When to Consider Hiring a Coach

Posted on May 9, 2013 by Dana Harrison

A third-party sounding board, thinking partner, resource, accountability coach and confidante can make a world of difference in building skills and changing behavior. Here are just a few of examples of when to consider hiring a coach:

preparing for a job transition
starting a new position
building capacity
developing high potentials
closing a performance gap.

Studies and surveys confirm the value of the time and money invested in coaching. Here is a sampling of three:

A Manchester Consulting Group study of Fortune 100 executives found that coaching resulted in an ROI of almost six times program cost.
An International Personnel Management Association survey found that productivity increase by 88% when coaching was combined with training (compared to a 22% increase with training alone)
Metropolitan Life Insurance Company found that productivity among salespeople who had participated in intensive coaching program rose by an average of 35%.

Our own experience coaching clients bears out these results. In a recent year-long project we completed with a group of high-potentials, we received this feedback:

“It forced me to think differently and stop and be proactive and not reactive.”

“Development and strategic opportunities will not be realized without making a detailed plan to aside time to think along this path.”

Download our guide: Seven Things to Consider Before Choosing a Coach. Or contact me to learn more.

Two Questions for James Struck

Posted on May 8, 2013 by Beth Claflin

As part of our spotlight on our coaching services this spring, we would like to offer our readers the opportunity to get to know our contract coaches better. Today we asked James Struck to respond to two questions we commonly receive about coaching:

1. How long do you think one should plan on it taking before attitude and/or behavioral change is seen in someone?

It is very conditional. Severity of the issue and the coachee’s awareness of the issue are the two largest determinants. Often, a person will need to ‘think’ differently about the situation before any movement can be made. That ‘thinking’ can take weeks, months, or even years depending on how invested they are in their way of thinking and acting. The second step is that once they make a shift in thinking do they know what the behavior change looks like? We make a lot of assumptions that when a person knows the change they need to make that they can make it. Sometimes they will need help in clarifying what the behavior looks like. With this said, a good coach will know what progress the coachee is making in a short amount of time (1 – 2 months), and progress is often seen in 2 – 3 months.

2. What makes someone a successful “coachee?”

My best coachees have been people who are open to learning about their behavior tendencies and highly motivated to make improvements in their effectiveness. Good coachee’s are open to learning about themselves rather than defending who they are and how they see things. From increased awareness they add a level of motivation that looks like, “I will do whatever I need to do in order to improve.” Entering a coaching relationship with these attitudes will almost always guarantee success.

Jim is owner and president of Leadership Vision, LLC, a consulting and coaching firm that focuses on maximizing personal, team, and organizational effectiveness. Before beginning his coaching business, Jim honed his understanding of how organizations and leaders excel through many years in senior business leadership positions. Most notably, he spent 21 years as president and CEO for Mutual Hospital Services.

Two Questions for Fredricka Joyner, Ph.D.

Posted on May 7, 2013 by Beth Claflin

As part of our spotlight on our coaching services this spring, we are providing readers with an opportunity to get to know our contract coaches better. Today we introduce Fredricka Joyner, Ph.D.

We asked Fredricka to respond to two questions we often receive about coaching:

1. How do you distinguish between when training is needed and when coaching is needed?

Training interventions are most appropriate when learning is related to established practices, system or process issues, or development of new technical skills. It can also be used to introduce new concepts and tools.

Coaching is more about supporting an individual in successfully integrating new skills and behaviors into their active management practice. Coaching interventions are typically focused on individual behavior changes, (sometimes very small individual behavior changes — such as learning to ask questions differently) that can make a large difference in an individual’s effectiveness.

Coaching can also be an effective way to shift habits and patterns that may be standing in the way of reaching higher levels of functioning.

2. What do you think is critical for a successful coaching relationship and how can one help ensure that happens?

The success of a coaching relationship is largely based on how the relationship is initially established. Clear, aligned expectations form the foundation for success and include explicit up-front agreements regarding goals, what/how information is shared, what approaches will be taken, logistics, etc. It is also important for the coach to authentically care about being involved in the development process of another person and for the coachee to sincerely want to engage in a development process.

