Author: Tejas

The sorry state of leadership…..

Why The sorry state of leadership is still prevailing in most organizations? is there any solution to The sorry state of leadership?

Here are some leadership statistics to ponder

• Only 1 in 3 employees worldwide trust their leaders – Gallup
• 58% of people said that they trust a stranger more than their boss – A Harvard Business Review survey
• 65% of employees would instead chose a better boss than get a pay raise – National boss day survey
• 57% of the employees leave because of their bosses – DDI research
• 70% of the employees are disengaged at work – World Economic Forum

Most employees say that the leaders they have worked with are mediocre at best and toxic at worse. But, unfortunately, being mediocre is not enough in today’s fast-changing business world.  In many organizations, leadership is simply uninspiring.  Often it is even worse – leadership is merely lame.

There are countless examples of leaders who disappoint us.  This is true for leaders in business, politics, religion, or any other area.  Newspaper headlines are filled with business leaders who misbehaved, put their self-interest ahead of the greater good, or stole money from their companies.  In politics, most people have to vote for less evil candidates compared with other candidates.  People often wonder this is the best we have in our political leaders.  Religious organizations are replete with scandals and cover-ups – no wonder most people have lost faith in organized religion.

How did we reach here?

In his book – The Leadership Contract – author Vince Molinaro cites four main reasons for the sorry state of leadership in organizations.

1.The heroic model of leadership

We love to believe in heroes.  A solo, all accomplishing hero is great for a movie plot. But unfortunately, when it comes to leading, the “heroic leader’ model is long dead. But we still believe in it.

A single person usually at the top of the organization knows it all and can single-handedly lead the organization to success. However, in fast-changing, globally-connected, complex organizations, this is simply impossible.

It is also risky to put all your faith in a single individual.  It takes away the focus from developing leaders at all levels of the organization – from C-suite to frontline leaders.

2.Glorification of charismatic leaders

To compound the problem of a few heroic leaders at the top, we glorify charismatic leaders and turn them into celebrities.  Business magazines and social media have turned many CEOs into charismatic leaders with a great fan following. As a result, companies give them eye-watering compensation packages and too much power.  While charisma in itself is not bad, but worshiping charisma has a darker side.

Jim Collins, in his book “Good to Great” warned of the dangers of charismatic leaders.  None of the leaders of the most outstanding companies identified by Jim Collins were charismatic. Instead, all of them had a rare combination of humility and discipline.

Walter Isaacson describes Steve Jobs as a “colossal asshole” who succeeded despite his destructive behaviors.  We see leaders glorified even when they are jerks.  We reward and celebrate these jerks.

Consequently, we forget what good leadership is all about.  Agreed that leadership is about getting results and not a popularity contest, but good leaders get results and engage people simultaneously.  While it may be OK to be harsh when a situation demands it, being a jerk all the time doesn’t make sense.

3.We promote technically brilliant performers into leadership positions

Most organizations tolerate mediocre leadership. One of the primary reasons is that organizations promote technically brilliant performers into leadership positions. For example, the salesperson who sells the most becomes the sales head.  The programmer who performs better than others becomes the project lead.

There is a flawed assumption that technically brilliant people will make good leaders. However, as an employee, becoming a team leader is probably the only choice to move up the career ladder.

Read: What are the ego traps and Leadership Derailers leaders fall for?

Leading people is an entirely different ball game.  Most people fail at it as they are not trained.  Often technically sound leaders have big egos.  Hence they may not admit that they don’t know how to lead.  They don’t ask for help.  Organizations rarely support them properly in their leadership role.  Offering E-learning modules or sending them to a two-day leadership program is not sufficient.

4.The quick-fix mentality of leadership development

We are seduced by quick fixes and overnight success in all walks of life.  Whether it is losing weight fast or getting rich quickly – we get attracted to such false claims.  Books, magazines, self-development programs promise such overnight success. But, unfortunately, it takes hard work and months and years of consistent effort to lose weight or get rich.  Chasing the latest fad doesn’t work.

Leadership is no different.  But companies still chase the latest fad in leadership development.  They want overnight results.  They send leaders to a three-day program and think that they have done enough to develop their leaders.

The leadership development industry hasn’t done enough to educate companies that quick-fix solutions are a complete waste of time, money, and effort.  Companies don’t want to hear the bitter truth, and consultants don’t want to disappoint their clients by refusing solutions that provide “quick fixes” and “overnight success.”

The quick fixes fade away quickly. Instead, it takes consistent effort and hard work over many years to develop leaders at all levels within the organization.

It is time to expect more from leadership.

Many years of mediocre leadership have lowered leadership expectations. The more we live with uninspiring leadership, the lower our expectations will become.   It is time to change that.

 

Expect and get more from your leaders.  Develop them to go from average leaders to inspiring leaders.

Develop them with our award-winning leadership coaching program that has a success rate of 95%

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

That delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (a study of 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work. Instead, individual development areas for each leader are aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team. As a result, it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short-duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results!: We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you don’t have to pay us

Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

Reference:

The leadership contract – The fine print to becoming a great leader by Vince Molinaro

Your Executive Leadership Development – Sink, Swim, or Set up for Success?

Executive leadership of any company has immense responsibility on their shoulders to steer the entire company.  Executive leadership’s collective effectiveness determines the success or failure of the entire organization.  In a company with 1000 plus employees, it is not unusual to see an executive leadership team (ELT) of 30 odd leaders.  What are you doing to develop your executive leadership team development?..

The Executive Leadership Team

In most companies, the board of directors occupies the top level of the organization and often includes the company founders and independent directors. In addition, the Board of directors usually has an advisory role.

The highest-ranking executive leadership position in any organization is the CEO or the Chief Executive Officer.  Sometimes the titles may be different – MD (Managing Director) or something else, but the function is similar.  The people who directly report to the CEO constitute the C-suite.

A list of designations that are in the C-suite usually includes the CEO, the COO (Chief Operating Officer), the CFO (Chief Financial Officer), the CIO/CTO (Chief Information/Technology Officer, the CMO/CRO (Chief Marketing/Revenue Officer), the CPO (Chief Product Officer), the CXO (Chief Experience Officer), the CHRO (Chief Human Resources Officer), etc.

The next level of corporate rung consists of people who report to the C-suite.  These titles often include designations like Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents, and Vice Presidents of specific functional areas.  The C-suite and the people who report to the C-suite make up the Executive Leadership Team (ELT) at any company.

A lot is riding on your Executive Leadership Team!

The executive leadership team, ELT, has the unenvious job of steering the organization in today’s VUCA (Volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) business world.

A lot is riding on the ELT!

Executive leadership – business results expectations

Below are some of the many expectations from the ELT

• Defining the vision
• Crafting the strategy to achieve the vision
• Do a SWOT (Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis
• Steer the company through PEST (political, economic, social, technological) changes
• Survive and thrive in the VUCA world
• Deliver profitable growth for all stakeholders

This is just the execution side.

Executive leadership team – people expectations

Here are some of the many expectations from ELT on the people side

• Communicate the direction down the line
• Attract, retain and engage the top talent
• Exhibit behaviors that are inclusive, respectful, supportive
• Inspiring and providing meaning and purpose in their work
• Listen to and act on employee’s inputs
• Hold everyone (including themselves) accountable to high standards of performance.

ELT is expected to keep up with the fast-changing and highly competitive business environment and meet the ever-increasing expectations of customers and employees.

Executive leadership development

I often ask the top leaders in organizations we consult for – How many people are on your ELT?   For one of the clients, that number was 32.   Then I ask, how many total employees are in the organization.  For this client, the number of employees was over 1500.  So 32 people are responsible for inspiring, motivate, hold accountable, and deliver results for all stakeholders through a total of 1500 employees.  That sheds light on the ELT’s responsibilities.

Regardless of its size, the Executive Leadership Team is responsible for providing leadership to the entire organization. As a result, this ELT has more impact on how the organization performs than any other group. And hence it is critical to have executive leadership development programs and solutions that include training and coaching.

My next question is – So, what are you doing to develop your ELT?  Often there is silence!  Then they will reply that we sent some of the leaders to an executive leadership training program at a B-school!  Sometimes that happened quite a few years ago. Others talk about the e-learning platforms and executive leadership training courses and solutions available to the leaders for their development.   Then there is also executive leadership coaching – a one-on-one personal approach to help the leaders grow.

Most of the time, such sporadic and disjointed leadership training is a waste of time and money. However, it is also dangerous as it gives a false sense that the company has executive leadership development solutions in training, coaching, and e-learning.

Executive leadership training is NOT working!

An estimated $100 billion is spent worldwide on executive leadership development programs.  Are they working?  How do we know that executive leadership development programs are working (or not)?  Here are some eye-opening numbers from two different surveys in 2016.

The first survey was by Mckinsey and included 52,000 leaders worldwide.

86 percent of leaders rated themselves as inspiring and good role model

What did the employees think of these leaders? The answer is in the 2nd survey!

A 2016 Gallup survey on employee engagement found that.

82 percent of employees see their leaders as fundamentally uninspiring.

What a stark contrast!  86% of the leaders rated themselves as inspiring.  Only 18% of their employees agreed, 82% clearly disagreed!

The same survey found that only 13 percent of the global workforce is engaged. In addition, 24 percent of the employees are actively disengaged.  Similar numbers are reflected in Gallup’s annual employee engagement surveys, year after year.

CEO and C-suite tenures are shrinking.  The traditional approach to leadership is outdated.  There is a huge skill gap in the approach and style of leadership required for the rapidly changing business environment of the 21st century.

Executive leadership development – Is it a top priority?

Leadership effectiveness drives business performance.  As the ELT provides leadership to the entire organization, it has more impact on its performance than any other initiative.  Their development is critical.  It may be the difference between surviving and thriving.  It is essential for sustainable growth in the long term.

