How would your work change if your pay was based on your performance rather than howmuch your clients like you or how much time you spend with them?I believe that neither of these (how much I’m liked or the length time I spend with my clients) is a good metric for them to achieve positive, long-term changes in their behavior.In fact, I have never seen a study that showed that clients’ love of a coach was highly correlated w...
A few years ago, former General Mills CEO Steve Sanger told nearly 100 of his colleagues: “As you all know, last year my team told me that I needed to do a better job of coaching my direct reports. I just reviewed my 360-degree feedback. I have been working on becoming a better coach for the past year or so. I’m still not doing quite as well as I want, but I’m getting a lot better. My coworkers have been helping me improve....
Can internal HR professionals do an effective job of coaching leaders? Definitely.Will most internal HR coaches be effective in coaching leaders? Maybe.My friend, Linda Sharkey, did some outstanding research on internal HR coaching when she was at GE Capital a few years ago. The findings were very clear: Not only could internal coaches do as good a job as external coaches, internal coaches often did a better job than extern...
In this short blog series with HRD Business Summit, I was asked questions that are highly pertinent to leaders, especially leaders of HR. The first question I was asked is: “why engage employees?” The simple answer: Employee engagement is critical for business success. We all agree. We want engaged employees.Employee engagement is defined by marginal effort. In other words, what are employees doing that they don’t have to d...
In a recent blog, I shared the “#1 greatest lesson for executive coaches” – to get over our own egos. To make the coaching about our clients, not about ourselves. If you took this advice to heart and are applying it, you are on your way to being a great coach!There’s another piece of advice I have for you that is critical to being a successful executive coach. Get ready, this is going to sound a little harsh. Most of the ex...
When we make plans for the future or even just today, why do we so seldom, if ever, plan on distractions? Why do we make our plans as if we are going to live in a perfect world and be left alone to focus on our work or family or whatever it is that we?re hoping to accomplish that day?This state of being able to completely focus without distraction on whatever task we assign ourselves for the day has never happened in the pa...
Are you a highly responsive person? Are you so easily triggered that you respond in an uninterrupted A to B sequence that leaves no breathing room for hesitation, reflection and choice?How does a trigger actually work within us? Why do we respond seemingly without even thinking? Are there moving parts between the trigger and the behavior? If so, what are they? And how can we gain access them?I would suggest that the more aw...
It doesn’t matter how friendly your tone is or how honey sweet you’re in a conversation and you start your sentences with one of these words (or both), the message to your recipient is “You are wrong.”What are these conversation stopping words? They are “No” and “But.”These words don’t say, “Let’s discuss this” or “I’d love to hear what you think about this” to people. They say, unequivocally, “You are wrong and I am right....
The most common problem faced by the very successful executives I meet is wanting to win too much. Winning is, of course, not bad thing — quite the opposite. But the desire to win can become a problem, especially when the topic is meaningless or trivial.To gauge my clients’ “addiction to winning,” I present them with the following case study:You want to go to dinner at restaurant X. Your spouse, partner, or friend wants to...
The #1 bad habit of successful people is winning too much. It is easily the most common behavioral problem I observe in successful people. You might think this is okay. How can winning too much be a problem? Isn’t winning too much why people are successful?No, not really, it’s oftentimes in spite of it. Winning too much is the #1 challenge for many of us, because it underlies nearly every other behavioral problem. For insta...