Fredricka has more than 20 years of business consulting experience. She operates her own consulting business and also serves as Associate Professor at the Indiana University East (Richmond) School of Business and Economics where she directs the Center for Leadership Development and the Master’s in Management programs.

Fredricka has worked with ADVISA since 2007 designing curriculum, advising on approaches with leadership development, and delivering coaching services. She is the lead author of Engineering as a Social Activity: Preparing Engineers to Thrive in the Changing World of Work, which draws on her work using Predictive Index^® at Cummins Inc. and was published in the American Journal of Engineering Education – Spring 2012 edition.

Next: Two Questions for Jim Struck

Five Ways to Develop Your Leadership Talent Pool

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Dana Harrison

You’ve heard it before: good leaders are made, not born. Simply put, leadership is working through others to achieve results. This is often easier said than done, especially when the others may be quite different than us. Here are five ideas for how to develop a deeper pool of leaders at all levels of your organization. You can also contact us to help you develop a custom leadership development program for your organization.

1. Improve self-knowledge

The Connection Circle below shows that achieving business results through others starts with understanding oneself.

With self-knowledge, one has the capacity to harness strengths and manage weaknesses. (And we all have strengths and weaknesses.) When we are able to manage ourselves effectively, we can be more successful engaging others, and achieving business results.

As you know, Predictive Index^® is a powerful tool for working through the Connection Circle, starting with building self-awareness and moving out from there. Identify your high-potentials and send them to the PI Management Workshop™. Your leaders can shift from judging others (“She just ‘doesn’t get it.”) to understanding them and working with them in the most effective way (“She’s needing more clarity from me. I need to be more specific about what I want the final product to be.”) See PI Workshop dates.

2. Consider Coaching

Pairing training with coaching boasts ROI. But you don’t have to take our word for it. Consider:

An International Personnel Management Association survey (Jan. 2001) found that productivity increased by 88 percent when coaching was combined with training (compared to a 22 percent increase with training alone).
A Manchester Inc. study of Fortune 1000 executives (2001) found that coaching resulted in a ROI of almost six times the program cost as well as a 77 percent improvement in relationships, 67 percent improvement in teamwork, 61 percent improvement in job satisfaction and 48 percent improvement in quality
Research conducted by Metrix Global, LLC with Fortune 500 companies (2001) reveals that 58 percent of those clients whose coaching experience was limited to working on more tactical issues reported that their coaching significantly impacted the business. In contrast, 100 percent of those who’s coaching addressed more strategic issues reported making a significant impact on the business.

Learn more about our coaching services.

3. Schedule Training

Learning and growing is not a “one and done” event. Rather, it’s a process. And because adults learn best when they can experience new thoughts and ideas, not just hear about them, our group-format training includes interactive exercises and application activities. We offer a robust selection of topics for ½ and full-day sessions:

Change Management
Motivation
Decision-Making
Conflict Resolution
Communication
Performance Management
Team-Building
Using Predictive Index in Hiring
Implementing the Predictive Index at an Organizational Level
Coaching
Performance Goals and Standards

Contact me to learn more.

4. Brunch and Learn

Our monthly PI Fridays refresher webinars are an excellent opportunity to gather your trained PI analysts (those who have attended the PI Management Workshop™) around bagels and coffee. These sessions revisit PI topics first encountered during the PI training as well as give you the opportunity to ask questions. See webinar schedule.

5. Attend Our Annual PI User Group

This annual gathering of trained PI analyst deepens knowledge, sharpens skills, and refreshes enthusiasm. Generally scheduled during the fall of each year, this event includes sharing of best practices, application activities and skill-sharpening presentations. Learn more about the 2012 PI User Group meeting on Nov. 15th in Lansing, MI.

Do you have a favorite method to develop leadership talent to add to this list? Contact me or leave a comment.

Two reasons why your best 30 something employee is about to quit you

Posted on September 25, 2012 by BJ McKay

Young employees can be the most productive, energetic and powerful group in your organization. However, they are leaving companies earlier than ever. Why?