This requires the continuous leadership development of the ELT.  Their development has to keep up with the rapid changes as growth and profitability are at stake.  Executive leadership training is also essential for the sustainability and survival of the organization.  Their collective leadership effectiveness determines the success or failure of the entire organization.

Executive leadership development is not an event, and it is a continuous process.  And it starts with the top! The CEO, the C-suite, and then cascade down to the ELT.

Read: Developing leaders vs. leadership development

To quote Peter Drucker –

“You cannot manage other people unless you manage yourself first.”

Good organizations don’t leave that to chance.  They engage in systematic executive leadership training that involves the entire team.  And it is a continuous process that lasts anywhere from 2-5 years.  It doesn’t stop after there.  The leadership development is cascaded down to the next level.  The world never stops changing, and executive leadership development shouldn’t either.  Progressive organizations continuously measure results.  The CEO, C-suite, and the executive leadership team drive the entire process and lead by example.

The collective effectiveness of your ELT

Most leadership development focuses on developing individual leaders.  Organizations rarely focus on the collective leadership effectiveness of their entire ELT.  If you can capitalize and utilize the collective intelligence of your executive leadership, it is an enormous competitive advantage. Individual leadership development is necessary but not sufficient.  Today, most work is done in complex, interdependent teams.  The days of a single heroic leader are all but gone.  Unfortunately, organizations still are unaware of measuring and developing the collective effectiveness of executive leadership through training and coaching.

Ineffective methods of executive leadership cascade down!

Here are some of the critical issues that plague the executive leadership

• Lack of transparency
• Politics and selfish behaviors
• Poor listening
• Lack of trust and collaboration
• Clear direction and commitment
• Lack of accountability
• Lack of courage to discuss tough issues
• Inability to admit and learn from mistakes

These factors reduce the collective effectiveness of the ELT.  And more often than not, the collective executive leadership performs well below the average intelligence of the individual members.  Hence, it is essential to measure executive leadership training and coaching effectiveness, focusing on their collective development.

To quote Peter Drucker again.

“Only three things happen naturally in organizations: friction, confusion, and underperformance. Everything else requires leadership.”

 

How effective is your executive leadership?

As part of the ELT, you cannot leverage and scale the organization until you develop the leaders.  The best way to develop others is by being a role model.  Going through the process yourself.  Understanding how it works.  And inspiring others with your behavior to become better leaders.

It is imperative that organizations simultaneously work on developing leaders individually and leadership development collectively, especially for the executive leadership through training and coaching.

Here are some questions to ponder to gauge the collective effectiveness of your SLT

• How effective is your ELT?
• How do you know that? (hint if you do not measure it, then you don’t really know!)
• How does it compare with a peer group?
• Is your ELT developing faster than the pace of change in the VUCA world?
• What behaviors are the ELT members role-modeling?
• What kind of organizational culture is it creating?

The level and consistency of the executive leadership’s collective effectiveness make the difference between an organization’s success and failure.  Often organizations focus on individual leadership effectiveness. Individual effectiveness is necessary but not sufficient for outstanding business performance. The organization cannot perform at a level higher than the collective effectiveness of its executive leadership.

The problem with executive leadership development

When asked, leaders always agree that leadership effectiveness (both individual and collective) is a primary contributor to business performance and success. In surveys after surveys, the majority of CEOs consider leadership development as their top priority.  And yet, leadership development is often relegated to the human resources department, which often struggles for attention and relevance amid competing priorities. To complicate matters further, most organizations that focus on leadership development focus on individual effectiveness and ignore the huge potential of collective leadership effectiveness.

Executive leadership Development – A huge and untapped competitive advantage

Collective leadership effectiveness and intelligence of ELT is a huge untapped potential in most organizations.

To quote Peter Senge –

“We usually dumb down when we come together. We act at the lowest common denominator.”

Most executive leadership teams’ collective intelligence and performance are well below the average intelligence and performance of the individual members.

In most ELTs, you can observe poor listening, lack of transparency, silo mentality, political caution, self-interest ahead of greater good, mistrust, withholding of opinions, lack of psychological safety, etc. —undermine the collective effectiveness. A

As a result, most leadership teams function collectively well below their members’ average intelligence. Yet, for today’s complex, global, and interdependent tasks, collective intelligence is required for breakthroughs.  As a leader, you cannot scale the organization until you understand and perform your role in developing other leaders.

Achieve sustainable growth in the NEXT normal by leveraging Executive Leadership Development

The best executive leadership program

We help our clients develop leaders individually and collectively through executive leadership training, individual coaching, and team coaching.

We offer guaranteed and measurable results, or you do not pay!

• Stakeholder centered coaching programs

Our leadership and team coaching programs are stakeholder-centered. It means that the leader’s team members are involved at every step of the 12-15 month process. First, the team members share anonymous feedback on the leader’s strengths and improvement areas. Based on the feedback, the leader selects improvement areas that are specific and customized to the individual leader. Then the team members give their inputs and suggestions on how the leader can improve – month after month. The leader implements these suggestions during their day-to-day work with the team members. They also anonymously rate the leader’s improvement via three surveys during this 12-15 month process.

• Benefits cascade to the entire team

Watching the leader make all the efforts to improve eventually spills over and cascades down to the team members. The best way to lead is to lead by example. With this process, the leader leads by example, and the impact spills over to the team. The entire team gets better. And the transition from leader development to leadership development takes root.

• Start with executive leadership coaching

We also advise our clients to cover all the leaders in an entire executive leadership team and then cascade down throughout the company. For a relatively smaller organization, the entire company may go through the process in one shot. For a larger organization, it may take 3-5 years. But it is really impactful. And helps the organization to transition from leader development to leadership development. It also has a multiplier effect as many leaders and their teams are improving simultaneously.

• Less time and money than sending people to a short duration B school program

Our coaching program that lasts from 6-12 months costs less than sending the leader to an episodic, short-term program at a reputed B-school. It also takes much less time away from work. We come to the leader (in person or virtually) and spend approximately 1-2 hours per month during the 6-12 month process. The rest of the time, the leader applies the learnings at work with their team.

• Guaranteed results or you don’t pay

In fact, we guarantee measurable results. We offer a no-growth no-pay clause for our leadership interventions. It means that if the leader does not improve, you don’t have to pay us. Who decides if the leader has improved? It is through three anonymous assessments of the leader’s improvement by their own team members.

Stop wasting money on developing leaders and start implementing leadership development in your organization today! Let us help you with leadership development and a culture of leaders at all levels in your organization. Why should you trust us?

• We are the largest leadership coaching network in the world.
• In 2020, Global Guru ranked this program the number 1 coaching development program globally!
• It is 95% effective in a study of 84,000 leaders on 4 continents
• And best of all – we work on a no-growth no-pay guarantee

Read: Which is the best leadership development program?

Schedule a no-obligation conversation to find out more.

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

References:

Mastering Leadership: An Integrated Framework for Breakthrough Performance and Extraordinary Business Results

Business coaching is one of the best tools available for the growth and success of small and medium enterprises.

Business coaching context:

Starting a business is not easy.  Sustaining and growing is even more difficult in an ever-changing VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) business environment. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 70% of the small businesses (with 500 or fewer employees) fail within the first decade.  Most fail to reach annual revenue of $10 million, and the minority reach $100 million in annual revenue.

Why is business success elusive?

In the last two decades, the way we do business has changed drastically. Think about the trends and disruptions

• Globalization of markets and supply chain
• Internet, smartphones, worldwide connectivity
• Rapid changes aided by technology
• Global competition and continuous change
• Changing customer needs and high expectations

These factors impact businesses in both positive and negative ways. Small and medium businesses that anticipate and adapt to these changes usually survive and thrive.  Businesses that fail to change their strategy and approach may suffer or even go out of business.

Business coaching for business success.

Many factors account for a business’s success (or failure): the right product, the right time, good marketing, unique niche, or even plain luck.  However, one factor that consistently predicts the long-term success of any business is the quality of the leadership in the company.  To grow the company, the leaders need to grow. So it starts from the top – the owners, the promoters, and the top management team (CEO, CXO, etc.). The impact of good and not so good leadership can easily be seen in the business performance over the long term.  Obviously, the owners and promoters of the business are the driving force in small and medium enterprises. Therefore, the company cannot grow beyond its own growth. Business coaching is one of the best tools to support business owners, proprietors, CEOs, and senior leadership teams.

What exactly is business coaching?

The job of a CEO or a business owner is not easy.  At a lower level, an employee can discuss things with their supervisor. But, who does a CEO bring his issues to?  Where can the business owner reflect his ideas, get clarity, and get support – in a confidential conversation?  Obviously, a business owner cannot discuss his worries, concerns, fears, plans, problems, etc., with their employees.  It is ironic and sad that the person whose development will have the largest impact on the company usually cannot ask anyone for help. In addition, business owners are constantly bombarded with urgent issues.  When do they get time to think, plan and reflect without being interrupted?  Without the time to think and reflect, the business owner can make rash and reactive decisions that may impact the owner’s effectiveness and the business performance. That is where a business coach comes in.  Business coaching creates a pause, a safe and confidential environment for the leader to think, reflect, and re-organize priorities.

Read: CEO coaching – the what why and how of it

Business coaching – Why do we need it?

Most business owners are self-made. However, they are also hands on.

Many business owners have difficulty in transitioning from owner operated business to a professionally managed business.

What brought them to this level of success in business stops them from reaching the next level of success. Business coaching provides the mindset, skillset, and toolset to help the leader make this transition. Think of the Olympics or any professional sport.  Every successful athlete or sportsperson has a coach. From school level athletes all the way to professional level sports, everyone has a coach. This is true even for those who are the best in the world. But, if they are the best in the world, why do they need a coach?  The coach provides an outside perspective, holds the athlete accountable, and supports them continuously. No athlete would ever think of “doing it alone.”  It is not possible to compete at any level without the help of a coach.  Why should business be different?  In a highly competitive, constantly changing, and disruptive business world, it is difficult for a small or medium business owner to do it all alone.  Just like the athletes have a sports coach, business owners hire a business coach to help them and their business reach higher levels of success and avoid the pitfall that is part of a competitive business environment.

