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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/ For recent articles on Coaching please visit: http://www.progressu.com/
Contents of this Article 1) Definition of Organisms - Individuals vs. Organizations 2) Common habits and traits of outstanding individuals and organizations
3) Reflection on yourself and your organization - how to find and define your successful habits 4) From Reflection to Action -> Progress-Urself and your organization 5) Evaluation of Support Systems for organisms
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Home > Resources > Progress! Newsletter > "Progress!" Issue No3 / April 04 "Progress!" (Progress-U Leadership & Coaching) - Issue No3 / April 2004 Dear "Progress!" Reader, How do you make decisions? For example, how do you decide where to go for a vacation? It seems like an easy decision to make, but most of us know from experience that such seemingly trivial issues can lead to complex and difficult-to-resolve situations. Why does this happen and how could we minimize the problems and frustrations that surround decision making? People make decisions when their doubts have been reduced to a certain comfort level or when the pressure to make a decision overrides an uncomfortable level of doubts. You can help people decide when you help them understand their personal criteria and beliefs regarding the decision. This can be achieved by using facilitative questions, which often start with “how” and “what.” For example, your friend wants to go for a vacation but doesn’t know where to go. You could ask questions like:
And so on … Your friend would get a clearer idea about his criteria for choosing holidays and discover how he could meet these criteria by choosing the right package. We usually share information based on our own criteria, and say things like “Oh, you don’t know what to do during your vacation? You must go to place XY because I just was there and it was truly fabulous …” See the difference? An important part of coaching is helping people make better decisions. Therefore, facilitative questions are a crucial tool used by professional coaches. Are you aware of how you make decisions? Yours sincerely,
Serial: Successful Habits of Outstanding Organisms (Part V) 3) Reflection on yourself and your organization – how to find and define your successful habits The habits and traits described above are rather basic and certainly no rocket science. The important point is to make them suitable for you and your organization and then implement them properly. We are now at the point where the work starts, whether for yourself or as a leader of an organization. I suggest that you start with yourself and use the outcome as a basis for your reflections regarding the organization. The more you can align your values, needs and wants with those of your organization, the more likely you will succeed with the implementation of these success habits. Every organism is unique; hence, the final look of success habits will be unique, too. There is no single solution to success. It takes your efforts and brains to discover the best fit between habits you want to develop and what presently exists. Before mirroring where you and your organization are now, and where you want to be, get rid of limiting beliefs. Otherwise you may miss out on exceptional possibilities and opportunities. First think of the ideal and then compromise only if there is absolutely no way to overcome obstacles. I found it much more effective to go through this reflection process with the help of a neutral person who understands the subject matter and knows how to structure the process. This person can be a mentor, a coach or a good friend who possesses these skills and who is at the same time able to keep a neutral position. Only then will it be possible to discover blind spots and alternative possibilities one would not have discovered alone. 4) From Reflection to Action --> Progress-Urself and your organization How many books do we read about things we want to learn? How many times do we undergo training? Aren’t we aware of all the good things we read and learn? How much of that do we actually implement in our life, professional or otherwise? Don’t get me wrong, I find reading and training to be important in the development of organisms. However, I also find that the effectiveness of reading and training is determined by the degree of implementation. I have read much and attended a lot of training but was often disappointed with myself after a few weeks or months because of how little I was able to implement from what I learned. And then I found that it was somewhat a waste of time and money despite the little good things I actually put into action. Since then I have been working with a professional mentor coach on a regular basis. I feel that I’ve become much more focused and action-orientated. This helps me progress faster and at the same time gives me a deep feeling of satisfaction. Remember, reflection without subsequent action is a waste of time. 5) Evaluation of Support Systems for organisms Our world is growing more and more complex. We never had so much data available. The speed of development has never been so overwhelming. I personally think that it is foolish to believe that we can keep up with all that just by ourselves. Great leaders are aware of that so they create a support system that helps them make the right decisions and brings the best out of them. The more complex our world becomes, the more dedicated and tailor-made our support system needs to be. Typically there are three major areas where adequate support is crucial:
It is almost impossible for an organism to develop all areas of expertise; it may not even be desirable to attempt it. Of course, an organism must decide which are the core competencies that need to be developed in order to be ahead of the game. But there are other areas that might be necessary but are not crucial. Dedicated consultants who are specialized in these areas can cover these more effectively. The development of core competencies can be done in several ways: an organization can employ people with such competencies; acquire other companies specialized in the desired area; or, use training in order to develop certain skills and competencies. While consulting and training are generally accepted methods to support the success of an organism, the development of success habits is an area not often given the necessary attention. Worse, top leaders often believe that it would be a sign of weakness to engage someone for the development of soft factors such as improving habits or understanding better how others experience their leadership. Why is that so? The main reason for this reluctance is the image most senior executives think they must project. They believe that it would be a sign of weakness if they solicited support for the development of soft skills. Consider this: we are ready to accept consulting and training in order to achieve excellence but are too proud to seek help to develop the most important area in our life: ourselves. Why do sport stars like Tiger Woods employ coaches? He plays better golf than his coach, no doubt about that. The coach is not a consultant and the coach is not a trainer. A professional executive coach is the executive’s partner specialized in establishing a process of creative discovery, ambitious goal-setting and meaningful action. The coach is able to help the client to develop habits and soft skills to reach outstanding success. More than ever, outstanding success is determined by doing a lot of things right while being ready to accept failure and to learn from it quickly. You can make it a habit to be successful by implementing success habits. Done correctly, success seems to be almost effortless. Remember when you started to learn how to drive a car? How confusing was it in the beginning to know when to press which pedal for acceleration, which pedal for brakes, and how to put the right gear? It required a lot of effort and training, but eventually you developed a habit to do it all right. How effortless is this very same process today? Unfortunately, successful leadership is not as easy as driving a car. However, the same principles apply. Shape your habits and establish them. Take the necessary support to allow you to do so. It is hard work, but a very rewarding one.