Lack of training opportunities
Lack of mentors

Read on:

Multiple studies find that today’s younger workers have absolutely no intention of sticking around if they don’t feel like they’re learning, growing and being valued in a job. Beth N. Carver, a consultant who has spent 12 years researching exit interviews, finds that a loss of training opportunities and a lack of mentors in the workplace are two of the biggest reasons why young workers leave.

At ADVISA, we provide our clients with a dozen modular training opportunities focused on leadership development, frontline management skill development, sales skill development and behavioral intelligence focused on gaining influence and providing coaching/mentoring in the work place. If you have programs like these in place for your employees, pat yourself on the back because you are investing in the right place. If not, reach out to me and learn what programs we have installed at client companies like yours to take care of their best and brightest 30 somethings.

Learn more about BJ McKay here.

Dana Harrison Named Director of Talent Acquisition and Leadership Services

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Beth Claflin

When Dana Harrison joined our team as manager of our ADVISA Hiring unit in 2009, we thought she was something special. Three years later, we have been proven right!

Dana has demonstrated her value time and again by delighting our clients as they seek new ways to address workforce and leadership issues on the path to business excellence and uncommon success. In light of her demonstrated abilities and our organizational needs, she has been named ADVISA’s Director of Talent Acquisition and Leadership Services.

In this new role, Dana will work at both the strategic and tactical levels across multiple service lines:

Recruitment Process Outsourcing (RPO) – this is the new name of what was formerly know as ADVISA Hiring
Consulting on hiring systems and strategy
Consulting on integrated hiring/appraisal systems, and leadership development (including 360 assessments and coaching utilizing offerings from the Center for Creative Leadership).

If you have not yet had the opportunity to meet Dana, please reach out to her. She would very much like to make your acquaintance – and we think you will find you are better off for it!

Link with Dana:

Read Dana’s blog.

Send Dana an email.

Letter from the Chairman: Delegation is Hard But Fulfilling

Posted on February 15, 2012 by Bob Wilson

Dear Fellow Leader:

In this inaugural issue of the “Letter from the Chairman”, I wanted to share some advice that was given to me many years ago by a CEO whose success in building his business I admired. The advice was simple and succinct, “If you want to be a successful leader, learn to delegate authority effectively. If you don’t learn this skill, your business will only grow so much as YOU can make all the important decisions that the business requires.” I’ve tried to absorb the wisdom. I’ve learned through my own mistakes and watching the successes and failures of others that delegation of authority can be made successful by taking several specific actions:

Surround yourself with people you trust
Expand trust as it’s earned
As trust increases, manage results, not activities
Find other things for you to focus on
Put parameters on your involvement with subordinates
In post mortems, focus on the decision process, not the mistakes

Let’s put a little meat on each of those bones.

Surround yourself with people you trust. You’ll never delegate authority to people you can’t put your faith in. Make sure that’s a part of the evaluation of people you have report directly to you. “Will I be able to trust them” should be a key part of the hiring or promotion equation for any person who might at some point report to you. Yes, you want them to be smart and have the right profile for the job, but if you have a difficult time trusting the person you charge with making decisions of import, you’ll never let them make those decisions to begin with.

Expand trust as it’s earned. When you have a direct report who you feel you can trust, gradually give them more and more responsibility and watch what they do with it. Early on, watch both the results and the execution. Follow what happens. Note that if you find yourself questioning how the individual executes work, challenge yourself with the questions, “Is my way really critical, or is the way they did it actually just fine (albeit different)?” The more trust you give, the more the business can grow beyond you. When your subordinates expand the business as a result of their good decision-making, give them more trust and let them decide more. Always look to expand subordinates’ capacity to decide – loosening reins as success is achieved.

As trust increases, manage results, not activities. As trust is expanded, keep yourself out of the weeds of how your subordinates accomplish their goals. Give them the space and time necessary to deliver the results that were desired. Getting involved in how people do what they do is taking back trust you’ve already given which has been justifiably earned.