How can the business coach help?

The business coach can help with one or more of the following areas of business skills.

• Create a shared vision
• Set the right strategy
• Design and implement processes
• Hire the right talent
• Lead and inspire employees
• Stay ahead of continuous change
• Build partnerships within and outside
• Get more work done efficiently from the team

Business coaching can also help with developing the leader individually

• Provide an outside perspective and act as a sounding board
• Understand own strengths and improvement areas
• Gain clarity and decide on improvement areas
• Create, commit and make progress on your action plan with small, consistent actions
• Get satisfaction and fulfillment from your career
• Survive and thrive in the next normal and a VUCA world
• Future proof your leadership skills
• Become a coaching leader

Business coaching has gone from “remedial” to essential.

Two decades ago, most business owners wouldn’t dare to admit that they had hired a business coach!  Most people would look down on them.  Why do you need business coaching?  Don’t you know your own business?  Is there something wrong with you?  Are you not smart enough?  Business coaching was looked upon as “remedial.”  It was needed to “fix” an incompetent leader or business owner. Today, we have come around a full circle.  In industry meets and around the conference tables, business coaching is discussed openly.  Small and medium business owners routinely ask one another if they knew a good business coach and if they could provide their references.  Smart business owners are taking advantage of business coaches to grow and stay ahead of the competition.  Business coaching has become essential and is considered a competitive edge.

Most of the Fortune 500 companies use coaching to develop leaders and to improve performance and productivity.  Why should small and medium business be left out?

How to select the right business coach?

In sports, the top players seldom become great coaches.  What is the main reason?  Coaching requires a different skill set.  When you are a player, you do things yourself.  When you are a coach – you have to use many skills like motivating, reflecting, building relationships, instilling discipline, supporting growth, accountability, and many more. While good working knowledge is necessary, it is in no way sufficient to make a good coach. Here are some of the criteria and questions to ask to select the right business coach

• Can the coach support you?
• Will the coach challenge you?
• Can the coach collect and deliver honest feedback?
• Does the coach have a structured and validated process?
• Does the coach maintain confidentiality?
• Will the coach help change the leader’s behaviors AND the team’s perception?
• Does the coach practice what he preaches?  Role models the right behaviors?
• Does the coach have relevant experience in coaching?

For more details on selecting the coach, please read my articleHow to find the best executive coach for you or the leaders in your organization

A majority of the owners don’t get the business coaching they need:

According to many surveys, 90% of the small business CEOs don’t get the business coaching they really need. There may be many reasons for this.  Many business owners are not aware that business coaching exists.  Some other owners believe in the old paradigm that they are weak or incompetent if they ask for help.  Others don’t know where to find a business coach or how to evaluate business coaching.

Without proper business coaching, the business owners and top leaders perform well below their potential.  And consequently so does their business!

Get the best business coaching today.

We bring a tried and tested process for business coaching that has a 95% effectiveness rate. We offer our New Age Leadership – NAL Triple Advantage Business Coaching. That delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (a study of 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders. Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching.

Time and resource-efficient:The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work. Instead, individual development areas for each leader are aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team. As a result, it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short-duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results! : We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you don’t have to pay us.

Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today

SCHEDULE NOW!

 

Competency framework-based leadership development -Why is it NOT working? And what can you do to make it work?

For the last three decades, organizations have increasingly used the competency framework for leadership development.  An estimated 80% of the large organizations use competencies to design and implement their learning and leadership development activities.

At the same time, the numbers on the effectiveness of leadership development initiatives are shocking and depressing.

The promise of competency framework based leadership development:

Here is the promise of using a competency framework for leadership development

• Identify the specific competencies (a combination of knowledge, skills, attitude, and traits essential for successful job performance) of successful leaders in a particular organization.
• Then define and refine these competencies to develop a competency framework (a list of competencies).
• This competency framework then becomes the benchmark against which the company selects, develops, rewards leaders.  If a leader possesses many of the competencies on the list, they have a higher chance of succeeding in their roles.
• Leaders are assessed based on the competency framework.  Any gaps are identified.  The goal of leadership development is to close these competency gaps.
• All the learning and leadership development activities are designed to enhance one or more of these competencies.

How competency frameworks are defined

If a company, ABC widgets, wanted to adopt a competency framework, here is the typical process they would follow, usually with the help of an external consultant.

• Study what do the best leaders have in common
• Analyze performance management, 360-degree feedback, leaders’ behaviors, interviews, etc.
• Prepare a draft list of competencies specific to the organization
• Get inputs, buy-in, and confirmation from top executives (CEO and the C-suite)
• Finalize the list of competencies to be used organization-wide

This list of competencies or the competency framework becomes the holy grail against which all leadership development efforts would revolve.

On paper, this process seems logical, reasonable, and scientific.

Why hasn’t competency-based leadership development worked?

While the competency framework provided a structured approach to talent management, competency-based leadership development hasn’t lived up to its promise.  The statistics on the effectiveness of leadership development initiatives are both shocking and depressing.

• In a recent survey, 80% of the CEOs thought leadership development initiatives in their own organizations had a little business impact.
• Kristi Hedges, a Forbes  magazine contributor, wrote in her aptly titled article – “If you think most leadership development is a waste of time, you may be right.”

Despite being used for three decades, competency-based leadership development has yet to deliver on the promise of improving the effectiveness of leadership development.

Read: Is your leadership development effective? Or is the money going down the drain?

Authors Zenger and Folkman (in their book The Extraordinary leaders) list these four flaws in the competency-based leadership development movement.  They present these findings based on large-scale studies of thousands of leaders in various organizations with diverse geographical locations.

Competency frameworks are too complex

It is quite common to see competency frameworks in organizations consisting of a dozen or more competencies.  Each of these competencies has four to six associated behaviors.

These behaviors are different for different levels of leaders.  Most companies have three or more levels – individual contributor, manager, function head, division head, etc.

Think about your organization.  What is the total number of competencies?  How many total corresponding behaviors do you have to be aware of?

How many different levels of leadership do you have to differentiate competencies for?  Just do the math, and you will see that there may be dozens of competencies and hundreds of behaviors to understand and develop.

It is practically impossible to track and develop such a large number of behaviors for the individual leader, their manager, and the talent development team.

Competency frameworks are based on incorrect assumptions

Here are some incorrect assumptions about competencies

Each company has a distinctive competency framework:  While there are some differences, the behavioral competency frameworks in most organizations are largely similar with just different semantics.

Each competency is discrete and distinct:  Nearly all competencies are linked to other similar competencies.  When a leader gets better in one competency, there is a spillover effect in one or more of the other competencies.

All competencies are of equal importance:  Traditional way to develop leaders is to improve upon the competencies the leader got a low score. Unfortunately, this assumption of removing weaknesses is ineffective.  It is much better to leverage two or three strengths that the leader possesses.

The only exception is if the competency gap is a “fatal flaw” that is so glaring that it distracts from the leader’s strengths.

Competency frameworks have unintended consequences

As the competency framework is complex and cumbersome, there are some unintended consequences.  Here are just a few of the unintended consequences.

• It becomes a check-the-box activity for the leader and the talent development team.
• The focus is on removing deficiencies. The focus should be on leveraging a few strengths.
• It is a cookie-cutter approach that tries to fit everyone in similar boxes.  In a rapidly changing world, having an entire team of identical people could be disastrous.
• Complacency – Leaders who get better than average scores within the organization become complacent. Companies end up with a lot of average leaders instead of aspiring them to become outstanding leaders.

Poor execution of the competency framework

Competencies aren’t selected based on rigorous research: The competency framework should ideally be created based on solid research that differentiates the top performers in a particular organization.   However, this doesn’t really happen.

Consultants bring a standard list of competencies, eliminate a few low-priority competencies based on organization, and share the list with the top executives in the C-suite.

The CEO and the C-suite executive tinker around with the framework till they are satisfied.  The consultants are usually happy to oblige.  If a CEO says that a particular competency is important, it is simple and easy to add.

It focuses on what brought success in the past:  Even when based on thorough research, competency frameworks focus on past successes.  It tells you what made leaders successful in the past.

As we all know, in today’s VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous – world companies are continuously undergoing transition. What worked well in the past is rapidly getting obsolete.

Companies have to adapt and change quickly.  Adhering to a backward-looking competency framework may be a trap that may jeopardize future success.

Hiring and developing is still not competency-based:  Although the human resources department is the custodian of competencies, they seldom find their way into the hiring process.  With too many competencies and even more associated behaviors, it isn’t easy to integrate a competency framework in hiring and designing developmental activities.

How to get competency frameworks right

Here are some tips to get the competency framework right.

Identify and develop the right competencies

Which are the competencies that really matter?  Has your organization done thorough, rigorous, and validated research to define which competencies matter?  If that is not the case, it is best to use a standard set of well-researched and validated competencies.

GLA 360 instrument, which measures the 15 top competencies of today’s global leader. These competencies include a focus on both tasks and people.  They also include timeless competencies to model past successes and emerging competencies to ensure future success.

Read: Measure 15 competencies of today’s global leaders with Global Leadership Assessment GLA 360

Compare scores with the Global norm group Many organizations rate their own leaders on their standard competency framework.  Then a leader’s score is compared with average scores for all leaders within the organization. This gives leaders a false sense that they are OK if they score above average.

If you are the best student in your own school, it is good.  But when you compete at a University level, you are just one of the many best students of their own schools.

It raises the bar of performance.  Don’t let them get complacent. Challenge your leaders to aspire to be the best.

Compare your leaders to a global norm group of leaders.  Our GLA 360 helps your leaders compare where they stand against the global group of leaders.

Leverage strengths except in the case of  “fatal flaws.”

