fan of strengths assessments such as the Values in Action Inventory of Strengths or the Gallup StrengthsFinder 2.0. However, there is nothing in those two assessments that prompts an individual to consider if they may be using a strength too much, whereas the Leadership Versatility Index (Kaplan Devries) also measures "overused strengths". 

McCall and Lombardo's interview studies conducted at the Center for Creative Leadership of derailed executives led them to them introduce the phrase, "strengths can become weaknesses". The Leadership Versatility Index gives leaders feedback on if they are doing behaviors "too little", the "right amount", or "too much". 

In a study of 421 upper-level managers, Kaiser and Kaplan found that by comparing self-report and 360 degree feedback the least effective managers overrated their effectiveness, and the most effective managers underrated their effectiveness. In fact, the high performing managers often did not have a good grasp of what their strengths are. This lack of strength awareness can cause them to overuse certain strengths in challenging situations because they come naturally to them. Of course this also is an argument to use strengths assessments to increase self-awareness. 

Is there a cost to overusing a particular strength? It seems obvious that to underutilize a strength, when that strength is needed, will lead to lower performance. It is just as true that to use a particular strength more than the ideal amount needed for the situation is equally harmful. 

Kaiser and Kaplan point out that you can have a manager that is a forceful leader -- who can take charge and provide clear direction. This leadership quality is often needed, especially with a new employee or in a crisis. However managers who are too forceful and too tough make employees feel badly about their work, and at the same time a leader who spends too much time including everyone in a decision and is too concerned about people's feelings for the situation, will get lower business results. 

The solution is to be versatile -- to display the "right" amount of their strengths for the situation at hand. The researchers describe being high in versatility as being a master of opposites. For example, managers or leaders can be evaluated for versatility by looking at pairs of leadership attributes such as Forceful and Enabling leadership by calculating how close their ratings are to the "right amount" on both dimensions. 

The bottom line is we need to balance focusing on strengths with a realistic assessment of where and how we may be overusing our strengths. Discovering your true strengths is the path towards improvement and success. When you pay too much attention to your deficits and try to overcome them, you are placing emphasis on becoming what you are not. You wind up living a second-rate version of someone else’s life rather than a world-class version of your own. 

Are you working in a company where executive coaches provide leadership development to grow emotionally intelligent leaders? Does your organization provide strength-based executive coaching for leaders? Sustainable leaders tap into their emotional intelligence and social intelligence skills to create a more compelling future. 

One of the most powerful questions you can ask yourself is “Do I build on my leadership strengths and mitigate weaknesses?” Emotionally intelligent and socially intelligent organizations provide executive coaching as part of their leadership development programs. 

Working with a seasoned executive coach and leadership consultant trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-I, CPI 260 and Denison Culture Survey can help leaders develop their strengths. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become fully engaged with the vision, mission and strategy of your company. 

About Dr. Maynard Brusman 

Dr. Maynard Brusman is a consulting psychologist, executive coach and trusted advisor to senior leadership teams. He is the president of Working Resources, a leadership consulting and executive coaching firm. We specialize in helping San Francisco Bay Area companies and law firms assess, select, coach, and retain emotionally intelligent leaders. Maynard is a highly sought-after speaker and workshop leader. He facilitates leadership retreats in Northern California and Costa Rica. The Society for Advancement of Consulting (SAC) awarded Dr. Maynard Brusman "Board Approved" designations in the specialties of Executive Coaching and Leadership Development.