Find other things on which to focus. It’s hard enough to delegate authority that has been yours. Then you must beware of finding yourself without enough to fill your time. Boredom playing at your brain isn’t a good accompaniment to delegation. If you’re planning on delegating authority to others, you’ve got to find other things for yourself to do to keep yourself from being compelled, out of boredom, to meddle. Give yourself goals, objectives, tasks, duties, something, anything to keep yourself busy outside of the realm in which you wish to delegate. If nothing else, take more vacations.

Put parameters on your involvement. Know that when you become involved in the decisions of your subordinates, you automatically have a stake in their outcomes (especially if you’re a high A). If, or when, subordinates bring you into strategic or substantive discussions about their areas of responsibility and you involve yourself, it will be your tendency to stay involved in how those decisions play out until they’ve run their course. Is that what you want? Is that what your subordinate wants? Either fence yourself off from getting involved after the decision has been made (a very hard thing to do); or, warn your subordinate whenever they ask for your help with something like, “Do you really want to ask for my help here? You do know that means I’ll be more involved than either of us want beyond my response…” Taking a Socratic approach in these discussions (questioning the thought process and helping guide rather than making decisions when guidance is required) also helps you stay out of your subordinates’ business.

When things go wrong, focus on the decision process, not mistakes. Delegation means mistakes will be made. You’ve made them and I’ve made them too. If people aren’t making mistakes, they’re not learning enough. When mistakes happen focus on, “What can we learn from this?” Conduct a post-mortem with your subordinate, but from a Socratic perspective. Have your subordinate walk you through the process of what happened asking questions like, “If you had it to do over again, would you still have come to that conclusion?” Help them discover how they could have done things differently. Many times you’ll find that they did the best they could at the time and things just didn’t go right. If you want them to succeed, create a scenario where the criticism will come from them. When it does, they’ll grow more than if the criticism comes from you.

Each step of growth you encourage and achieve with your subordinate means there is concomitant growth for you and your business. Their development allows further development for you.

True delegation is hard. You’ve built the business to where it is. Giving someone else a part of it to run is a scary endeavor. Seeing them eventually running their part successfully is one of the more fulfilling aspects of life. For me, it’s had the same impact as watching a child become a successful adult. Being successful at helping foster either is hard work. The results can be extremely gratifying. They have been for me.

I hope this has been helpful.

Bob Wilson
Chairman
ADVISA

I-It vs. I-You. How are Sales Superstars created?

Posted on November 22, 2011 by BJ McKay

I-It = Viewing people solely as instruments to be used toward our own goals. I am “I-It” when I care not at all about your feelings but only about what I want from you.

I-You = A special bond, an attuned closeness that is often-but of course not always-found between husbands and wives, family members, and good friends.

When we are in I-It mode we treat other people as means to an end. In the I-You mode, our relationship with them becomes an end in itself. (Daniel Goleman; Social Intelligence)

So, how are sales superstars created? I-You and I-It is how. Let’s define a sales superstar – an individual who consistently achieves above average revenue results while maintaining a role as a consummate team player and positive employee role model. Would you like to have more of them? Me too!

I-You and I-It cuts to the heart of this conversation. In selling situations we can find ourselves on the wrong end of an I-It conversation. The “I” is the prospect and the it, more often than not, is the sales person. The salesperson feels objectified, disrespected, made to feel small, and often a second-class citizen. That is what being “It” feels like. Not something you want to do for a living. It is unsustainable for most mere mortals.

The I-It is also a glass ceiling for sales superstar impostors. These are the individuals who produce sheer numbers but tend to be a negative influence and suffer from “too-heavy-to-handle” ego. They are the “I” and the company and clients are the “It.” Meant to serve their own ends. As you can imagine, this is also unsustainable.

I-You is the secret. “I” actually care and am interested about “You,” regardless of any positive outcomes for me — where I ask questions that strike to the heart of problems that matter to you and are relevant. Not, simply the problems that happen to be solved by my products or services. The I-You is the person who legitimately cares about others, and in turn, others trust that person. They should. These are the gems that take a reasonably good sales team and turn them into super heros.