Do you remember your last performance management review?  Your boss probably complimented you, albeit briefly, about your strengths.  Then immediately, he/she went on to discuss your “weaknesses” and advised you to improve upon them.  Even for 360-degree report debriefing, the focus is on remedying weaknesses instead of leveraging strengths.

This is an inefficient approach to leadership development. To quote Albert Einstein – if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.  It is easier and more efficient to teach a fish to swim better and faster than to teach it how to climb a tree!

Similarly, it is more effective for leaders to get better in their strengths instead of focusing on the improvement areas.

However, there is one exception.  It is when the leader’s weakness is a “fatal flaw” or a “bottleneck.”  Here is an example of a fatal flaw.  When I say the name Bill Clinton, what comes to mind?

Although he was an extremely effective and popular president, the first thing that comes to people’s minds is his affair with Monica Lewinsky.

A fatal flaw casts a shadow on everything else a leader does.  In such cases, it is important to work on the bottleneck or the fatal flaw.  In all other cases, it is more effective to focus on leveraging the leader’s strengths.

Enroll and involve the leader’s team in leadership development

The leader’s team members are in the best position to judge whether the leader has changed her behavior. Whether or not the leader is improving.

They can also provide valuable inputs about what behaviors the leader should start or stop to improve a particular competency. Involving team members increases accountability and helps leaders improve quickly and efficiently.

Our NAL triple advantage coaching process is team-centered.  It is highly efficient, with a success rate of 95%.  It is based on the 15 competencies of today’s global leaders and it guarantees measurable leadership growth.

Read: A Coaching program with 95% success rate

Conclusion:

While the competency framework is a good start, it has severe practical limitations.  Competency-based leadership development hasn’t lived up to its promise. Some workarounds will overcome the flaws and enhance the effectiveness of your competency-based leadership development initiatives.

We offer a GLA 360 assessment, which measures the leader on the top 15 competencies of today’s global leader.  We also compare the leader’s ratings to a norm group of global leaders.

We also offer stakeholder-centered coaching for developing your leaders.  While most leadership development fails to deliver measurable results and business impact, our approach guarantees it!  If your leaders do not improve measurably, you don’t have to pay.

Read:What are the best executive coaching programs? Which are the top executive coaching firms?

Choose the right competencies and right approach to develop your leaders

We offer our New Age Leadership – NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching that delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth. It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on four continents). Companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 use this process to develop their leaders.

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

We offer our New Age Leadership Triple advantage coaching that delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on 4 continents).

It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching.

Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Individual development areas for each leader aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short-duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results! : We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you simply don’t have to pay us.

Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today. No obligation and no sales pitch.

SCHEDULE NOW!

Reference:  The Extraordinary Leader by Zenger & Folkman

Qualities of a leader – based on validated research

Qualities of a leader.  Instead of compiling a random list of leadership qualities, I will discuss fifteen leadership qualities based on research on real leaders in large organizations across the six continents.

A leader’s two primary responsibilities

To understand the qualities of a leader, let us first think about a leader’s job.

Any leader has basically primary responsibilities – and both are interrelated.

1. Deliver results by getting work done to achieve the organizational goals
2. To retain those people by looking after their wellbeing.

Task & people focus

The first point refers to the qualities of leaders to deliver results or task competencies.  The second point refers to the leadership qualities and competencies to engage, inspire and retain people. In other words – people competencies.  If a leader only focuses on results, she may lose people.  It is a short-term gain for a long-term loss.  If a leader only focuses on people at the cost of business outcomes, the leader is not doing her job and may not remain a leader for long.

Think about some of the best leaders you have worked for or worked with.  What did they do?  Think about some of the worst leaders you have worked with or worked for.  What did they do?  The chances are that they struck the right balance between caring for people and focusing on business results.  Good leaders support and empower people, hold them accountable, and inspire them to achieve business goals.

The 15 qualities of today’s global leader

This list is not a random compilation of the miscellaneous qualities of a leader.  These qualities come from our Global Leadership Assessment GLA 360, which measures today’s global leaders’ essential competencies.  These qualities of a leader are based on research on real leaders in actual companies.

The research included actual leaders in real companies.  The study included CEOs of Fortune 100 companies.  It also included global thought leaders in the area of leadership.  It included geographically diverse leaders and executives on six continents.   You can safely say this list includes real-life leadership qualities and real-life competencies required for success in today’s global business world.

These 15 qualities are grouped into 5 clusters.

1. Qualities of a leader:  The Communication cluster

The first cluster of leadership qualities is about communication and includes three competencies. 

1. Integrity

To quote Warren Buffet- I look for three things when hiring people.  Integrity, intelligence, and energy.  But if they don’t have the first – don’t bother about the other two.

People are constantly assessing whether the leader is trustworthy and reliable.   If the leader doesn’t have integrity, people won’t trust the leader.  If they don’t trust the leader, they won’t believe in what the leader says. 

Integrity is a fundamental leadership quality.  It is timeless.  A hundred years ago, people expected their leaders to have integrity. 

Decades ago, Dwight D. Eisenhower called integrity the supreme leadership quality.

“The supreme quality for leadership is unquestionably integrity. Without it, no real success is possible, no matter whether it is on a section gang, a football field, in an army, or in an office.”

I am willing to bet that integrity will be an essential leadership quality even a hundred years from now.

Leaders themselves have to be honest and ethical in dealing with people at all levels and all the time.  They have to clarify their values and lead by example to live their values.  They are willing to take a stand for what they believe in.  They also have to hold others to high levels of integrity. 

2. Vision

Vision is what separates a leader from a competent manager.  Leaders have a clear picture in their minds for where they want to take people.  They want to bring followers to a place that is much better than the current place.  Leaders share and articulate this vision so that it inspires followers to sign up for this arduous journey.  A good vision influences people to put in the hard work needed to achieve the vision for the greater good of all.  A good leader creates a strategy and prioritizes the tasks to make the dream a reality. 

“Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” Warren G. Bennis

3. Communication

Effective communication is an essential leadership quality.  Often people think that communication is about speaking.  Communication is a lot more about genuine listening.  It is about understanding others’ perspectives, even when leaders disagree with that perspective.  Good leaders also have an excellent quality of asking people for feedback on how they can get better and then act on that feedback.  They don’t get defensive when someone criticizes them.  They keep an open mind and consider everyone’s ideas, opinions, and perspectives.

“The art of communication is the language of leadership.” James Humes

Read:How to become a better leader? What does it take?

2. Qualities of a leader:  Engaging people cluster

The second cluster of leadership qualities is about engaging and inspiring people and includes three competencies. 

1. Supporting people

A good leader inclusive and treats people with dignity.  Good leadership quality treats everyone with respect irrespective of their gender, race, age, or culture.  Good leaders ask people what they need to do their best work.  They provide all the tools and training required for people to do their jobs well.  They provide timely and constructive feedback, coach and mentor people to lead them to a path of continuous improvement.  They give credit, praise people, and recognize good work.

“You never know when a moment and a few sincere words can have an impact on a life.” – Zig Ziglar.

Good leaders have a positive energy that charges people up. They never miss a moment to support people and develop their confidence.

2. Collaboration

Most of the work done today requires the diverse expertise of multiple employees.  Good leaders have a collaborative approach, not a competitive one.  Good leaders view co-workers, suppliers, and customers as partners.  They build cohesive teams, both within the organization as well as with external parties.  They reprimand behaviors that undermine teamwork and collaboration.

The term frenemy describes today’s business environment very well.  A frenemy is a friend plus enemy.  Many companies today are competing in certain areas while collaborating in other areas. One such example is Apple and Samsung.  While they compete for patents, technology, and customers in some areas, Apple is also the largest Samsung customer for smartphone screens.  Good leaders build partnerships and create a network of relationships within and outside of the organization to achieve the current business goals and steer the company in the right direction for future growth.

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” Michael Jordan

3. Share leadership

The 20th-century paradigm of leadership was power and control.  Leaders have to share power and authority with others in today’s flatter organizations that need to be nimble and agile.  Good leaders defer to others who have more expertise and technical knowledge.  They keep an eye on the greater good of all instead of hoarding power for themselves.

They work with others instead of having a silo mentality of getting into fiefdoms.  They take inputs from all to arrive at a decision instead of steamrolling their way.  They work on breaking silos and creating opportunities for cross-functional teams to work together.

“I start with the premise that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.”  —Ralph Nader.

Read: Your Executive Leadership Development – Sink, Swim or Setup for Success

3. Qualities of a leader:  Inclusion cluster

The third cluster of leadership qualities is about people inclusion and has three competencies. 

1. Empower others

The primary job of a leader is to get work done through others.  Good leaders make it easier for others to do their best work.  They build people’s competence and confidence.  They give people space and the freedom to do their work in a way that best suits them.  They provide enough authority for people to make their own decisions.  They have faith in their people.  They allow them to make mistakes and learn from them instead of jumping in and micromanaging people.

“Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.”—Jack Welch.

2. Global mindset

Today we live in a flat world that is hyper-connected.  Advances in technology and supply chain have made it possible for companies to produce goods and services anywhere in the world. It is cost-effective and sells it anywhere in the world where it is most profitable. 

Globalization impacts all businesses.  A good leader continuously makes an effort to look outside of the organization, look at the larger picture, gain the experiences and exposure needed to succeed in a global and interconnected world.  They understand trends, incorporate them into decisions, and help others understand the threats and opportunities created by globalization.

Globalization is a fact, because of technology, because of an integrated global supply chain, because of changes in transportation. And we’re not going to be able to build a wall around that. Barack Obama

3. Appreciate diversity

Good leaders appreciate the contribution of a diverse workforce.  They celebrate diversity of age, gender, ethnicity, ideas, and personalities.  They can make people valued and appreciated for who they are and what they bring to the organization.  They value the importance of diversity of ideas and opinions.  They have the uncanny ability to motivate people from all backgrounds.  They make a concerted effort to understand and engage with diverse groups of people.

