Five Tips for Coaching Top Performers

 

Executive coaching helps effective managers become even stronger. The same can be said of Olympic coaches and the athletes they coach.

A recent article in the Harvard Business Review looked at various coaching strategies and strengths that have helped coaches produce winning athletes in intense situations. Thinking of employees as athletes, five keys to success are identified as:

1.    Help your “athletes” understand and learn to use their talents and skills in the work environment. Allow them to be creative. When creativity is allowed, employees feel free to use their interest and skills to develop a better product. Take the time to build in space for creative uses of skills into different projects.

2.    Build a strong, transparent relationship with your mentee, to establish an open line of communication with them. Honesty is key. Olympic athletes have usually had the same coach since they were youngsters; even if they adopt other coaches along the way, their original mentor and trainer is always there to support them on game-day.

3.    For athletes, training is the most crucial part. They must be up to date on the latest rules, techniques and competitor training habits and performances. The workplace is similar. Push your employees to investigate new technologies, and encourage attendance at training sessions, industry-relevant conferences and membership organizations.

4.    Athletes receive different types of support including financial, motivational, nutritional, and more. Help steer your employees in the right direction and make it easier for them to “win.” Steering may look like helping your employees find grants for departmental team-building activities or building relationships with cross-organizational teams. Steering may also look like hiring effective managers who will appoint appropriate project leaders.

5.    I found the 5th point to be the most compelling: managing the environment for your employees. You know your organization and industry inside and out so give your employees the perspective needed to help them create innovative solutions they can carry with them to future leadership positions.

Have you seen this parallel between athletic coaches and workplace leadership? How did it impact your team and organization?

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

 

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Four Resources to Help Employees Manage Change

 

I recently had the honor and privilege to be interviewed by different publications about changing work dynamics, managing difficult employees and the future of our workforce. The new era of workforce management is here; I hope our interview discussions help you plan for the future in these times of change.

When I spoke to Bindu Nair, editor at The Smart Manager, we discussed various ways to manage unmanageable people and situations.

Supported by my years of experience as a front line coach and consultant, we outlined how to help those unmanageable employees who torment other employees. The methodology we recommend consists of five steps: Commit or quit; Communicate; Clarify goals and roles; Coach; and Create accountability. How can you use this methodology? First, the manager needs to decide to retain this unmanageable employee or not. Ultimately, it’s not only about making that employee accountable; it’s also about the manager’s commitment to the employee’s success. Next, the employee should be clear on what goals she is expected to achieve. You can read more about the steps here.

Successful organizations not only manage employees; they also create and manage successful teams. During another discussion with The Uncommon League, we mused about preparing individuals and teams for employee training. What tips did we discuss? First, explain the training context to increase the chances of employees attending that training. Second, build organizational interest in what they will learn, to attract other employees who want to learn these skills as well. You can learn more tips here.

Successful organizations are also nimble and adapt to change, which is important because the way people are choosing to work has changed. Discussing the trends that are shaping the future workforce with Brown Wallace on The Bridge Revisited, we shared our thoughts about the personality traits and key differences of each generation in the workforce. The discussion also included the impact of women starting their own businesses, the importance of workplace diversity and the increasing trend of freelancing. If leaders develop a strategy without knowing about these workforce trends, they will be shooting into the dark.

Finally, at the Women’s Foodservice Forum we exchanged views on how freelancers and contract workers can provide fresh perspectives and help organizations move toward success. To effectively leverage their talents and capabilities, leaders must integrate freelancers in the workplace culture, articulate clear expectations, touch base regularly, and recognize results.

I’d love to hear how you are managing workforce challenges. What works for you and what doesn’t? What results have you seen? Let’s share experiences.

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

 

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Five Tools to Successfully Work from Home

Coronavirus is causing organizations to shift toward telework. Though telework is not new, employees now are working remotely more often, which changes team dynamics. There are tools available that can help organizations streamline remote employee management, enhance professional skills and collaborate successfully.

Some of the most popular tools for remote teams are:

1. Project management: Asana
2. Video conferencing: Skype and Zoom
3. Team communication: Slack
4. Cloud storage and file sharing: Dropbox

Let’s learn more about each tool, to help you better identify the best one for your team.

Project Management: Asana

Skype is a popular voice communication service. People can share instant messages, hold video calls and share screens, as well as call Skype numbers and landline/mobile numbers.

Asana’s key features include project management, task management and file sharing. Asana has numerous features to manage complex projects, so build in time to master the learning curve and eventually manage projects more efficiently.

Want to learn about similar tools?  Check out Trello, Proofhub, ProjectManager.com and Workzone.

