If these15 statements are true for you, you might not need a coach. If, on the other hand, some of these are false for you, scroll to the bottom for links to coach directories.
Instructions: Print this out. Read each statement. Black out the "[T]" if the statement is true for you. Black out the "[F]" if the statement is not true for you. Step back and sort out what it all means. And then see the coaching directory links for help.
Dave Krueger, in addition to being a friend, is an experienced and accomplished mentor coach, and Dean of Curriculum for Coach Training Alliance. On this week's drive to Houston and back (four hours one-way), I listened to Dave's great set of CDs about coaching professionals. One quote, among many, stood out as worth sharing with you:
"If we find our selves resisting change, it's already occurred."
What does that mean to you?
I rarely talk about my business on this page. However, as I have just added four new pages explaining my business (see the links below my photograph), I thought it was time to tell you what I do for a living.
For 28 years, I worked in manufacturing in North America, New Zealand and Asia. Starting as an energy engineer, I worked my way up to CEO of a publicly-listed company in Thailand. Through most of the last ten years, my primary approach to getting business results has been through coaching those I work with.
Now I am a full-time, professional Executive Coach. (No, I am not a horse drawn conveyance from a bygone era, but I couldn't find an interesting picture that captured my profession, so I decided a homonym was just as good.)
Jeffrey Zaslow writes in "The most-praised generation goes to work" about the how much praise 20-somethings need. In "In praise of less praise," he follows up with a counter view.
In this article, I'll summarize Zaslow's key points and then sort out what I think it means for you, the business leader.
A friend of mine had an interesting question this week: "How does a manager help an 'odd duck' fit in?" Fun question. Let's see if I can do anything with it.
First of all, what is an "odd duck?" I'm going to take it to mean someone who is different from the rest of your team. Perhaps our duck has a different academic background from most of the team, or came from a different country, or is a youngster among baby boomers (or a boomer among gen-y folks).
Regardless of the details, you want to forge a strong team and you need your odd-duck to become one of the team. How might you approach the task? Here are my thoughts, but I might have this completely wrong. I would sure appreciate your corrective comments!
(Perhaps the friend who brought me this sticky question will weigh in with some ideas?)
Continue reading "How to help an "odd duck" fit into your team" »
"Without systematic and purposeful abandonment, an organization will be overtaken by events. It will squander its best resources on things it should never have been doing or should no longer do. As a result, it will lack the resources, especially capable people, needed to exploit the opportunities that arise. Far too few businesses are willing to slough off yesterday, and as a result, far too few have the resources available for tomorrow."
Peter F. Drucker, The Daily Drucker: 366 Days of Insight and Motivation for Getting the Right Things Done, page 7.
The textbook for last week's coaching clinic included the following quote, attributed to Jerry Kouzas and Barry Posner:
"To get a feel for the true essence of leadership, assume everyone who works for you is a volunteer."
What difference would that assumption make to your leadership approach?
I reported recently on Merrill Lynch's efforts to be more inclusive in order to increase diversity of thought. Ferdinand Reinke suggested that I might want to find a better model, citing his negative experience as an employee. His implication was that ML's poor past performance should cause us to reject any lessons from how they do business.
I disagree, and said so in my response. But the comment format did not give me enough room to fully explore the idea of using models in business. That's what today's article is about: why we need models in order to succeed in business, how to find them and how to use them.
Continue reading "Models - shortcuts to business learning - if used carefully" »
I am a member of Jones Partners, a group of professionals striving to increase collaboration between the Houston business community and the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management at Rice University. Last night, as part of the Partners' Thought Leadership Series, we had the opportunity to hear from Larry Stuart and Subha Barry about why diversity and inclusion matter to business.
One of your jobs as a leader is to focus the energies of your organization on a handful of priorities. You have limited resources: limited money, limited equipment, only so many people and just so much time. You can't do everything. You must cull your list down to the three to five most important things you need to get done.
But how do you do that? Here's a four step process I find helpful.
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