It is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences. ~Audre Lorde

4. Qualities of a leader:  Delivering results cluster

The fourth cluster of leadership qualities is about achieving business outcomes and includes three competencies. 

1. Leverage technology

Technology has transformed how business gets done.  It has drastically changed how we live and work.  Today, a successful leader has to keep up with technology and leverage it to improve productivity, speed, and service.  They have to hire and empower people who have the right technological expertise.

Jeff Bezos at Amazon is one example of a leader who understands technology and leverages it to help the organization succeed.

“Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.” Stewart Brand

2. Customer focus

Any business that does not focus on satisfying customers will soon be out of business.  Good leaders see the organization and its operation from the perspective of customer’s needs. They inspire others to attain high levels of customer satisfaction.  They listen to the customer’s voice.  They understand that customers do have other options and value their inputs to deliver better products and services.

“There is only one boss. The customer. And he can fire everybody in the company from the chairman on down, simply by spending his money somewhere else.” Sam Walton

3. Deliver results

Leaders are ultimately accountable for delivering business results.  A good leader has a get things done contagious attitude.  There is a continuous focus on reducing costs and cycle time, improving customer satisfaction, and delivering better products and services.  Good leaders focus on providing value to all stakeholders – customers, employees, vendors, and investors.

“Results matter! They matter to your credibility.” Stephen R. Covey

“Whether it’s Google or Apple or free software, we’ve got some fantastic competitors, and it keeps us on our toes.” Bill Gates

5. Qualities of a leader:  Managing change cluster

The fifth and final leadership qualities cluster is about managing change and includes three competencies. 

1. Personal Growth

A good leader understands their own strengths and improvement areas.  They focus on continuous learning and self-improvement.  Learning and development are part of the job.  Good leaders are humble enough to know that they don’t know everything.  They involve others who complement their improvement areas to get things done.  In a world where the change is rapid, and the half-life of many education programs are five years or less, continuous learning and personal growth are essential leadership qualities.  Good leaders role model learning and personal growth.

Improvement begins with I. Arnold H. Glasow.

2. Anticipating Opportunities

While a leader’s job is to deliver present results, they also have to anticipate future growth.  They have to “see around the corners” and see trends and inflection points ahead of time to avoid threats and exploit opportunities.  Good leaders invest time, money, and effort to keep updated with future trends.  They also inspire other people to do the same.  They develop new ideas and plans to stay ahead of trends and take advantage of opportunities.

Kodak and Nokia are an example of companies where leaders could not anticipate future opportunities despite tell-tale signs.

“Opportunity is everywhere. The key is to develop the vision to see it.” Anonymous

3. Managing Change

Change and disruptions are part of the 21st century globally-connected and technology-enabled business world.  Hence managing change is a critical leadership quality for today’s leaders.  Instead of embracing the status quo, the leader should challenge the status quo.  Change is the only constant.  A leader should see the change as an opportunity and not a problem.  A good leader inspires employees to drive change and innovation continuously.  New ideas, experimentation, and implementation are how the leader ensures to manage and utilize change.

“Even if you are on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” Will Rodgers

In Conclusion

These are the 15 qualities of a global leader today.  How do you or the leaders in your organization rate on these top 15 qualities of a leader? A straightforward way to find out is to administer a 360-degree feedback assessment.  We offer GLA 360, which is multi-rater feedback of the leader on these 15 qualities.  It compares the leader’s scores with a norm group of global leaders for benchmarking the leader’s qualities.

Learn more about GLA 360

GLA 360 allows the leaders to know about their strengths and improvement areas.  We offer leadership coaching to help the leader leverage their strengths and develop in their improvement areas.

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

We offer our New Age Leadership Triple advantage coaching that delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader:Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Individual development areas for each leader aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short-duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results! :We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you simply don’t have to pay us.

Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

What is a learning organization?

A learning organization is a group of people working together to enhance their capacities to create results they really care about.  – Peter Senge

In fact, Peter Senge popularized learning organization in his groundbreaking book – The Fifth Discipline – published in 1990.  Peter Senge was a visionary who saw how the world was changing and why learning was a key driver or performance, way ahead of its time.  In 1990, many of today’s technologies were in their infancy – internet, world wide web, smartphones, cellular connectivity, and computing capability. The enormous advances in these technologies have drastically changed the way we live and work.

Do we need learning organizations?

Today’s business environment has been aptly described by the acronym VUCA – volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.  The speed of change is fast and getting faster.  Rapid change and disruptions are the norms. There are uncertainty and ambiguity around strategy and implementation.  Work is complex and needs cross-functional teams with diverse expertise.  The world has become flatter, and competition is global.

The average tenure of an S&P 500 company is shrinking. So are product cycles. So are competitive advantages.  Yesterday’s business models are already outdated or will be soon.  Kodak, Nokia, Blockbuster, etc., are just a few of the examples of companies who held on to their extremely successful business models just a little longer than they should have.  They tried to change, but it was too little too late. 

The high cost of not learning

The half-life of any degree is estimated at 5 years and shrinking fast.  Half of what a fresh graduate learns in a degree program will be outdated in 5 years or less.  Think about the employees in your organization. What would happen if they didn’t learn anything new since they joined the company?  Would it impact performance?  Could you still keep up with a competitor that focuses on organizational learning and invests in employee development so they keep up?  Creating a learning organization needs time, money, and relentless efforts.  But the alternative is worse.  Consider the classic dialogue between CEO and CFO

CFO asks CEO – What happens if we invest in developing our people, and then they leave us?

CEO replies – What happens if we don’t, and they stay?

In today’s VUCA business environment, investment in learning is essential to survive and thrive. However, relentless focus on results at the cost of ignoring organizational learning is penny-wise and pound foolish.

Learning organizations have a huge competitive advantage.

To survive and thrive in a VUCA world, organizations must adapt, explore, experiment, and innovate.  And none of this can be done without continuous learning both at the individual and the organizational levels. Learning faster than the pace of change is essential to survive and thrive.  Learning organizations can respond to change quickly. They can unlearn and relearn quicker to stay ahead of disruptions.  They unlearn outdated or ineffective practices and develop innovative products, services, and business models to meet and exceed customer needs better than the competition.  They can address problems quickly and efficiently.  They also tend to attract and retain the best talent.

Individuals and organizations must continuously learn and adapt or risk becoming obsolete. As a result, individuals may become unemployable, and organizations may go out of business. 

Benefits of becoming a learning organization

Most of the work done today is complex. It requires contributions from multiple team members with diverse expertise.  A learning organization can utilize the collective intelligence of these diverse teams.  It unlocks individual employees’ potential and aligns their efforts to learn, change, innovate, and grow.

There are several benefits of creating a learning organization.  Here are a few of them

• Attract and retain talented employees
• Enhances an employees sense of purpose and engagement
• Reduced employee turnover
• Open sharing of knowledge
• Learning from mistakes
• Better teamwork and collaboration
• Increase ability to change and adapt
• Continuous change and innovation
• Better problem solving and decision making
• Improved efficiency and productivity

When employees learn, they grow and thrive, which in turn helps the company grow and thrive. Conversely, when the learning stops, both employees and the organization stagnate. 

Leader’s role in creating a learning organization

The first step towards building a learning organization is to create a learning culture.  According to Russell Sarder, the author of the book – Building an Innovative learning organization – there are four components of building a learning culture.

1. The right leaders
2. The right people
3. The right behaviors
4. The right resources

Transforming the culture to a learning culture takes time, effort, and commitment from the top management.  But the rewards of such a culture are worth the effort. 

The right leaders

The leader who wants to create a learning organization must have a vision.  The leader must sincerely believe that learning is a key competitive advantage. Be a promoter or learning every day.  Communicate the value of learning to everyone in the organization.  Paint a picture of how learning will allow the organization to achieve its vision and mission.

If you are a leader, you are always leading by example.  Whether you know it or not, whether you like it or not, whether you want it, you are leading by example!  What kind of an example are you setting for others to follow?  What behaviors are you role modeling to others?  Eventually, these behaviors cascade down and create a culture for your team. 

What behaviors should a leader role model create a learning culture? 

Be a lifelong learner.  Be open to new ideas.  Be teachable.  Be curious.  Ask questions and listen carefully.  Learn from everyone, especially those who are at a lower level of the corporate ladder.  Share what you learn.  Encourage others to share ideas, feedback, suggestions openly with other team members.  Make learning collaborative, not competitive.

The right people

To transform the culture into a learning culture, you need the right people. These people have both the right mindsets and the right skills. In addition, they should have a track record of having a learning mindset and delivering organizational learning. Today organizational learning is a complex issue that requires expertise from a variety of fields. In addition, there are a variety of tools and methods that need specific expertise.

Online learning, blended learning, instructor-led learning, off-shelf courses, custom-designed courses, microlearning, mobile learning, instructional design, learning management systems are just some of the many aspects of organizational learning today.

To manage it, you need experts from various fields – Instructional design, administrators, content creators, marketers, computer experts, and more.

To oversee all of it, you need a position of CLO or chief learning officer.  Learning technologies are constantly changing.  The right people will ensure that the organizational learning keeps up with and leverages technologies to help the employees learn – anytime, anywhere, on any device – in a way that engages them and challenges them.

The right behaviors

Eliciting the right behaviors from employees is a task that is both challenging and rewarding.  The right behaviors create the right culture where engagement and performance can flourish.  The wrong behaviors create a toxic culture with a vicious cycle of disengagement and underperformance.  Culture change starts with the top leaders and cascades down from there.  It is a long-term commitment by the senior leadership team.  The top leaders need to lead by example and role model the right behaviors for others to follow.  Just lip service doesn’t do the job. 

The leaders themselves have to be humble and teachable.  They themselves have to demonstrate a commitment to continuous learning and change.  They have to create an environment where people can speak up, express opinions, and bring up problems without fear of being embarrassed, ridiculed, or punished. Leaders have to create an environment of psychological safety. 

Read: Leadership development plan example template – a real-life case study.

