Category: Beyond Leadership

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?

Today, you can find a “coach” for everything. Where we used to associate coaching specifically with sports, now there are life coaches, leadership coaches, executive coaches, parent coaches, career coaches… you get the picture.

Since our firm provides leadership and career coaching, we obviously see the value in coaching.Performance Management: Putting Research into Action states, “There is strong research and case-study evidence that coaching is an effective leadership development tool.” In fact, one of our coaching clients from last year received a substantial raise as a result of gains in his performance. He deserves the credit for this through his hard work, but we were able to help him maximize his performance through behavioral-based leadership coaching. I have an executive coach I work with and she has helped me tremendously in focusing company efforts towards growth.

So if you are seeking someone to help you improve your performance, what should you be looking for?

1. A coach who has a governing set of ethics/professional standards. Ask them to provide you with their standards inInformation on confidentiality, conflict of interest, professional conduct and scope of practice, at a minimum, should be included.
2. Industry knowledge and people knowledge. For example, if you are in manufacturing, does the coach understand this arena? Within the scope of practice your coach should be able to provide to you an explanation of their training and background. Make sure this is in line with your needs.
3. Track Record. Your coach should be able to provide you with a list of references.
4. An approach. The coach should have an approach to coaching grounded in research and practice that comes with a proven process you can align with and devote the time implementing.

We’ll be focusing over the next few weeks specifically on leadership coaching including things to consider before hiring a coach, our approach to leadership coaching, and common areas of focus in leadership coaching along with tips to aid in these common areas. We’ll wrap this series up with ways to measure the impact of coaching at an individual and organizational level.

Do you have a coach or have you thought about hiring one? What sold you on their ability to help you gain the results you were seeking to accomplish?

I’ve been asked by a friend to write a post on time management. It seems fitting at the beginning of each year to look at how we manage our time and “resolve” to manage it more appropriately as we begin anew. 

But other than this one tidbit of time management advice, I’m not going to write today about time management: How you spend your time should be based on your purpose, and your purpose should be captured in a mission statement to govern how you spend your time. 

Instead, in considering time management, I think it is worth reflecting on this quote from Raising Self- Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World by H. Stephen Glenn and Jane Nelsen: 

“Studies of successful, healthy people show that they are consistently good finders who see lemonade in lemons and glasses that are half full rather than half empty.  Incidentally, such people, who are quick to celebrate any little movement in the right direction, have very few problems with burnout and stress.  People who look at what they failed to accomplish during the day, not what they did accomplish, and who go to bed and burn themselves out in stress tend to invalidate themselves and others.  We need to be encouraging to ourselves as well as our children, and celebrate our own incremental successes as we go through life.” 

So if you want to manage your time wisely, my advice this year: Celebrate your successes, your “little movements in the right direction” and try to do more of it one day at a time. Don’t beat yourself up when you haven’t checked everything off today’s to-do list. Move what hasn’t been accomplished to tomorrow, and go to bed knowing that you did get something accomplished today. My hope is that you celebrate the accomplishments of each day and purposely connect them to something that connects to your personal purpose. 

What is the best advice you have received on how to manage your time?

Want some more traditional reading on time management? Here are some recommendations: 

Books:  Ready Covey: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People,  First Things First

Blogs:  Joseph Lalonde’s How to Improve Your Time Management Skills  (the comments on this post are also good reads)