The great news, in most cases, is that this mindset can be trained to those willing to learn them. Like anything else, there has to be a will to become better, and an authentic passion for what you are selling and the good it brings to clients.

Do you have a sincere interest in re-engineering the human side of your business? Contact me.

Communicating Effectively with an Impatient Boss

Posted on April 13, 2011 by Paul Dumouchelle

This is an occasional series describing (anonymously) a real challenge faced by one of my ADVISA clients in Ohio or Michigan and my recommendation to them based on analysis and understanding of PI®. Please let me know what topics you’d like to see included in this series.

- Paul

Communicating Effectively with an Impatient Boss

Scenario: A large service firm has multiple divisions, each of which operates on their own and is measured by their individual financial performance. My contact at the company asked me to coach one of the Division’s Controllers regarding her support for the VP responsible for the Division’s results.

PI Patterns

Divisional VP

Divisional Controller

The Issue: The Controller said she had difficulty in her face-to-face encounters with the VP. She said the VP interrupted her frequently, seemed unwilling to listen and now seemed not to respect her contributions.

PI® Analysis and Recommendation: These are two very different Predictive Index® (PI®) patterns. Beginning with the strongest PI® Drives for each person – the Controller is a Highest C with a very strong position (almost two Sigmas high) while the VP is an extremely Low, and Lowest, C.

When two people are at such opposite ends of the C Drive spectrum their natural behaviors do not create a good basis for solid communication. In this scenario I was only coaching the Controller so my recommendations focused solely on how she could adjust to the VP’s tendencies.

I first explained the very different perspectives that people with such different personalities usually have about communication. As a Highest C, the Controller believes every story starts at the beginning and much of the information leading up to the end is relevant and needs to be conveyed to put the end of the story in proper context – or, put another way, the end of the story can only be understood as it relates to everything that precedes it. As an Extremely Low C, the VP simply wants the end of the story, or, bottom line result as quickly as possible. The reason he interrupts is that he wants the Controller to jump ahead – skipping steps if necessary.

My recommendation for the Controller was to prepare for any interactions with the VP in advance and go through the “story” in her own mind but then note the ending and begin her communication with the VP with that ending.

If and when the VP catches her off guard the Controller should ask for time to research an answer then get back with the VP after she has had time to prepare along the lines described above.

The second strongest difference between the VP and Controller is that the VP is a Highest A (very strong) while the Controller is Lowest A (also very strong in the Low position). I focused on the Controller’s concern that the VP was not respecting her input. I explained that Highest A people are comfortable with conflict and respect people who will stand up for their point of view. The Controller, as a Lowest A, prefers a harmonious team environment and finds conflict unpleasant.

My recommendation for the Controller was to recognize that when the VP challenged her it was not necessarily a sign that he thought she was wrong. Such challenges are often a “test” to determine the level of conviction held by the other person as well as a means to dig into the details to determine the best answer based on available information.

I encouraged her to defend her position at least once after each challenge by the VP – and more if the situation warranted, such as when she had high confidence in her analysis. The more she stood up to the VP the more he would respect her contribution. I suggested she might want to pick a topic on which she thought she had a very strong position to try this new approach for the first time.

Change Management Strategies for Technology Adoption

Posted on March 28, 2011 by Paul Dumouchelle

Increasingly-rapid change cycles in the world of information technology require significant agility from organizational leaders.

Recognition of this reality has penetrated mainstream business even at the consumer level, as evidenced by the new “Buy Back” program from retailer Best Buy. The deadly competitive effects of slow response have recently been evidenced by the bankruptcy of book retailer Borders.

Driving technology adoption in an organization creates unique change management challenges as highlighted in this entry on “hrmtoday.com” – which provides some interesting graphical devices to consider in the technology adoption challenge.

My ADVISA clients in Ohio & Michigan can use Predictive Index® to assist in targeting early adopters in their organization. Characteristics consistent with proactivity, affinity for change, comfort with risk taking and thinking “outside the box” are measurable using Predictive Index®.

Leaders can improve the technology adoption results for their organization by building these concepts into strategic planning methods and change management plans.

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