Learning, change and innovation cannot happen unless employees feel psychologically safe.  They feel comfortable challenging decisions, expressing opinions, giving candid feedback, and admitting mistakes so everyone can learn from them. 

Besides, the leaders have to understand the learning needs and the learning style of their teammates.  This can be done through well-structured one on one meetings.  This one on meetings works best when they are short, informal, and frequent.  Many organizations are changing their performance management meetings between the managers and subordinates (that happens once in a quarter or even a year) to performance conversations that happen weekly fortnightly or at least once a month. 

The right resources

All organizations aspire to become learning organizations. However, to translate these good intentions into concrete results, organizations need to allocate proper resources to learning. 

Progressive organizations understand that learning is not something that you besides work, but see learning as an integral part of work.  Hence they give learning due importance.  They allocate time and budget and provide resources.  They hold leaders accountable for business results and learning. Learning is part of their KRAs and KPIs.

The first critical resource is money.

One example of a company that prioritizes organizational learning and allocates money is General Electric (GE).  GE includes learning and development spending on their line-item budget year after year. So instead of just paying lip service to “learning is important,” they put their money where their mouth is! 

For any company wishing to become a learning organization – money has to be allocated on an ongoing basis for various resources, some of which are listed below.

• Deigning and purchasing – Internal and external learning programs
• Training rooms, equipment, and material
• E-learning and mobile learning
• Learning management systems
• Various software and technologies that aid learning
• Administration, monitoring, and evaluation of the entire learning operation
• Travel and accommodation

The second critical resource is time.

Employees need time away from work to engage in learning activities.  They also need time to assimilate and apply the learning to their jobs. In addition, they may need to collaborate with peers, attend follow-up sessions, and try new things at work.  All of these require unconditional understanding and support from the employee’s manager. 

Managers need to help employees discover what they need to learn (with or without the learning department’s help). The managers have to be open to try new approaches, allow mistakes, and learning from them. Unfortunately, many managers treat learning as secondary and business urgencies of primary importance.  For them, training is important but never urgent.  Business priorities supersede learning programs.  In such an environment, there is little room for employees to learn and for the organization to become a learning organization.

Is your company a learning organization?

Here is a questionnaire to reflect and evaluate how your organization is doing in its quest to become a learning organization.  (Reference – Building an innovative learning organization – Book by Russel Sarder). An honest self-evaluation provides a good idea of where you currently are and what you need to do to progress.

• Do we continuously discuss, evaluate and improve our processes and work on improving them?
• Do leaders openly acknowledge errors and mistakes and work to rectify them?
• Do employees ask questions, offer different perspectives, and challenge decisions when appropriate?
• Do managers see themselves as taskmasters or facilitators whose job is to help employees do their best work?
• Do people listen to and respect the ideas and opinions of others at all levels?
• Do employees feel safe enough to take risks, even if it means making mistakes and failing?
• Do leaders and employees openly share information?
• Do leaders and employees work to reduce bureaucracy and redundant procedures?
• Does the company value learn enough to allocate a learning budget even in tough times?
• Do people help one another succeed
• Has HR put learning as part of the leaders’ and employees’ KRAs?
• Do leaders allocate enough time to employees for learning programs and follow-up activities?
• Does the company offer a wide variety of learning options to reach all levels and suit learner tastes?
• Do senior leaders themselves serve as role models for learning?
• Do you extend learning and sharing with customers and vendors?
• Does the organization learn from the best practices of other companies?
• Do you assess and improve learning programs regularly?

What factors hinder organizational learning?

What are the factors that hinder organizational learning?  Two culprits that kill organizational learning are ego and fear.

The detrimental impact of a leader’s ego

For leaders with egos – it is always about winning.  They put personal gains ahead of the greater good.  As leaders move up the career ladders, they often get only positive feedback, inflating their egos. As a result, the amount of critical and corrective feedback reduces.  This continuous positive reinforcement combined with a lack of negative inputs is bad for the leader’s further development.  Often successful leaders fall into this trap and suffer from ineffective habits that derail learning, engagement, and performance. 

We offer 360-degree assessment to make the leader aware of their behaviors and their impact on the teams.  We also offer our NAL triple advantage leadership coaching that delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.

Read: Qualities of a leader – based on validated research.

The grave consequences of fear

Fear and learning are incompatible.  Fear shuts down blood flow to the neocortex – the thinking part of our brain.  Fear gets compliance, not commitment.  And yet, many organizations and leaders are stuck in the 20th-century paradigms of command and control.  They still think that carrot and stick is the best approach to leading people. 

Instead of commanding leaders, they have to transform into facilitating leaders.  Instead of motivating by fear, they need to support dialogue, openness, transparency, and learning.

For organizational learning to thrive, leaders have to create a climate of psychological safety. They have to be aware of their behaviors and their impact on organizational learning. What is the current level of psychological safety on your team?  How do you create a climate of psychological safety? 

Create a culture of psychological safety and organizational learning

Creating a culture of psychological safety and organizational learning starts with leadership.  We coach leaders with guaranteed and measurable improvement in behaviors.  Here are some details

Increase your teams’ transparency, dialogue, candor, and psychological safety with our team coaching and team assessments. We offer Marshall Goldsmith coaching in India, the middle east, and southeast Asia.  It is the best coaching program in India because it is the same executive coaching process used by Marshall Goldsmith to coach CEOs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide. We guarantee measurable leadership growth or don’t pay at all. 

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching.

That delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (a study of 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work. Instead, individual development areas for each leader are aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team. As a result, it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short-duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results! : We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you don’t have to pay us.

Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

CEO coaching – the what, why, and how of it

CEO coaching – What is it?  Why do CEOs need coaching?  What are the CEO coaching areas?  How to choose the right CEO coach?

The job of a CEO is challenging

The pressure to perform on the CEOs is higher than ever.  Flatter organizations, the fast pace of change, technological advancements, competition for good talent, globally diverse workforce, changing customer demands, global competition in a connected world – are some of the many challenges facing the CEO.   These factors keep the CEOs awake at night worrying about their current growth and profitability, and future sustainability.

Who does a CEO ask for help?

At lower rungs of the corporate ladder, executives have a boss to fall back to and ask for help or advice.  To decide the strategic direction, to give advice, to motivate, to guide.  When a CEO needs guidance, motivation, and clarity, whose help does the CEO seek?  The answer most of the time is – no one.

Any CEO of a large organization is expected to portray confidence and competence.  If a CEO publicly admits to being unsure or doubts the strategic direction, the consequences can be severe.  The board and the executive team may judge the CEO as being weak, indecisive, or incompetent.  One wrong sentence from the CEO’s mouth can wipe off mega millions from its market cap for a publicly traded company. The impact of the CEO’s decisions (or the lack of them) is far-reaching.  Stakes are high.  A lot is on the line.  Ceo’s actions affect many people both within and outside the organization.

Urgent drowns the important

CEOs are constantly bombarded with urgent issues.  The demand for the Ceo’s time and attention is relentless.  They live in an environment of permanent urgency.  It is not unusual for a CEO to get into a reactive mode.  They hardly have time to take a pause, reflect and think.  CEO coaching creates a safe space for reflection and reevaluation of what the CEO is doing.

The CEO coaching paradox

It is a paradox that the one person who probably has the most significant impact on the company’s profitability and employee’s well-being cannot ask for help for himself or herself.  CEOs often lose sleep at night considering and reconsidering their own decisions and the consequences of their decisions.  It is lonely at the top – is often true for the CEOs where they have to fight their battles on their own – silently and without asking for any help.  Unfortunately, the CEOs are also human, and they need help too.

Every top performer has a coach!

Think of any sport – football, tennis, basketball, or soccer.  Every top player in any of these sport has a coach.  They wouldn’t dream of doing it on their own.  The coach provides an external perspective, support, challenge, and reinforcement to sustain high performance.  CEO coaching provides a respite from the world of noise and distraction.  CEO coaching is where the leader can calm down, distance from the urgent, think, prioritize, focus and get back into the proactive mode.

A majority of CEOs still don’t get the coaching they need

Top performance as a CEO of a large organization is equally challenging.  Why do we expect the CEOs to perform at their best without the help of a coach?  And yet 2/3rd of the CEO doesn’t use a coach – according to a study of over 200 CEOs by Stanford University and Miles.  The study also confirmed that most CEOs want coaching.  CEOs are more open than ever to CEO coaching.  Unfortunately, most CEOs don’t get the outside coaching they need.  Harvard article states that while most CEOs want CEO coaching and want advice on their leadership skills, two-thirds of the CEOs don’t hire an external coach.

In the past, CEO coaching was seen as remedial.  The perception was that if the CEO needed coaching, it meant that she was not capable enough to handle things herself.  Fortunately, this incorrect perception is changing rapidly.  CEO coaching is now seen as developmental – helping a successful CEO achieve higher levels of success for himself and his organization.  Many CEOs now openly admit to having a coach and recommend others to hire a CEO coach.

Top CEO’s believe in coaching

Steve Jobs, the then CEO of Apple, had a coach. Bill Gates, the former CEO of Microsoft, had a coach.  Eric Schmidt, the former CEO, had a coach. Bob Nardelli, the former CEO of Home Depot, had a coach.  These highly successful CEOs vouch for the benefits of having an external coach.

“Everyone needs a coach. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a basketball player, a tennis player, a gymnast or a bridge player. We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve.” Bill Gates

Every famous athlete, every famous performer has somebody who’s a coach.  Somebody who can watch what they’re doing and say, “Is that what you really meant? Did you really do that?”  They can give them perspective. The one thing people are never good at is seeing themselves as others see them.  A coach really, really helps. – Eric Schmidt – former CEO at Google

“I absolutely believe that people, unless coached, never reach their maximum capabilities.” Bob Nardelli former CEO at Home Depot

Many studies have shown a clear correlation between the CEO’s performance and their access to good CEO coaching.