Serial: "Innovative Sales Program" (the 2nd of 4 parts): How to help your customers buy In this serial, you get an insight of the four modules of the Progress-U Sales Training Program. Like people in every other profession, sales people have an understanding of their role and possess certain beliefs about what would make them successful. Traditionally, sales people have some or all of the following beliefs:
Now let’s have a look at an example of a typical sales process: 1. A prospect wants to have information about your product—let’s say a PC network solution. 2. You call or visit him to understand his EDP requirements. You may even take an IT engineer with you to understand how your products would fit in. You also try to find out about the other people involved in the decision. 3. Then you may make a demo either at their site or in your demo facility and things go well. The demo is impressive; your relationship with the prospect seems good. You give it a 75% chance. 4. Now you wait for the next steps of the prospect and after 2 weeks you call up. They tell you that they have not made their decision yet. So you keep waiting and following up. The truth is that you actually have no idea what’s going on in the prospect’s company. You may ask them whether they need some more info and the answer is usually “no.” What’s happening behind the scenes? 1. After your presentation, the prospect understands that his problem can be solved, so they call together all people involved to get their opinions. They may have done that to some extent even before your presentation, but now they need to consolidate all opinions before making a decision. 2. In most cases there will be at least one person who will know a different way to solve the problem. Before that, they will explore the possibility of solving the problem with existing resources. 3. If that is not the case, they will truly consider your offer and, at the same time, look for a similar solution from your competitor. 4. In this process, the people involved very often get distracted by something or the other: a more important project, budget problems, new people being hired, team members leaving, etc. 5. Once they are back on the project, people will start asking questions like “What if …” before making a decision. This creates a dynamic among the team members typical to many purchase processes:
People will only make a decision once all those involved agree and at least somewhat support the purchase. The “Innovative Sales Training Program” teaches sales people how to follow a purchasing process rather than a sales process and how to speed up the sales cycle by helping the buyer how to buy. The program is based on the following considerations:
What are typical questions to ask a prospective customer who may or may not need your product? 1. How could you be different from your competitors? Is there anything missing or not working properly? Do certain problems keep coming up? 2. What could be done to change this? Are you able to change this with your existing resources? 3. What would you be ready to “invest” (time, effort, money, people, etc.) to make this change happen? 4. How would your organization be able to handle such a change? 5. In which case(s) would it not be worthwhile to do this? 6. Who are the people you need to involve to avoid disruptions in the process? 7. How can you get all people directly and indirectly involved to agree to such a change so that when difficulties occur, they would be ready to help? 8. What needs to be accomplished to get all involved people to welcome a change? 9. Is the organization really ready to embrace such a change? Once a customer is actually ready to buy, you may ask questions like: 1. Are you clear on what is missing and how you ended up in this situation? 2. What must be considered before working with a new solution? 3. How can chaos be avoided or at least minimized when working with the new solution? 4. How will you know how to choose one solution or vendor over another? As you can see from above examples (which of course must be adopted to the situation and to the style of the sales person), most questions start with “how” and “what” because these kinds of questions trigger a thinking process in the buyer. The buyer will start thinking things over; the sales person functions as a “buying coach” to the customer and presents himself as a person of integrity. “Why” questions should be avoided as much as possible as they carry a judgmental notion. My experience is that sales people talk way too much and don’t ask enough questions, thus missing a great opportunity to:
Research has proven that sales people could increase their sales by approximately 20% by simply doubling the questions they pose during a sales call (the average sales man asks 5 to 10 questions per sales call). Conclusion: The “Innovative Sales Program” teaches sales people how to “coach” their customers through the buying process. Simply asking more questions already has a positive impact, while using the “coach approach” in sales will dramatically reduce the length of the sales cycle, leading to much better sales results. Read how to create winning arguments by developing USPs (unique selling propositions) based on customer benefits in the next issue of "Progress!" NOTE: Progress-U offers the Innovative Sales Program as a tailor-made package consisting of an initial 2-day training combined with follow-up coaching of the sales management. If you are interested in a presentation of this program, please contact us at innovative-sales-program@progressu.com.hk.
