Recently a shared status update that said, “What a crappy day already”, and it was before 9am! The odd thing is that someone replied with “Why’s that?” almost seeking to prove it true. The real question is, “Why is it NOT a crappy day?”
This is an example of giving away personal power. You can give away your personal power by shaming, blaming, or justifying. Read More
If we think about what should make leadership coaching (or any type of coaching) effective, we can rationalize that three things are needed: Coachee responsibility, Coach’s skills, and chemistry between coach and coachee. This is the same style of thinking that leads management to conclude, “Well people need and like money so we’ll use a pay for performance program”. They use less effective incentives because it seems rational and logical.
Well, researchers tested the notion that responsibility, coach’s skills, and chemistry lead to coaching effectiveness. They sent a short 8 question survey to 700 leaders who participated
in a 360 degree feedback and coaching program. In their qualitative research, they asked questions such as: Read More
How does one explain a coaching relationship? It’s much like trying to explain dancing.
They’re both difficult to put into words because of the mental, physical, and intangible experience. Much like the coaching experience, when you are dancing:
Take a moment to reflect on either yesterday’s or today’s productivity. How well did you exercise your time management? Did you run the day or did the day run you? It happens to all of us. We sit down with a mental checklist of items to get done and the next thing we know it’s been 4 hours with only a few items done. It’s really attention management.
Top performers and ultra-productive people have amazing time management skills. Tim Ferriss offers a whole section about a low information diet where he excludes all news from his reading. He has a couple of other productivity tips that we previously wrote about.
One of the simplest (not to be confused with easy) productivity techniques and time management strategies is to evaluate your work on two continuums; urgency and importance.
When determining where to allocate your time and attention, evaluate the importance of the task. And be brutal when evaluating. Think mission critical meaning it is critical to the organization’s mission.In crisis management where certain components must be delayed or eliminated, the mission critical ones must not be among them. Read More
Your top performers or high potentials are not your typical employee. They are driven, determined, and are willing to make sacrifices others won’t. They approach their work differently than your average Joe or Jane.
But what exactly sets them apart, and what can managers and leaders do to ensure these top performers don’t leave the organization?
First, let’s understand the characteristics of high performing employees: Read More
When it comes to productivity, many try apply the Nike approach of “Just do it”. This requires will power to mentally say no to distractions and to will your way through the task at hand. But will power is a depleting source. Pringles chips know this and taunt you with their “once you pop, you can’t stop” advertising. So here are a few concepts to help you systematically approach productivity:
Many hire coaches for leadership skills, personal growth, and better decision making. Yet there seems to be misunderstandings regarding coaching. Generally, it isn’t fully understood what it is and what it offers. Some claim to offer coaching are really offering training or consulting. In this post, we will parse out how coaching is the different from training, mentoring, consulting, and therapy.
We recommend that you use an assessment before (and after) coaching. Here are 5 reasons why you should use an assessment.
1. Current State: Let’s say you are going on a trip. You can find the location of the destination, but that won’t help you get there. Only after identifying the starting point can the journey can begin.
2. Reflection: A secondary benefit to establishing a current state is going through the self-reflection to define the current state. A self-assessment or 360 degree assessment helps examine how you operate. The lack of self-reflection is the biggest hurdle to self-awareness.
A new management approach being adopted is the manager as a coach. Coaching, mentoring, and individual development is becoming higher on the list of priorities for managers. Yet there isn’t a great deal of understanding what coaching is within the workplace.
It is frequently mistaken for
With the new rise in developing managers as coaches, a new term has been born: Coaching Culture. A coaching culture is an environment where insight and reflection takes place through powerful questions. The main component of coaching is asking questions. Sometimes really tough questions. Some example powerful questions include:
If a leader can ask powerful questions that help connect employees to their job and create moments of reflection, then the leader is creating a coaching culture.
How do you know when you have a coaching culture? Read More
These words express appreciation, recognition, humility, open mindedness, encouragement, and inclusiveness — Some values that go far in the workplace.
They are easy to say; try on a few today!