The why of CEO coaching

Here are some reasons why CEOs need coaching.  As a leader moves up the career ladder, both the quantity and the quality of the feedback he/she receives goes down.  Employees want to be on the good side of a senior leader.  They often offer lavish compliments to their leader while avoid mentioning their shortcomings. They hold back or sugar coach any critical feedback to the leader.  Often the leader only gets positive feedback and reinforcement.  Their ego gets inflated, and they usually start believing in their own PR. The higher the leader is up the career ladder, the more chances that the leader will be detached from reality.  This is where CEO coaching fills the gap.

What does a CEO coach do?

Every single person who meets the CEO often has their own (and often hidden) agenda.  The CEO coach has only one agenda – to help the CEO lead more effectively.  A CEO coach is a skilled professional who listens non-judgmentally.  The CEO can communicate openly without fear of being judged or the fear of personal and organizational consequences.  The CEO coaching session is safe to discuss issues, fears, doubts, and shortcomings in a safe environment. Coaches listen.  They are non-judgmental.  They allow the leader to reflect in a supportive environment.  They ask powerful questions.  They provide clear and honest feedback in a non-threatening way so the CEO can take stock and clarify priorities.

CEO coaching also helps the leader to get honest and accurate feedback on their own behaviors from other team members.  Without feedback, the leader would be blind to how others perceive the leader’s behavior.  The CEO coach almost always uses a 360-degree feedback tool to gather anonymous feedback from the leader’s team and deliver it to the leader while maintaining the feedback givers’ confidentiality.

If you would like to know more about the best 360-degree feedback tool, read my article.
Read: 360-degree feedback A complete guide with a questionnaire.

The CEOs technical vs. behavioral skills

Think about two C suite leaders who are more or less equal in experience, past performance, and leadership ability.  Both leaders are the candidates to be the future CEO.  Which one of these two leaders has a better chance of success?  What leadership qualities and behaviors do you look for in them?

Do you look for technical skills?  Do you look for people skills?  Daniel Goleman’s research has shown that emotional intelligence accounts for 7/8th of the difference between the top performers and the bottom performers at the C-suite level.  Technical skills only account for 1/8th of the difference.  By the time any leader reaches the C-suite level, they certainly will have “adequate” technical or functional skills, or else they wouldn’t make it to the C-suite.  The difference then is the leader’s emotional intelligence – the ability to understand and manage own emotions and gauge others’ emotions and use it to build relationships.

Also, the CEO or C-suite leader doesn’t really handle any of the techniques of functional aspects on their own.  Almost all of the work a CEO does, he/she gets it done through others.  Hence, at the C-suite level, emotional intelligence (or people skills, to put it simply) accounts for 7/8th of the difference.
Almost always the CEO coaching involves coaching the CEO in people skills and behavioral aspects.

CEO coaching areas

What areas do CEOs want help from the CEO coaches?
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith conducted large-scale research on real leaders in large multinational organizations to understand what behaviors make leaders successful.  He found these 15 competencies and behaviors essential to today’s global leader.  These 15 competencies are grouped into five clusters.

Here are the five clusters and fifteen competencies

• Communication

1. Demonstrating integrity
2. Encouraging constructive dialogue
3. Creating a shared vision

• Engaging people

1. Developing people
2. Building partnerships
3. Sharing leadership

• Boundary-less inclusion

1. Empowering people
2. Thinking globally
3. Appreciating diversity

• Assuring success

1. Developing technological savvy
2. Ensuring customer satisfaction
3. Maintaining a competitive advantage

• Continuous change

1. Achieving personal mastery
2. Anticipating opportunities
3. Leading change

We use the GLA 360 degree assessment tool to assess the strengths and improvement areas for CEO coaching.  GLA 360 also allows the comparison of the leader’s scores with a norm group of global leaders.

Here are the top 20 growth areas selected by the CEOs worldwide

Here is another way to look at the CEO coaching areas. Below are the most frequently selected areas for leadership growth and CEO coaching by leaders worldwide.  This list is compiled from the global leaders who have undergone CEO coaching using our award-winning process.

Communication:

• Communicate/listen better
• Decision making (incl. e.g., speed of decision making, including opinions of others in decision making)
• Be more assertive (incl. speaking up for own beliefs & opinions)
• Manage conflict constructively, timely, and effectively
• Influencing / persuasive

Developing organizational culture & leaders:

• Managing diversity
• Build cross-functional relationships
• Cross-cultural management
• Stand up to people undermining teamwork
• Collaborate better with others (incl. being more respectful to others)
• Building trust with stakeholders
• Executive presence
• Self-confidence
• Driving team, I culture change
• Coaching and mentoring

Managing performance:

• Delegate effectively
• Empower direct reports
• Execution for results (incl. focus execution and resources on few critical business issues)
• Strategic thinking
• Be more entrepreneurial
• Take calculated risks
• Hold others accountable for results
• Deal timely with performance problems

When CEO coaching won’t work

Here are a few situations where CEO coaching will not work

1. The CEO is unwilling to change. Behavior change is one of the most difficult things for grown adults.  It is even more difficult if the adult is a successful leader!  Without the CEO’s awareness, acceptance, and the need for change, coaching is unlikely to succeed.
2. The company and its board have written off the CEO.  When a CEO has lost the board’s trust, there is little chance for the CEO coaching to succeed. In such scenarios, the board often uses coaching to confirm the CEO’s inability to lead effectively.
3. The CEO is a mismatch for the role.  The CEO may not have the skills or experience for the role.  In such cases, there is little chance that CEO coaching will help improve the performance.
4. The CEO is pursuing the wrong strategic direction.  If the CEO is going in the wrong direction, CEO coaching may help get there faster!  CEO coaching is no substitute for an incorrect strategy.

The basic premise in CEO coaching is that the CEO needs help with behavioral issues.  Or else the coaching will not help.

Read: 9 Reasons Why Executive Coaching Fails in Organizations

How to choose the best CEO coach?

As I mentioned earlier in the article, there a multitude of expectations from the CEO.  A lot is riding on the CEO’s success.  Hence it is essential to hire the right coach for the CEO coaching assignment.

What do you look for in a CEO coach?  What criteria do you use to evaluate various CEO coaches?
Here are a few points to consider

• Can the coach strike a balance between supporting and challenging the CEO?
• Can the coach gather honest feedback from the team and deliver it to the CEO?
• Does the coach have a structured process and a tested coaching methodology?
• Can the coach maintain strict confidentiality?
• Does the coach role model the desired behaviors and bring a calm and assuring presence?

To delve more into the details of how to select the right CEO coach, read the article.
Read: How to find the best executive coach for you or the leaders in your organization?

Who is the best CEO coach?

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is considered probably the best CEO coach in the world.  He has coached over 150 CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.  Over the years, he has distilled his CEO coaching process into a very successful stakeholder-centered coaching process.  Over a million senior executives worldwide have been coached using this process.
Tushar Vakil is considered one of the top CEO coaches in the Indian sub-continent.  He is certified by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith and has coached over 300 C-suite leaders and CEOs in large organizations across the US, India, Middle-East, Africa.  He is recognized in the top 100 global influencers list by People hum.  He brings the skills and experience to impact the leaders at the highest level.

Read: What are the best executive coaching programs & the top executive coaching firms? 

Get the best CEO coaching and methodology.

We bring a tried and tested process to CEO coaching that has a 95% effectiveness rate.
We offer our New Age Leadership – NAL Triple Advantage CEO Coaching.

That delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.
Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching.

Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Individual development areas for each leader are aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short-duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results! : We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you don’t have to pay us.

Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today
SCHEDULE NOW!

Reference
https://hbr.org/2013/08/research-ceos-and-the-coaching

Three employee engagement strategies that every leader must know

Three Employee engagement strategies and Employee engagement importance every leader must know.
The business world today is challenging. Global competition, flatter organizations, the fast pace of change, the scarcity and competition for good talent, continuous disruptions, and so on are just some of the challenges. The acronym VUCA nicely describes the current business environment – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous. A VUCA world creates both opportunities and risks.

Why is employee engagement important?

Large companies today have equal access to capital, technology, talent, or other resources. What, then, is the differentiating factor? What makes the difference is whether the company can engage the workforce to put in the discretionary effort. We all have heard the famous phrase – “people are our greatest assets.” While it may have been an excellent slogan for Human Resources or C-suite executives in the past, it is absolutely true in today’s business environment. People will be the greatest assets of any company – as long as they are engaged!

We have moved from the factory and mass production of the industrial age to today’s knowledge economy and knowledge work. The 20th-century paradigms of command and control or carrot and stick management approach are becoming outdated and ineffective. Companies realize that they need to develop a new kind of relationship with employees. Employees aren’t merely replaceable cogs in the machinery but valued, respected, and contributing partners. Companies know that to deliver business results, they need engaged employees. Hence business strategy must include ways first to establish a culture of high employee engagement.

Read:  Diversity and inclusion at the workplace

What is employee engagement?

The concept of employee engagement is relatively new. Before the late ’90s, hardly anyone used the term employee engagement. Back in the ’60s or ’70s, organizations thought that people worked only for salary and benefits. Obviously, this line of thinking is now outdated. Employees do care about pay and benefits. But employee engagement takes a lot more than just financial benefits. Today there is a shortage of talent in many specialized fields.

Employees can choose where they want to work for similar pay and benefits. Employees consider the values, culture, growth opportunities, and many other factors before deciding to join a company. Companies have to work hard to create an environment that engages employees. Not doing so can be costly. Companies will not attract and retain the top talent. This has high financial and opportunity costs.

Employee engagement definition

Here are a few employee engagement definitions:

“The extent to which the employees thrive at work, are committed to their employer and are motivated to do their best, for the benefit of themselves and their organization.” – Stairs

“Engaged employees are those who are “mentally and emotionally invested in their work and in contributing to their employer’s success” Czarnowsky.

Employee engagement is a relationship between the organization and the employee. It involves both the attitude and the behavior of the employees.

