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Coaching is Critical!

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Coaching is Critical

Leadership, which is a required aspect or skill of management, cannot be done successfully without the leader being a great coach. Being a great coach means that you are a terrific communicator. However, time becomes your enemy. You really will never have enough time to provide pertinent feedback to your direct reports. So how are we supposed to be able to be effective as coaches?

In the world in which we work and live there is too much going on. We are having to constantly upgrade our skills. This is true for us as managers, as well as for our support groups and teams. As a result of the time squeeze and the need to be constantly upgrading skills, sufficient time spent coaching employees is rare. This is an area that has found a good amount of study at Universities and Think Tanks. How do we continue to be able to lead and coach and keep current with skills? Harvard brings us the concept of what they are calling “a connector.”

HR leaders surveyed by Harvard found that they expected Management to spend 36% of their time developing their subordinates, their team members. But a survey within the same organizations with the management found them saying that they spent 9% of their time developing employees. This is a tricky result. More time coaching is not necessarily the answer.

Another survey by Gartner of 7,300 hundred employees and 100 HR managers asked “what are the best mangers doing to develop employees in today’s busy work environment?” They created four different categories of management.

1) Teaching Managers:
Coach based on their own knowledge. This is advice-oriented feedback to employee job performance.

2) Always-on Managers:
Provide continual coaching, it is part of their daily work. This category is typically in alignment with what HR executives think that management should be doing.

3) Connector Managers:
Provide targeted coaching. They constantly are assessing skills and provide specific coaching from the best coaches available. Not necessarily themselves.

4) Cheerleader Managers:
They are supportive. Providing positive feedback and have the employees in charge of their personal development.

The most common type is cheerleaders, which represents 29% of management. While the category representing the least followers was teaching at 22%. The splits are relatively the same.
So, let’s go back to the statement that more time coaching is not necessarily the answer. This survey by Gartner found that “there is very little correlation between time spent coaching and employee performance.” “It is less about quantity than quality.” This is pointing out a stark reality. It is time we start teaching managers how to “COACH.”

As I mentioned last blog we are in the process of creating a coaching class. We are aiming at providing learning on coaching that addresses building trust with team members, tapping into employee potential, creating employee commitment, and actually executing and meeting goals and objectives.

We have referenced the International Coaching Federation (ICF) which has published a set of ethical standards for coaches to build this class. They ask coaches to pledge to do the following

 Show genuine concern for the individuals’ welfare and future.
 Continuously demonstrate personal integrity, honesty and sincerity.
 Keep confidences.

More on that list will come in the weeks and months ahead.

The Time is NOW.

Coaching

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Coaching

We are constantly looking to our clients to help us determine what additional learning classes we should create. We get a lot of very good suggestions.

Recently, I was asked to create selling skills classes for service management and supervision, foremen and customer contact personnel. We are creating those classes now.

Another suggestion from our clients was regarding the management courses we offer. We have taught management and supervision now for over twenty years in the classroom, with webinars and most recently our internet-based classes. However, it was tied to the functions within the department. It was never “pure” management functions. That program is now under development.

Another learning area that was requested of us was coaching and mentoring. We were first approached with the need to help a specific individual with their management skills with their team. Communications skills were specifically requested, as well as leadership and trust. That was matched with another request to assist in the development of a new manager in a new job function.

It is always necessary to make changes in our programs based on what is needed in the “learning arena.” As our industry changes, I adapt as well.

Coaching is the subject I would like to explore more with you this week. Personal success is a common and constant pursuit for talented people, for curious people, for self-motivated individuals. Satisfaction comes form being able to tackle and overcome difficulties in our lives. As John Wooden said we he defined SUCCESS. “Success is the Peace of Mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing that you made the effort to become the best you are capable of becoming.”

I have been telling the story in classrooms and in talks for a long time now about the individual who at sixteen years of age, let’s call him James, is told that they have POTENTIAL. That is a wonderful thing. It holds such promise and hope. Now I would like you to imagine that James is now sixty-six years of age and is still told he has a lot of potential. Shouldn’t the next question be “what have you been doing the past fifty years?”

Coaching is vey personal. It is working with individuals and helping them to reach their potential. A good definition of coaching is that the purpose of coaching is “unleashing or unlocking the potential of another human being.” Perhaps that sounds too overpowering to you. But that is what you do if you are coaching another person. You are helping them become better at what they do.

Gallup surveys everything and coaching is one of the subjects on which they have conducted surveys. Their surveys say that 30% of the people want coaching to help them with “life, purpose, vision, creativity and integrity.” That is a real mouthful, isn’t it?