Video Conferencing: Skype

Asana is an online management tool that helps teams stay focused on daily tasks, goals and projects. It’s known for its simple functionality, clean design and elegant usability.

This tool offers cross-platform support and is an excellent instant messaging tool, which is important for document collaboration.

Some of the alternatives for Skype include WhatsApp, Telegram and Viber.

Video Conferencing: Zoom

Zoom is a video communication tool. Widely used for virtual meetings, webinars and virtual conferences, it’s a great way of connecting via video when team members and clients are unable to meet in person.

The tool’s key features include video meetings, voice calls, hosted webinars, messaging and file sharing. Some users have had issues with unpredictable video quality so check your bandwidth before you begin working.

Some excellent alternates to Zoom include GoToMeeting, Webex and Adobe Connect.

Team Communication: Slack

Slack is a popular communication tool that brings remote teams together by having all communication in one place. It can also be used for instant messaging and collaboration.

The key features include instant messaging, file sharing, voice and video calls, as well as screen sharing. Some people find Slack hard to search so check it out for yourself.

A few of the alternatives for Slack include Microsoft Teams, Rocket Chat and Flock.

Cloud Storage and File Sharing: Dropbox

Dropbox, popularly known for online file sharing and storage, helps teams working remotely and saves time tracking down files. It is a modern workspace where all files can be stored together in one place and remote workers can easily sync and share documents.

In general, Dropbox is better for casual files; you may not want to store sensitive files here. Some of the alternatives for Dropbox include Google Drive, OneDrive and Box.com.

Technology helps us keep up with the changing times, where telecommuting and remote work is more of a need and requirement. These collaboration tools make it easier to achieve business goals by providing platforms to work more efficiently, regardless of where the employees are located. Once you pick your tool, you may want some tips on how to best present yourself on video. Check out this blog, from our speaker coach, Jezra Kaye.

Want to develop your remote-based employees, but don’t know how? We can help! We’ve designed and delivered interactive webinars for over a decade on a range of management and leadership topics.

I’d love to hear from you. How are you coping in these stressful times? What tools are you working with and what has been your experience?

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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What The Heck Is Executive Coaching

“What the heck is executive coaching?” I get asked that question many times a day.

I admit that coaching is a nebulous term. When I say that I’m a certified coach, people ask if I coach sports teams. When I say that I actually coach work teams, people look surprised. ‘Why would a work team need coaching?’ they ask. Because work teams are just like sports teams:

• They are made up of different people who try to reach a team goal together.
• Each person on the team has two types of goals in mind: individual goals and team goals.
• Every team member has his/her own communication style, which may or may not work well with the others on the team.
• Although there is one official leader (the coach or captain), there are usually other team members who carry as much weight, if not more weight, than the official leader.

Similar to a sports team, thriving work teams need an ‘outsider’ to coach them to success, whether the whole team or just some of the team leaders. That’s what CHCI does. We coach teams and leaders to get from Point A to Point B, in the most effective way possible.

During the years, many people have asked for a practical book on coaching, so they can bring coaching skills to their own teams. That’s how Anne Loehr’s book, “A Manager’s Guide to Coaching” was created. Here is an excellent write up about one of the book topics: How to create effective coaching questions. Enjoy!

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

Conflict in the Workplace? 7 Ways to Resolve It

Crucial conversation sounds like a serious life or death conversation. It’s not. Instead, it’s a concept pioneered by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler that describes a conversation between two or more people where the stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong.
We tend to avoid crucial conversations at work. However, it’s important to learn how to handle them productively. There are seven steps to creating a successful crucial conversation:

1. Start with the heart
2. Master your story
3. Learn to look
4. Make it safe
5. State your path
6. Explore the other’s path
7. Move to action

1. Start with the heart: During the crucial conversation, start with the heart. Why are you having this conversation? Because you’re angry and want to prove your point? Or because you want to improve your working relationship? Focus on healthy goals like learning, finding the truth, and strengthening relationships.

2. Master your story:When managing crucial conversations, stick to concrete facts and avoid judgements about those facts. Instead of saying, “You’re late, again.”, try saying “This is the 3^rd time you’ve been late in 3 weeks. What’s causing these delays?”

3. Learn to look:Look at your role in the situation before accusing the other person. How have you contributed to the problem and how can you improve it?

4. Make it safe:While engaging in crucial conversations, create safety which includes being fully present without distractions and avoiding dangerous phrases, such as “You always do this.” or “You never do that”.

5. State your path:Create a culture where asking for help is encouraged. State how you’d like the issue to be resolved and ask for help in finding that solution.

