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Content of this Newsletter 0. Opinion 1. Leadership Coaching 2. Sales Management Coaching 3. Change Management Coaching 4. Career Coaching FURTHER NEWS * For upcoming seminars & events please visit: http://www.progressu.com.hk/ * For recent articles on Coaching please visit: http://www.progressu.com.hk/ * For recent articles on Leadership please visit: http://www.progressu.com.hk/ * For recent articles on Sales Management please visit: http://www.progressu.com.hk/ * For recent articles on Change Management please visit: http://www.progressu.com.hk/
Subscribe now to "Progress!" and get informed about the latest trends in Leadership, Change Management, Career Transition and Sales Management. To receive "Progress!", simply send a blank email to subscribe@progressu.com.hk
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Home > Resources > Progress! Newsletter > "Progress!" Issue No10 / November 04 "Progress!" (Progress-U Leadership & Coaching) - Issue No.10 / November 04 0.
Opinion Dear Progress! Reader, These last few months, I have been thinking of ways to accomplish my missions in leadership and sales more effectively. My missions include:
After talking to some very wise people, including one of the world's top executive coaches, Marshall Goldsmith (read my blog for the full story), I realized that I need to focus my energy more on what is most important to me: to help people to become First-Class Leaders. I also realized that I did not want to waste my expertise in sales, and therefore decided to start a strategic partnership with Mr. John Bower of St. George's Human Potential. John, who is an expert in Harrison Assessments, and I are developing an outstanding Sales Training Program as a unique and effective tool for the advancement of any sales team. On January 20 to 21, 2005, we will conduct a 2-day experiential training workshop in Hong Kong. To register, visit www.progressu.com.hk/seminars.htm. We have limited the number of seats to assure high effectiveness of the program. The benefits of coaching are still practically unknown in Asia, including Hong Kong. This prompted me to initiate the Master Coach Alliance (MCA), which aims to elevate the image of coaching in Asia. The MCA is currently composed of Bonnie Chan, Douglas Gerber, Vivien Pau and myself, but we are welcoming more coaches, provided they comply with the minimum standards that we established to ensure a high level of professionalism. On November 23, 2005, we will have our first press conference at the Foreign Correspondence Club in Hong Kong. Executive Coaching is a highly effective yet costly method to achieve First-Class Leadership. I understand that many corporations hesitate to spend thousands of dollars if there is no guarantee for a return of investment. This is why I decided to make a unique offer to all who are interested in improving their leadership skills:
Last but not least, I realized that besides coaching sessions and teleclasses, I can contribute in spreading the concepts and understanding of First-Class Leadership by authoring a book about how and why First-Class Leadership produces the results any committed leader wants. If you would like to be involved in the development of this special book (your name would be mentioned), please don't hesitate to contact me at . I look forward to hearing from you (again)! Yours sincerely, Charlie Lang
1. Leadership Coaching Part III Competency No. 3: Coach & Support People The role of a true leader involves not only directing and telling people what to do, but also creating a supportive environment. First-Class Leaders coach their direct reports, thus moving the organization forward. Coaching became a buzz word in recent years and therefore may be easily misunderstood or underestimated. Masterful coaching includes the following core competencies:
A key element in this type of communication is to leave ownership with the coachee. This may be a problem, as it seemingly conflicts with the authority of most managers. Let me make an example: Tom is the CEO of a midsized company with 800 employees. One day, on his way to a meeting, he meets Shellie, the HR director. As he has a few minutes to spare, he starts an informal conversation with her. T: Hi, Shellie. How are things? What happened in this conversation? The HR director shared a concern and proposed an approach how to handle it. The CEO, believing that he is asked for 'help' and must give his recommendation or direction, takes away ownership from Shellie. In fact, with this 'ruling', Shellie has hardly any options left but to follow the suggestion of the CEO. How will she feel about it? Frustrated and demotivated, not grateful, as the CEO might think. This is a common problem with many managers and can be found on all levels of an organization. Once managers are given authority, they start to believe that they have to exercise this authority at any given opportunity. First-Class Leaders would respond in an entirely different way, using the coach approach: .... Do you see the difference? Tom did not tell Shellie at all what to do and yet assisted her greatly in her problem-solving process. She still has full ownership and will leave this conversation motivated and encouraged. Tom acted as a true coach using unbiased active listening skills, shared his experience without forcing it on Shellie and encouraged her in solving the problem.
Competency No. 4: Rewarding Performance Many people believe that the top motivator for employees is money. I would agree to this statement if we add "in the absence of other motivating factors." Unfortunately, other motivating factors are indeed missing in many corporations. What can be motivating to employees besides money?
This list may not be exhaustive, but gives you an idea that money must not be the only motivating factor for employees. If that were the case, then people would always try to change jobs whenever they get a few dollars more (there are very few who do, in fact). Not everybody is motivated by each of these factors in the same way. Some factors may be very important to Polly yet totally meaningless to Martin. There are two ways to figure out what motivates your staff: a) Be interested in their motivations, listen to them, etc. - in short, get to know them. However, this may take time, and you may waste unnecessary resources on ineffective forms of motivation. b) Cut this process short by using a psychometric
assessments. Ideally, such assessments are used in the selection
process, or when the employee is selected and starts in a new position.
Such assessments provide quick insights in the motivators of the employee
and allow the superior to adjust his 'reward system' accordingly. For more information related to Progress-U Leadership Coaching please visit http://www.progressu.com.hk/leadership.htm.
