Posted by admin on December 17, 2009 under Uncategorized | 
QUESTION, LEADING TO CONSULTATION: “Dr. Norm, I just learned that one of our best and brightest internal sales people, I’ll call him Sean, is working with some of his friends to start a business on the side. It is an Information Technology business, including computer services and a social networking venture. This business doesn not compete with our manufacturing business, but I’m afraid it will compete for his time and attention.
“I’ve met with him once, and he tells me he has always wanted to be aan entrepreneur and run his own business. This is not unlike myself around 10 years ago. His benture looks promising, but right now, is only a cash drain.
“He’s been involved in this side business for 6 months, and as far as I can tell, his dedication and performance for us have been tremendous.
“What should I do?”
RESPONSE: First of all, you and Sean need to continueyour dialog about what his plans and intentions are. If you trust him I would suggest that you or his immediate leader meet with him to see how things are going every few weeks.
He needs to know that expectations of him will continue to be the same as they have been. I think he also needs to knowthat starting his own business can impact how he is viewed internally, particularly with regard to future career growth.
Conceptually, compensation rewards performance and potential. Someone like Sean, who has “one foot in and one foot out” of the company cannot be considered as a high potential person in your talent management discussions. It sounds as though if his business “takes off”, he’ll leave.
Another consideration for you is how to manage the news internally. There may be a variety of reactions by employees as they learn of his activities on the side. It reminds me of how professional athletes react to a teammate who lets it be known that he wants to be traded.
Again, the best thing Sean can do to retain his position–and also to maintain reasonably good relations with fellow employees–is to demonstrate hard work, dedication and excellent results. (Sounds like a good formula for all employees, doesn’t it?)
One other thought: assuming that Sean continues to demonstrate hard work, dedication and excellent results, you may want to at least think about the possibility of his relationship with the company changing in the future. Probably not right away, but it may be a long, long time–if ever–before his company generates enough momentum to support his and his partners. An option worth thinking about is that of contract employee. This arrangement could provide short term focus on accountability, allow you to react quickly if need be, and enable the two of you to reduce his work hours if desired.
Once again, keep the conversation with Sean open and ongoing, so that you are up to date on how things are going. It’s not too soon to start thinking about what your back-up plans for Sean would be in case he leaves.
Posted by admin on under Uncategorized |
EXECUTIVE COACHING
IN BUSINESS
Norman Lanier, Ph.D.
Dr. Norm and Associates
Business executive coaching and consulting services are aimed at helping individuals increase their leadership perspectives and skills. These services can be considered part of a specialized, individually focused development program; however, as key executives increase their comfort, awareness and leadership effectiveness, the corporation stands to benefit exponentially. Executives who expand their roles and skills as leaders tend to promote healthier cultures and more productive functioning among those whom they lead.
The mission of a business executive coach is to help speed up the learning process. Executive coaching frequently focuses on the following needs:
• Identifying and modifying an executive’s managerial style.
• Developing greater leadership presence and communications/presentation skills.
• Adapting effectively to change.
• Balancing demands of work life and home life.
• Planning for organizational change (e.g., modifying the existing culture; restructuring).
• Thinking through people-related issues and challenges.
• Maintaining focus on a leader’s obligations to empower, teach and coach others.
A highly effective firm recognizes the need to understand a client company’s business, and to empathize with its leaders’ problems and realities. There is a need to understand not only the individual’s personality, role and responsibilities, but also the business objectives and uniqueness of the organization. Emphasis needs to be placed on the following:
• Understanding the organization, including various functions and positions within it.
• Identifying key success factors for individual roles and positions within the organization.
• Evaluating the individual in terms of key success factors.
• Providing honest, encouraging feedback to individuals.
• Helping individuals establish goals, objectives and a plan for growth.
Executive coaching is not the one and only way to bring about growth and development. Many individuals would point to having taken on a challenging job that “stretched” them as being one of the most significant developmental experiences of their careers. Many individuals have found
off-site experiences such as attending the Center for Creative Leadership or Harvard’s Executive Development Program to be of exceptional benefit to them personally and professionally.
Experience suggests that the more corporate-wide the support is for putting people in challenging jobs and/or sending individuals to off-site development experiences, the more powerful the experiences become, and the more reinforced the learning becomes. We have all had the experience of learning something but then not really getting to apply it – such learning typically “fades” rather fast.
A hybrid-type of training, recently developed at Dr. Norm and Associates is a mixture of classroom training (where leadership skills are explained and practiced) and field coaching (where the knowledge and skills from the classroom are applied to real-life, practical situations).
For any activity or program to be effective, it needs to have endorsement and support from the top. If a CEO or a group executive is not committed to developing people, the operating managers will tend to undervalue the same thing. This commitment to developing people is just as critical now, during difficult economic times, as it is when the economy is strong.
This commitment to developing people entails tremendous persistence and work. It involves trying to be really good at the fundamentals:
• Selection
• Training
• Senior executives getting to know and tracking the progress of talented individuals
• Rewarding excellent performance
• Building bench strength and planning for succession
• Providing honest performance reviews and feedback information
• Coaching
In this day and age, talented individuals are oftentimes “flooded” with feedback information from a variety of sources. An expert business executive coach can help the individual consider and sort through the information, understand it more fully, synthesize it, and come up with a clear, focused development plan.