6. Explore the other’s path:Now it’s time to listen and hear what the other person wants. Looking at the other person’s perspective calms the conversation and helps move the discussion in the right direction.

7. Move to action:Moving to action plays a significant role in crucial conversation. What action steps have you both agreed to and how will you ensure those steps take root?

With practice, a crucial conversation can be simple and bring a positive outcome. Keep these three tips in mind:

1. Adjust your mindset

Gearing up for a crucial conversation can create anxiety. Instead of getting nervous, try to adjust your mindset to be more positive. A crucial conversation goes best when you think of it as a normal conversation in a normal day.
These types of conversations could trigger strained working relationships within the organization. To avoid the painful effect, be compassionate with yourself and the other person. No one is perfect so be gracious with those around you.

2. Listen

Listening actively before responding to the other person can often give you enough time to choose the right words. By doing so, you can address the right issues leading to fruitful conversations.
During the crucial conversation, listen deeply with an open mind. While listening to the other person’s points of view, you will get to know their needs and requirements.
After listening, acknowledge the other’s viewpoint. Expressing interest in understanding the other’s point of view helps clarify the difference between the perspectives.

The best way to listen in a crucial conversations is to keep yourself calm and relaxed. Don’t just rush into things. To keep yourself calm, try to take regular breaths and relax your mind. A relaxed mind helps you refocus, providing the capacity to absorb any blows coming your way.

3. Plan

Planning is an essential aspect of crucial conversations so make sure to understand all the factors related to your crucial conversation. Being prepared in advance helps you hold a simple, clear, balanced and direct conversation. Bringing a few notes is one technique; you could also role play with another colleague before the actual crucial conversation.

Ready to improve your crucial conversation skills? Start by asking for feedback on your ability to handle stressful situations, which will help identify your areas of improvement. Then practice, practice, practice. Practice makes crucial conversations substantially more relaxed and less daunting!
Want to learn more about crucial conversations?

Let’s share experiences. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or find me on Twitter.

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To Be a Great Leader You Have to Listen

Two skills make up the backbone of coaching: listening and asking questions. Today we are going to focus on listening.

Often leaders and managers under develop their listening skills. Why? For one, they aren’t taught how to truly listen. Second, leaders are expected to have all the answers. And third, it’s physiologically hard to listen.

The human mouth plods along at 125 words per minute, while a neuron in the brain can fire about 200 times a second. No wonder our mind wanders when there’s so much time in between the words of a conversation! This is part of the reason why we remember only 25% to 50% of what we hear.

Plus, when we are talking, we get a rush of chemicals sent to our reward and pleasure centers. There is no such reward for listening. When you listen, you are halting your natural ways of thinking. It is like holding your breath. When you practice listening, it’s a fitness test for the brain.

And don’t forget about the fact that feelings, assumptions and anxieties tend to dominate much of our attention while communicating, which makes it difficult to concentrate on what others are saying.

The good news is that listening skills can be learned and improved. While leaders can be coached in listening skills, it’s also important for managers who want to coach their team to master the art of listening. In other words, it’s a fundamental aspect to coaching no matter which side of the equation you’re on.

Why Listen?

Why bother? If you’re not listening at work, it’s easier to misinterpret a discussion as a decision. You may underestimate the importance of objections and ambivalence. And not listening is a quick way to dissolve trust between leaders and their teams.

Many of the reasons people choose to be better listeners include:

• Increase their emotional intelligence
• Gain more trust and influence with others
• Better understand their client’s and customer’s needs, in order to innovate ways to meet those needs
• Have people experience what it is like to be completely heard and understood
• Build respect, and to learn from others

Being a better listener takes effort and a strategy. Much like any sport, you will want to learn the steps, and then practice, practice, practice. Your coach will help you do this, but you can also practice on your own. 

Master Active Listening

The first thing to master is called active listening. What is it? There are five parts of communication—what’s said, what’s not said, words, tone of voice, and body language. Here’s an interesting article on the language of leadership.

Active listening is the process of fully attending to all parts of someone’s communication.

To improve your active listening skills, practice these three steps: 1) Focus on yourself, 2) focus on the other person, and 3) focus on the environment.

Here are some tips:

Three Steps to Improve Your Active Listening Skills

1. Focus on Yourself

• Quiet your own thoughts and emotions
• Make eye contact with the speaker (it will help you concentrate on them)
• Mentally restate what you’re hearing them say
• If you miss anything, or something seems unclear, ask them to repeat it

 2. Focus on the Other Person

• Make eye contact with the speaker (to let them know you’re listening)
• Make appropriate reactions and sounds
• When they’re done, repeat what you heard out loud
• Do this until you’ve clearly heard what they were trying to say

3. Focus on the Environment

• What do you hear? (Restlessness? Calm?)
• What do you see? (Head-nodding? Phone use? Taking notes?)
• What does your emotional intelligence say? (They’re losing interest? They like this idea!)