2. Sales Management Coaching I got to know John Bower from St. George's Human Potential in October 2003. He authored an article about the professional development of managers, which was published earlier that year in Hong Kong Echo, the official publication of the French Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong. Inspired by this article, I wrote to John and he invited me to his office where we met for the first time. He introduced me to the Harrison Assessments (HA) which - after having studied a number of psychometric assessments - appeared to be the most advanced and innovative assessment tool to me. One month later I was accredited in the use of HA. Ever since, I have applied this tool successfully with my clients in my coaching practice. It has made a great difference for the clients as it cuts short the coaching process by around 3 to 4 sessions. John has been overseeing how I progressed in my own business. At the beginning of October this year we met again at a seminar he organized, which was a seminar facilitated by Dr. Dan Harrison himself (for details read my blog) about how to more effectively use HA in coaching. At the end of the 2-day seminar John approached me and said that we should meet soon to discuss a business opportunity. During our meeting, he explained that he would like to team up with me in developing a unique sales training program that fully integrates HA. As I wanted to refocus on leadership anyway, I saw a great opportunity in this partnership to contribute my expertise and experience and create something special, while focusing my energy on leadership at the same time. We are currently bringing both our minds together to take my Innovative Sales Training to a new level and create the new program: Stop Selling! Accelerate Your Business - An Experiential Process for More Profitable Sales. It will be offered to the public for the first time in a 2-day Public Training Workshop on January 20 to 21, 2005. Based on this program, we will offer a Train-the-Trainer (TtT)
Program, including license and certification processes for training
companies and for in-house trainers in larger corporations. The TtT
Program will be available in Spring 2005.
3. Change Management Coaching To view Part I and II, please visit Part III: Successful Change Processes Leading change processes successfully is only possible if the leader gets 'permission to lead'. This is quite challenging to any leader. 'Permission to lead'does not simply mean being nominated by a group into a leadership role, such as member of the board of directors or boss. "Permission to lead" in this context means that the group gives the leader unwritten permission to lead the group. This is a big and important difference! Let me give you an example to illustrate this point: Remember the bad teachers you had in school? Let's call one of them Mr. Nag. Mr. Nag does not have the respect of his pupils for whatever reason, and is not able to inspire the class to study. His lessons are boring and the only reason why the pupils study is because they are forced to do it. What do you think happens when Mr. Nag is called out of the room in the middle of a class? You can probably imagine: everybody immediately stops studying, starts doing everything they are not supposed to do and will return to their work only when Mr. Nag returns to supervise. Let's compare him to Ms. Inspire. This teacher is able to make even a boring topic interesting. Also, pupils respect her because she seems to care about who they are, what they think and what they have to say. When they work on a topic and the teacher is called out of the room, the great majority keep studying because they are engrossed in the topic and don't care whether they are supervised or not. We can find similar situations in manager-team relations. A group - be it a class of pupils or a team of employees - decides to give or not to give any person who is not part of the group (and managers/teachers never are) the permission to lead them. Groups give leadership permission to persons they truly respect, and it must be a leader's foremost objective to gain respect from the group they want to lead. How to gain respect How can anyone gain the respect from a group they are not part of? The key elements are:
and, most importantly:
There are a number of other skills and traits that help a leader become accepted. For instance, in technology companies, technical competence is often considered to be one of the most important traits of a respected leader. However, it may be a wrong decision to promote the best specialist into a manager's position. While a high level of technical competence is certainly not harmful, it may not be the most important trait of a successful leader. Having worked in the technical field for over 13 years (I am an engineer myself), I have never seen a manager failing in his management position due to a lack of technical competence. I observed that, without exception, managers fail only because of the lack of the necessary soft skills, i.e., leadership skills. My observations are confirmed by leadership research. Once a leader gets the permission to lead, implementation of change processes are a piece of cake, provided that the leader consistently:
while keeping the sense of groupness alive as described in Part II of this article. Summary: Change processes can be successfully implemented:
NOTE: Progress-U Ltd. offers the Win Through Change! Program to assist corporations in their change process. For details visit http://www.progressu.com.hk/ChangeMP.htm
4. Career Coaching by Dan Harrison Overview Harrison Assessments is an assessment instrument that is used for selection and development. It measures 130 different characteristics of an individual. In addition it formulates the requirements of a particular job and compares the individual to that job. It offers a final score between zero and one hundred which represents the degree of suitability of a person for a particular job. A score of one hundred represents a person who is completely suitable for a particular position, while a score of zero represents a person who is completely unsuitable for that position. Assuming the person is eligible for a position (has the education, experience and technical skills), a suitability score of 75 or greater represents a person who is considered likely to perform effectively in that position. A score of 74 or less represents a person who is considered to be unlikely to perform less effectively than average in that position. The data was collected by Dan Harrison (Ph.D.) and the performance rating were given by the company in 1995. The aim of the case study below was to determine the degree of predictive accuracy of Harrison Assessments for this position. This study included 31 subjects. This was achieved by comparing the Harrison Assessments suitability score (using the Administration-accounts template) with the persons actual performance. The performance rating was given by a group of supervisors for each employee that competed the Harrison Assessments profile. Performance ratings More than one company was involved. Each company was instructed to have a random sampling of employees from their company complete the Harrison Assessments questionnaire (a range of excellent to poor performers)... Read the complete article by visiting http://www.harrisonassessments.com/CaseStudyI.html For more information related to Progress-U's Career Coaching Programs, please visit http://www.progressu.com.hk/Career.htm.
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