Category: Beyond Work

What would you guess to be the Top 10 most common topics covered in leadership coaching? Maybe we can get Letterman to do a Top 10 list on leadership coaching needs (oh, what humor we could probably find, it wouldn’t take much creativity), but in all seriousness, by reviewing many, many 360° leadership evaluations and coaching individuals on maximizing and improving their performance, here is my list- and I could only get to nine:

1. Developing Others
2. Time Management
3. Delegation
4. Thinking Strategically
5. Managing Upwards
6. Communication
7. Planning/Organizing
8. Managing Conflict
9. Empowering/Motivating Others

I’d love to hear what would be in your Top 10 list of your needs for improvement as a leader, or better yet, what areas you think the person who leads you or manages you needs! Maybe by comparing my list to yours, we can get to 10. And better yet, send them to me in David Letterman style! How would he phrase them?  Email me your list or post it to our Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter Feed.

Over the next several weeks, we’ll be writing on ways to address these common areas. We’ll phrase them in your Letterman style and add to our list based on your feedback. If we use one of your submissions, we’ll send you a $25 Visa Gift Card. Submit away!

In leadership coaching and training, there are several key areas where people seek help for maximizing their performance. Over the next few weeks, we’ll focus on one a week and provide you with some tools and tips to help you if the area is one in which you seek to develop as a leader.

Last week we pointed to feedforward and feedback as one of the steps in our coaching process. We often find, however, that this topic is also a tactical approach for improving performance. Many people in leadership roles, don’t seek feedback for themselves and do not provide adequate feedback to those they lead, which inhibits the ability to maximize performance.

Here are some tips and methods for seeking feedback for yourself:

1. Ways to seek informal feedback for yourself:

-Simply ask those around you what they see as your strengths and areas for improvement. Ask “What can I do better?” This shouldn’t just be done at work. It should be done at home as well.

-Listen to what others say or comment about you whether in humor or not. These comments are often a good indicator of how they perceive your strengths and weaknesses.

2. Ways to formally seek feedback for yourself: There are variety of good books out there that list questions relevant to leadership performance that can be found in 360° questionnaires. Use these questions to develop your own 360° evaluation and solicit someone’s help to distribute it to those you wish to gain feedback from. Have that person also compile the results for you in order to protect people’s confidentiality and provide better results.

-Books with good questions for consideration:

What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

            Successful Manager’s Handbook

Another way to seek formal feedback for yourself is to simply take your performance evaluation process seriously. Hopefully your company has one. Utilize the feedback you receive in your review.

3. Hire someone to conduct a 360° evaluation for you: Make sure you vet  this person/firm appropriately. Although you can gain meaningful insight into yourself by seeking feedback on your own, this method may provide the most objective, and therefore the most actionable plan for maximizing your strengths and developing as a leader if you can afford to hire someone to conduct the review.

What is the best method you’ve used to seek feedback for yourself?

If you are seeking to maximize your performance at work, hiring a professional coach may help you do this. We’ve mentioned key factors in vetting a coach, one of which is considering the approach or process the coach or firm follows.

Our coaching approach is grounded in our company values. Our basic leadership coaching process focuses on these key elements, stemming from our values:

1. Assessment. We start by assessing where people are from their perspective and the  perspective of people who matter in their life.

2. Self-Awareness. Based on the results of the assessment phase, we work to build self-awareness between the individual’s perception an others’ perception to determine focus.

For more reading on self-awareness:

The Mirror

Self-Awareness Test

The Verdict

3. Mission statement. As a way to solidify self-awareness and focus developmental efforts, our clients formulate a mission statement based on their values in order to govern their direction.

For more reading on creating a mission statement:

Don’t want to wake up with regrets? Create a mission statement

Define and focus on what’s important

4. Goal setting. After a mission statement is created, our clients set goals to govern focus for maximizing performance.

For more reading on goal setting:

4 tips for setting mission focused goals

5. Feedforward and feedback. After goals are set, we work with clients to share their mission and goals with those who are tied to their performance monitoring. We provide a framework for them to seek continually feedback on the progress there are making towards maximizing their strengths and minimizing their weaknesses, through the help of a practice called feedforward (a concept developed by Marshall Goldsmith)

6. Tactical coaching.  In conjunction with the feedforward and feedback process, we work to help clients maximize strengths and improve in weak areas by tackling key areas with behavioral-based coaching. We provide discussion, reading and exercises for the client to consider and implement. These tools are designed to help individuals take their performance to the next level. Over the next few weeks, we’ll be focusing on the most common tactical areas we see come up in coaching as well as tips and tools to help improve performance in each of these areas.

What are of your performance at work would you most like to improve?

Last week, we discussed what you should look for in a coach. But before you go looking for a coach, you need to look in the mirror. Consider these questions before you vet coaches to help you:

1. Are you willing to devote the time to coaching? Developing as a person takes time. You’ll need to be willing to meet with a coach at regular intervals and devote the time to practice and follow-through on assignments that arise from the coaching arrangement. Just like you won’t be a become a better baseball pitcher if you only practice during the 1 hour of your coaching session, your performance in any arena won’t improve if you don’t take the time to put into practice what you are learning. If you don’t have the time or the willingness to devote to the process, don’t begin.
2. What are your needs? Continuing with the baseball analogy, do you need help with your hitting, your pitching, your fielding, your speed? A similar list for leadership coaching may be help with motivating others, delegating, time management, managing upwards to develop your career, among many other things. What you need “help” with should focus not only on where you desire to see improvement, but where you want to maximize your talent. Consider what can help take you to the next level, and hire a coach that can help you focus on just that. If you are unsure of what you need or seek clarity in defining focus, a good coach should have the ability to assess this for you as a part of the process and create a plan for you. In fact, most coaches will start first with some type of assessment to begin the coaching engagement.
3. What results are you expecting? Do you want to increase the number of strikeouts you have in a game? Do you want to get noticed by major league scouts? Clearly defining your needs should lead to clearly defined results you are expecting. Having these written down can greatly help you when you go shopping for a coach to help you achieve them.
4. What are your values? Different coaches practice different forms of coaching. In leadership coaching, some focus on behavioral based coaching where others on psychoanalysis as their framework. There are multiple variations of coaching methods, none of which are necessarily right or wrong, but you need to have a frame of reference in terms of your values in order to select the best person to work with you. The clearest analogy for this may deviate from sports and come from parent coaching. Quite simply, if you fundamentally disagree with spanking your child as a form of discipline, choosing a coach who advocates for this type of discipline would not be a fit for you.

So, should you hire a coach?