To summarize succinctly: Effective executive coaching accelerates learning and development.
QUESTION OF THE MONTH:
Posted by admin on September 14, 2009 under General Business Executive Coaching Consultant Advice |
EXECUTIVE COACHING
IN BUSINESS
Norman Lanier, Ph.D.
Dr. Norm and Associates
Business executive coaching and consulting services are aimed at helping individuals increase their leadership perspectives and skills. These services can be considered part of a specialized, individually focused development program; however, as key executives increase their comfort, awareness and leadership effectiveness, the corporation stands to benefit exponentially. Executives who expand their roles and skills as leaders tend to promote healthier cultures and more productive functioning among those whom they lead.
The mission of a business executive coach is to help speed up the learning process. Executive coaching frequently focuses on the following needs:
• Identifying and modifying an executive’s managerial style.
• Developing greater leadership presence and communications/presentation skills.
• Adapting effectively to change.
• Balancing demands of work life and home life.
• Planning for organizational change (e.g., modifying the existing culture; restructuring).
• Thinking through people-related issues and challenges.
• Maintaining focus on a leader’s obligations to empower, teach and coach others.
A highly effective consulting firm recognizes the need to understand a client company’s business, and to empathize with its leaders’ problems and realities. There is a need to understand not only the individual’s personality, role and responsibilities, but also the business objectives and uniqueness of the organization. Emphasis needs to be placed on the following:
• Understanding the organization, including various functions and positions within it.
• Identifying key success factors for individual roles and positions within the organization.
• Evaluating the individual in terms of key success factors.
• Providing honest, encouraging feedback to individuals.
• Helping individuals establish goals, objectives and a plan for growth.
Executive coaching is not the one and only way to bring about growth and development. Many individuals would point to having taken on a challenging job that “stretched” them as being one of the most significant developmental experiences of their careers. Many individuals have found
off-site experiences such as attending the Center for Creative Leadership or Harvard’s Executive Development Program to be of exceptional benefit to them personally and professionally.
Experience suggests that the more corporate-wide the support is for putting people in challenging jobs and/or sending individuals to off-site development experiences, the more powerful the experiences become, and the more reinforced the learning becomes. We have all had the experience of learning something but then not really getting to apply it – such learning typically “fades” rather fast.
A hybrid-type of training, recently developed at Dr. Norm and Associates is a mixture of classroom training (where leadership skills are explained and practiced) and field coaching (where the knowledge and skills from the classroom are applied to real-life, practical situations).
For any activity or program to be effective, it needs to have endorsement and support from the top. If a CEO or a group executive is not committed to developing people, the operating managers will tend to undervalue the same thing. This commitment to developing people is just as critical now, during difficult economic times, as it is when the economy is strong.
This commitment to developing people entails tremendous persistence and work. it involves trying to be really good at the fundamentals:
- Selection
- Training
- Senior executives getting to know and tracking the progress of talented individuals
- Rewarding excellent performance
- Building bench strength and planning for succession
- Providing honest performance reviews and feedback information
- Coaching
In this day and age, talented individuals are oftentimes “flooded” with feedback information from a variety of sources. An expert business executive coach can help the individual consider and sort through the information, understand it more fully, synthesize it, and come up with a clear, focused development plan.
To summarize succinctly: Effective coaching in business accelerates learning and development.
QUESTION OF THE MONTH:
This question was selected from a number of good questions asked by individuals in client companies.
Q: “In preparation for a corporate retreat/planning session, we’ve been asked to think about ‘Is there a difference? Preparation–Performance
and Statistics–Score’. What are your ‘top of the head’ reactions?”
A: It sounds as if someone is trying to stimulate people’s thinking around RESULTS. If there is a lively group discussion, participants will likely discuss/debate a variety of questions, such as: How much preparation is necessary for strong performance? Do statistics tell us where we’ve been, or direct us toward performance improvement?
In my opinion, preparation is critical for consistent performance. Tiger Woods, the world’s greatest golfer, schedules 220 days per year for practice (preparation) with his coach, Hank Haney. It strikes me as counter-intuitive for corporations to cut out training and coaching budgets during economic downturns (perhaps survivors need more support/coaching and preparation than ever for how to do more with less).
Also, it is my opinion that statistics can be very helpful if they are comprehensive enough, and are interpreted by individuals with vision and strategic bents. Oftentimes, statistics are simply metrics for tracking activities, as opposed to indicators of change that is needed. Corporations that are in a success mode sometimes use statistics to affirm how effective or great they are, rather than using the information to spot subtle “chinks in their armor”.
Constantly maintaining vigilance, and continually asking questions about what are the organization’s vulnerabilities are major responsibilities of those in leadership roles. There are no simple formulas–preparation does not guarantee strong performance, and statistical analyses do not ensure improved scores.
NOW, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS??
PLEASE E-MAIL ME OR WRITE ON MY BLOG. (http://www.drnorm.net/executivebusinesscoachinginflorida/)
Thanks - Dr. Norm