Acquisition - a good decision? A few years ago, when I was still working as a director in a medium-sized global group, I experienced the difficulties corporations face when acquiring and trying to integrate other companies. I can still remember one case vividly. The top management decided to buy a competitor in the US to improve their market position in North America. The size (in terms of sales and people) of the acquired company at that time was approximately 40% of our company. What was the catastrophic result after 3 years?
Can we conclude from this that the acquisition was a wrong decision? Maybe, but not necessarily. Sure, the timing was a bit unlucky because one year later the US economy slid into a recession. Still, I am of the strong opinion that companies can run a profitable and growing business even in times of recession. There are many examples of companies who have proven that time and again. What went wrong? Of course, a lot of big and small mistakes (too tedious to discuss here) were made, but what is clear is that this is common to all complex processes, like acquisitions. The important question is: What are the key success factors during such a process? For me, it all boils down to good leadership, and good leadership means communication. Communication is not merely talking—it is listening and the willingness to learn and understand before making crucial decisions. Willingness to learn from and listen to others, however, requires a certain level of trust in the knowledge and competencies of people who are currently in charge and execute the daily business. I have experienced all too often that top managers simply wouldn’t listen to the people from lower levels and because of this, miss the chance to obtain possibly crucial information that may or may not influence their business decisions. More often than not, I realized that many top managers actually fear information that doesn’t fit their plans and would possibly require them to revise decisions they were ready to make. The cost of this ignorance and arrogance can be tremendous. When working on change management projects, I focus strongly on helping the management team create an effective communication structure. Part of this structure is to figure out who needs to be kept in the loop and for what purpose. An effective communication structure assures a seamless communication flow while avoiding communication overkill. During my initial workshops, we make agreements how to work on the project and it is vital that everybody involved really “agrees.” Through the follow-up individual coaching sessions, we assure that the whole change management team stays on track and that potential conflicts are handled right away before they have the chance to escalate. The cost of a poorly managed and led change management project can be exorbitant and may even lead to bankruptcy. In the case of my previous employer, it did not go to this extreme but it certainly was a negative experience—something that could have been minimized, if not completely avoided, had there been better leadership and management. Summary: The integration process of acquired companies is a highly complex process, which requires focused and professional leadership. Coaching a change management team can help keep everybody on track and prevent huge losses created by poor communication and cooperation.
Emergency Operation (the 2nd of 2 parts) Emergency Action Unfortunately, I entered very late in the process and it was clear to me that the chances of “saving” Marc were not good. As always, when I coach people in difficult situations, my first target is to get them to calm down and put some distance between them and their turmoil, to enable them to think more clearly and rationally. I encourage them to first air their frustrations, anger and other strong emotions they may have in that situation. Marc and I spent half of our first session doing this activity and I could feel how Marc calmed down afterwards and started to think more logically. As a next step I asked Marc to describe his current situation and what led to it. Of course, in the beginning Marc could not understand how this could have happened to him. He always had good intentions, worked hard and “did nothing wrong to deserve” it. Only when I asked him to clarify in detail what happened did Marc start to understand what “he did wrong” and what led him to this difficult situation. That was a key element of our coaching process, as understanding what went wrong was the basis of the action plan that could help rectify the situation. In the second week, we worked out the action plan that he would present to his management to show that he would change the way he was working so he can merit the satisfaction of his superiors. Too late Unfortunately, it turned out that some key people in the organization completely lost their faith in Marc—they did not believe that he would be able to change and work successfully in his position. Hence, they were actually looking for Marc’s mistakes to have more reasons to terminate him. We realized that the ultimatum was a wish of the top management who wanted to give him a last chance, while his direct superior already “wrote him off.” In this situation, it was impossible to succeed. The coaching process started after he had reached the point of no return. After we realized that (3 weeks from the start of the coaching), we focused on his time after the ultimatum. Overall, Marc’s feedback on the benefits of coaching was as follows:
The coaching helped him understand what went wrong, what he could have done differently, and how to be more successful in the future. To read the 1st part click on http://www.progressu.com.hk/NewsletterNo.2-2004.htm
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