At the end of the blog last week I stated that “I think we all can do much more in our lives and in our careers.” Sometimes that challenge overwhelms us. Don’t let that happen to you. Take up the challenge. Find a coach: someone you trust, someone you respect and someone who will be honest with you. Then get started. As the US Army commercial says “be all that you can be.”

The Time is NOW.

Management Musings 2.7 (Reprised) #MondayBlogs

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We are in the process of updating the business page for our consulting, and I wanted to give you a reminder. What follows is our statement of where we are as a group and where we are going. I am as excited now, and as motivated today, as I have been at any previous time in my forty five years working in the Industry. I am truly blessed.

Our consulting business is winding down. I am not aggressively soliciting business like I once did, but will be dealing with requests on a one to one basis. As long as there is interest in my skills and experience I will be more than happy to assist.  Our website, rjslee.com, is still live and active, with ongoing updates to our articles and our recommended reading.  With our reading lists, you can find selections from Business Teachers, or Business Management Tools, and many more.  I like to direct avid learners to that resource, as it can provide foundational texts to motivate you in pursuing your goals.

The Learning business is becoming a much more prominent focus for my time. We are excited about our new venture, Learning Without Scars, and using all the current technology to bring our learning products to the market worldwide. We will be offering ten classroom seminars, forty webinars and ten internet based self-study programs in fifteen different languages. We will be moving to having a YouTube channel and developing a series of streamed products for use by everyone in fifteen languages as well. All of this is being done with a new web page as well. We are working with a terrific partner on this project. Brian Shanahan of “shanahandesign” is the gentleman we have selected to do this work. I am extremely pleased to have found Brian as he does wonderful work. Thank you, Brian.

Our Company Insight (M&R) Institute which has been the platform for the traditional Twenty Group business is being replaced with a new and improved technology driven product. I suspect this new model will become the new standard for twenty group operations in the coming years. This new product is being developed in conjunction with Foresight Intelligence. Dale Hanna, the CEO of Foresight Intelligence, and I are putting the finishing touches on what we believe will produce strong value to dealers in assisting them to be all that they can be. The new product offering will be complimentary and confidential. The dealer will be able to sign on to a model and either identify who they are on not, their choice, enter their information into a “FITNESS” model and receive a “FIRST” results response on key management measures for each of the five major departments within a dealer. The FIRST will show each management measure and a traffic light type graphic with a color code to recognize their performance as out Insight standards. These standards have been developed in our consulting business over the past forty five years in working with well over 1,000 different dealers around the world. The dealer then can go and make the necessary changes in their business without anything further. If however, they want assistance with the click of a button they will be directed to the “FAIR” page will is a series of “TIPS.” Each TIP leads to an implementation process. Each one of the TIPS is a tried and true example of the consulting work I have been doing for the past thirty five years. If the dealer wants further assistance we have developed a network of “ACES.” Each ACE is a retired senior executive from a dealership who still has the interest and energy to continue working in the Industry just not on a full time basis. Dale and I are very excited about this new offering, which we are presenting as the Capital Goods Sages.

I hope that you will find this news as exciting as I do in providing you with it and look forward to continuing to be a part of your team in Product Support.

The time is now

Management vs. Leadership #MondayBlogs

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Management vs. leadership is a topic that comes up in many of the programs I teach.  It is often easy to miss the difference.  When we are managers, we see ourselves as managers of people.

You manage processes, not people.

You lead people.

It is not enough to manage the process: you must have clearly defined goals and procedures that everyone has agreed upon.  The days of the “invisible” employee should be behind us.

Remember Patrick Lencioni’s 3 signs of a miserable job –

  • anonymity
  • irrelevance
  • immeasurability

None of your employees need to be anonymous in your workplace.  We spend so much time at work, we all know each other quite well.  The same applies to irrelevance – with a leader in place who has sought and received feedback, each staff member has a voice and is entirely relevant to the work at hand and the future success of the department and company.

Immeasurability.

How do your employees know when they are doing a good job?  It’s important to ask this question, as both praise and constructive criticism play a key role.

Just some food for thought for you this evening.

The time is now.

Thought for the Day: Capital Goods Industry Management

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Continuing with the philosophical, I want to share with you one of the approaches that I used when I was in a leadership position as an employee.  One thing I teach – and this does not just apply to Capital Goods Industry Management, but to management in every industry – is that we manage process.  We lead people.  Obviously, I was very engaged with my team.  Here is one of my standard approaches.

 

  1. What do I do that you like and you want me to continue doing?

 

  1. What do I do that you don’t like  and you want me to stop doing?

 

  1. What do I do that doesn’t really matter to you?

 

The responses to these questions allowed me to have a clear view of what my team thought was important.

 

The time is now…