Next time you’re in a meeting, glance around. Is what you are hearing different than what you are seeing? Is what you are seeing different from what you are feeling?

Practice each step of listening until you feel you’ve mastered all three. Ask a few nonbiased people if they perceive you as a strong listener. Then actively listen to their responses! Active listening will greatly improve your coaching, and will benefit all of your relationships—inside or outside the workplace.

There are also things you can do day-to-day to improve your listening skills. Read over these tips on a regular basis until they are set in your mind.

Day-To-Day Listening Practices

To improve your listening, DO:

• Be 100% present. This means turning off all electronics, and keep your eyes on the person.
• Be content to listen and to stay in the conversation until the person feels like they are fully heard.
• Ask questions and take notes, including word clarification. Many words in the English language have more than one meaning, or can vary drastically (such as the word “soon”).
• Show engagement in your posture and your tone of voice by leaning into the conversation, and keeping your voice level.

To improve your listening, DON’T:

• React emotionally. Stay calm and focused on the other person.
• Offer suggestions or advice. This is a hard one! Yet if you are truly listening, all you’re doing is pulling information out. As soon as you start suggesting solutions, you are no longer listening.
• Talk about yourself. Even if you have had the same experience, don’t tell your story. It takes the attention off the person and back onto you. A simple “I have been there” can do the trick.
• Look at anything but the person. Stay focused on the person’s eyes, facial expressions, and body language.

It can’t be stressed enough just how important listening skills are for coaching. Whether you invest in building your listening skills by working with a coach, or commit to practicing yourself, it will be well worth your while. Paired with a strong grasp on how to ask the right questions in a coaching environment, which you can review here, you are well on your way to using coaching as a tool to enhance your impact as a leader.

How to Train Your Staff With A Decreasing Budget

In our last blog, How to Use the 70/20/10 Model to Develop Careers, we discussed the “what”, “when” and “how” of using the 70/20/10 Adult Learning Model for employee development. Now let’s discuss the “why”.

Managers face daily decisions to ensure their team gets what’s needed for success. But with budgets getting smaller, it’s hard to stretch resources. After reading this blog, you will learn several tips on how to stretch your training budget, spend wisely, plan strategically and still meet your employee development goals.

The “Why” to Employee Development

What is the return on investment (ROI) for a manager who wants to allocate time and financial resources for her employees? Simply put: a better prepared employee is a more productive employee. According to the Association of Talent Development (ATD), companies that invest in training employees see a 218% higher income per employee than companies that don’t. The 70/20/10 model for employee development is one effective tool to leverage the current talents of your staff and build stronger teams, which increases the organizational bottom line.

We know that the manager cannot motivate an employee to improve; that has come from within the employee. However, managers can create a learning environment for them to grow. How? The first step is to take an inventory of the current staff, using a consistent assessment tool such as a 360-degree assessment, with an objective lens to collect skills data. This full assessment will provide two sets of data in one assessment: strengths and areas to grow. By selecting the right 360 tool, you can complete two tasks at once for the same price, creating cost savings for your budget. This 360 view lets managers begin to leverage the strengths in their staff that can be shared with other employees; it also shows the delta between the strengths and weaknesses, so you can create the best strategy to decrease the weaknesses of the entire team.

People Analytics: Creating The Ultimate Workforce

People analytics, historically referred to as HR Analytics and utilized strictly as an HR function, has evolved into a systematic data-driven approach to improving your entire business.

If you are a leader or manager in a large organization, you are probably familiar with these terms. But you may be unaware how your organization can benefit from people analytics and what it will take.

That is what we will discuss today.

Table of Contents

·         What is people analytics?

·         Difference between HR, people, and workforce analytics

·         How organizations benefit from people analytics

·         Where do you begin?

·         How other organizations leverage people analytics

·         Understanding the ROI of people analytics

·         How should organizations implement people analytics?

·         What is the cost of implementation?

·         How does CHCI use people analytics to help organizations?

What is people analytics?

People analytics is the process of leveraging new or existing data within your organization to provide invaluable insights into your workforce and help you make better business decisions.

People analytics delivers facts about your organization such as why people are leaving your organization, the challenges they face, how much this is costing you, and more. Equally importantly, it paints a picture of how to anticipate and prevent these staffing challenges.

Difference between HR, people, and workforce analytics

People analytics, HR analytics, workforce analytics, and even human capital or business analytics are all different terms that share a common purpose: to improve all areas of business performance through the use of workforce data. Whatever you call it, the goal is to create a productive, innovative and powerful workforce, which positively affects the bottom line.

How organizations benefit from people analytics

The true value of a well-structured people analytics initiative will reflect directly on your bottom line. We’ll talk more about this in a minute, under the ROI section.

For now, here are a few ways your organization can benefit from people analytics.

Ten Ways Organizations Benefit from People Analytics

1.     Understand and improve retention

2.     Identify patterns of racial bias or inequity in compensation

3.     Create effective, non-biased processes for hiring and promoting

4.     Strengthen workforce decision making

5.     Increase accountability

6.     Shift team silos

7.     Improve employee productivity and commitment

8.     Determine the traits of your quality employees

9.     Seek better employee sourcing options

10.Develop a culture where decisions are made in accordance with the evidence

How does it help my organization make better decisions?

A crucial component of people analytics is the ability to make informed decisions based on user data. An example of this is McDonald’s. They learned that employees working in groups containing a healthy mixture of generations tended to be happier. Happier workforces can lead to improved service, product quality, and teamwork, all creating higher value for the restaurant brand.

Three Ways Learning Agility Can Help Your Career Growth

We have a guest blog this week about a fascinating topic: Learning agility. Thanks for David Hoff, co-author of Learning Ability-The Key to Leader Potential.

Learning agility is finding yourself in a new situation and not knowing what to do – but then figuring it out.

Why would that be important? In an organizational context, if you are promoted from one function to another or from an individual contributor to a manager role, how do I know you will be successful? The answer is that I don’t, because you’ve never done the job before. The research says if leaders make that decision without the help of an assessment process, the odds of the person being successful is 50-50 – essentially the flip of a coin.

What is the cost if the coin lands on the side of being unsuccessful? It depends; the range is anywhere from one to three times that person’s fully-loaded pay, including compensation and benefits. That’s an expensive coin toss!

Most organizations use a performance management system to give employees feedback on their performance and to equitably distribute merit increases. The output of this process is supposed to be a development plan, which describes the key objectives a person should achieve in the coming year and the areas he or she should begin to improve.

Some companies put additional time, effort and money into critical jobs and/or high-potential employees. There are different definitions of high-potential employees; a common one is a person with the ability to be promoted two levels above his or her current level. An example would be a manager with the ability to be promoted to a vice president. You can’t spend significant additional dollars on everyone, so who gets this extra time and attention? That is the $64,000 question.

One answer is to spend time on the most learning-agile person. But how do you determine learning agility? That question has stumped people in the talent management field for some time. My favorite response is, “Those who can learn on the fly.”

How do you operationalize that definition? What would I see a learning-agile person do? How would I teach someone to? Be more learning-agile? These questions are where learning agility becomes more complicated.

Researcher Scott DeRue, from The University of Michigan, established a model that identifies speed and flexibility as the two most important factors determining learning agility. Learning agility is about being able to digest a large amount of information quickly and figure out what is most important (speed). DeRue defines flexibility as the ability to change frameworks to help you understand how different things are related or connected.

DeRue also made a distinction between learning agility and learning ability. “Ability” means the cognitive ability or “smarts.” Ability is important to a point, but then, smarter is not necessarily better. Earlier, I noted that learning agility is being in an unfamiliar situation, not knowing what to do and figuring it out. The ability takes you to a certain point. Then, agility becomes more important.

DeRue says there are both cognitive and behavioral components to learning agility. The cognitive ones – the “hard wiring,” if you will – are difficult, if not impossible, to change. The behavioral ones are more learnable, because if you do the things described by the behavior, then you are demonstrating that part of learning agility.

Another researcher, Dr. Warner Burke from Columbia University, confirmed what DeRue described and found seven additional dimensions of learning agility. He embraced speed and flexibility; his research also identified experimenting, performance risk-taking, interpersonal risk-taking, collaborating, information-gathering, feedback-seeking and reflecting. Burke also developed a test to measure learning agility; his work led to a valid and reliable tool with years of research to support its results. This is a huge step beyond the 50/50 coin flip to determine who we develop and promote.

Here are three tips for using learning agility in your work:

1. In the future, people are more likely to be hired less for what they “know” and more for their ability to figure out what they “don’t know”. So get curious about what you don’t know as a way to make a difference in your career.
2. To increase your flexibility (one of the learning agility dimensions), take the opposing point of view (from your own position) during a discussion. Support that contrary position as strongly as you would your original position.
3. When seeking feedback (a dimension of learning agility), seek to understand what the other person is saying by truly listening. Defensiveness gets in the way of learning agility.

Want to learn more about learning agility? Reach out here.