Employee engagement is not the same as employee satisfaction. A company may be able to raise the employee satisfaction level through financial rewards. But it may be costly, raise expectations, create complacency and instill an entitlement mentality.

Companies cannot buy employee engagement with money! They have to earn it through the behaviors and climate those behaviors create.

Employee engagement importance

Here is a list of attitudes and behaviors exhibited by engaged employees

· Are committed to the organization
· Are positive about the job and take pride in working at the company
· Treat other employees with respect
· Put is discretionary efforts
· Stay longer with the company
· Care for the greater good and not just personal benefits
· Look for opportunities to learn, grow and improve their performance

What does DIS-engagement look like?

On the other hand,take a look at these behaviors of disengaged employees.

· Lack of discretionary effort (do enough not to get fired!)
· No initiatives, no sticking their necks out
· Lack of communication and helpful feedback
· Defensive and disruptive behaviors
· Self-interest ahead of the great good of the team or company
· Increased bureaucracy and friction
· Conflicts and silo mentality
· Increased stress and low morale
· High attrition rates

Steven M R Coven nicely outlines the consequences of disengagement.

When the bond of trust is broken between the employee and the employer, speed goes down, and cost goes up.

Engaged employees increase the rate at which business gets done and reduce the cost of doing business. On the other hand, disengaged employees reduce speed and increase the cost of doing business.

Employee engagement importance – The business case

What company would not want their employees to exhibit the behaviors in this list routinely? But these are “soft” measures. Is there any hard evidence that employee engagement really matters?

· Highly engaged employees deliver 26 percent higher employee productivity (SHRM, 2011a)
· Companies with top engagement scores are 21% more productive than those with low levels of engagement. (Gallup)
· Companies with top 25% engagement scores delivered 2.6 times earnings per share and 12% higher profitability than those in the bottom half of engagement scores. (Flade, 2006)
· Engaged employees deliver 44% more productivity than workers who merely feel satisfied (Bain & Company)
· Organizations with above-average employee engagement exceed the financial performance of their peers by 73% (Wharton)

Higher levels of employee engagement are correlated with a variety of positive business outcomes. Having engaged employees is a significant competitive advantage.

The current state of employee engagement in organizations

Gallup organization conducts annual employee engagement surveys around the world. Their latest State of the Global Workforce Report surveyed employees in 155 countries.

Only 15% of the global workforce is engaged. 85% of employees worldwide are not engaged or are actively disengaged in their job. 67% were not engaged, and 18% were actively disengaged. A disengaged workforce is a barrier to performance. An enormous amount of human potential is wasted.

The top 25% of the global engagement scores had 17% more productivity and 21% more profits than the companies in the bottom 25%.

Employee engagement levels are a deficient level worldwide. Cultivating employee engagement is a strategic advantage in a competitive business environment.

Read: Psychological safety at work – Why you need it and how to develop it

Three employee engagement strategies that every leader must know

Engaging employees takes time, effort, and commitment. But the efforts are worthwhile. Gallup’s State of Global Workforce found these factors common in organizations that maintain a high employee engagement level. These are the three employee engagement strategies that every leader needs to know.

Employee engagement strategy 1: A clear and straightforward approach to performance management

Companies that have high levels of employee engagement use intrinsic motivators routinely. Intrinsic motivators like recognition, praise, valuing the employee’s contribution are part of the performance management process.

They also take the performance conversations approach instead of once-a-year performance management.

They schedule regular coaching conversations between the manager and employees that help the employee stay the course and stay motivated. They do not focus much on vanity metrics and employee engagement scores for the sake of measurement.

They understand that these surveys barely scratch the surface of how engaged the employees are. It is the simple approach to managing performance that drives results and engagement.

Employee engagement strategy 2: Managers are held accountable for both engagement and performance

Gallup found that 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores can be attributed to the manager. In organizations with lower employee engagement scores, managers are held accountable for results only. Often it results at the cost of employee engagement. Short-term focus on outcomes usually costs a lot in the long term due to employee engagement loss.

Progressive companies hold managers accountable for both performance and engagement. They put it in black and white as the key performance indicators – based upon which the manager’s performance is evaluated. The company also invests in regular training and coaching of the managers to make them aware and support them in changing their approach and managing them more effectively.

Employee engagement strategy 3: Engagement starts at the top

High levels of engagement are seldom an accident. It is a result of the consistent commitment of the top leaders in the organization. The top leaders clearly understand that high performance is a clear result of highly engaged employees. Employee engagement is a strategic priority for them.

These leaders routinely identify and rectify barriers that stifle employee engagement. They are transparent, communicative, and open-minded in their approach. They work tirelessly to create a culture where the right people get hired and are motivated to do their best work.

Progressive leaders do not pass on the responsibility for employee engagement to the Human Resources department. They themselves take ownership and pride in cultivating engaged employees in their organization.

They consistently improve their own behaviors through feedback, self-reflection, and executive coaching. They then role model the right behaviors so they cascade down the line to the front-line employees.

Read: How to create and implement an organization-wide leadership development plan

Conclusion:

Employee engagement is a vast topic. But there are a few simple things that are key driving factors. The first factor is the leadership behaviors at the top. The second major factor is the behaviors of managers and team leaders.

When leaders role model and cascade the right behaviors, and when managers are held accountable for both business performance and employee engagement, they are on the right path to achieving high employee engagement levels.

Supporting the leaders and the managers through training and coaching is key to changing long-ingrained behaviors.

Read: Coaching achieves multiple talent development needs.

Employee engagement strategies for your company

The leaders and managers are the key drivers of employee engagement and employee engagement importance. One of the best employee engagement strategies is to enroll your leaders and managers in our executive coaching and team coaching interventions.

Our NAL triple advantage coaching takes your leaders and managers through the process of awareness of their behaviors, acceptance of the need to improve specific behaviors and take consistent action toward achieving the goal of improved behaviors to increase employee engagement.

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching – your best employee engagement strategy

That delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study of 11000 leaders on four continents).  It is used by companies ranging from start-ups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Individual development areas for each leader aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short-duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results! : We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you don’t have to pay us.
References

State of the Global Workplace: Gallup survey and Employee engagement importance
Why is Employee Engagement So Important?

5 reasons about employees engagement importance

Developing leaders to thrive in a VUCA world

The pandemic has hyper disrupted workplaces.

To say that the pandemic has disrupted how we live and work will be an understatement! It has hyper disrupted how we live and work.  As CEO’s COO’s and CHRO’s  – you have already handled the crisis. You have quickly stabilized things and quickly adapted to the new normal. Great job so far! 

• Now, how do you leverage leadership to thrive (not just survive) in the new normal?  It is already a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world.
• Disruptions create both threats & opportunities.  What will it take to create an opportunity out of this crisis?
• Are you playing offense or defense?  Is your focus on merely surviving, or are you planning to thrive in the “new normal”?
• Is your leadership ready to exploit the opportunity in this disruption? Are you supporting your leaders and setting them up for success?  Or is it a SINK or SWIM approach?
• The statistics on the effectiveness of leadership development initiatives are both shocking and depressing – How do you maximize the ROI on leadership development investment in the new normal?

Changes at work after the pandemic

We have all observed a multitude of changes at our workplaces.  Work from home, remote teams, Zoom and MS Team meetings, virtual teamwork and related issues, work-life balance issues, and many other changes.  The pandemic has impacted every employee as it altered their work-life in some way. They had to adjust and adapt. 

But CEOs had the most crucial job of adapting and stabilizing to keep the business running.  What are their challenges and priorities going forward?

The top 3 CEO challenges & priorities for the new normal – Survey of 160 CEOs by Predictive Index

The Predictive Index surveyed 160 CEOs (in late 2020) about their top priorities, concerns, and challenges.  The survey report was titled – Understanding the future of leadership, teaming, remote work, and strategy.  You may read the entire report here.

I am going to share some highlights of the report.  There are three main themes.

1. Executive strategy and work to be done

• Pandemic has forced companies to change their game plan – 96% of CEOs said that they had shifted strategic direction in some way since COVID-19.  It is a new normal, and leaders developed new ways to cope.
• CEOs are laser-focused on strategy development, and it is their number 1 priority,  especially for the new normal.
• But most CEOs think – Employees are less clear on strategy – especially after the pandemic.  Firstly there is a change in strategy, and secondly, the difficulty in communicating the strategy down the line due to remote work.
• Less than 80% of CEOs believe in their employees’ ability to communicate and cascaded the strategy to others.

Key takeaway:  As organizations look to bounce back from the pandemic, many CEOs have ambitious goals. Achieving them requires a strong business strategy and execution.

2. Team stress and the need for team cohesion

• Executives are leading all-new teams. Why? – First, 69% of companies restructured their teams during the pandemic. Second, most teams worked remotely during the pandemic.  This is an entirely new experience for both executives and employees.
• Remote work and work from home (WFH) are here to stay. Once considered an employee perk, now it is likely to be part and parcel of work.  97% of CEOs believed that remote work would continue in some form even after the crisis is over and things go back to normal.
• CEOs’ No. 1 challenge is helping their remote teams work well together.  They are concerned about employee productivity, especially of their remote teams. CEOs doubted the remote team’s ability to hit strategic goals.
• Senior leaders are struggling with team cohesion. – remote working has made it worse.
• Team conflict stems from people’s problems. CEOs are spending precious time mediating people issues and interpersonal conflicts.

Conclusion – Remote work and team restructuring have caused team stress, people issues, and conflicts. CEOs are concerned about the productivity of remote teams and their ability to achieve strategic goals.

3. Building dream teams, developing leaders, and talent optimization

• While focusing on business strategy, executives can’t afford to neglect talent strategy. Businesses don’t run themselves; people do.
• People are any company’s most expensive and the most potent assets. Most CEOs and executive teams recognize the need for developing leaders and talent optimization.
• Besides, CEOs themselves need help in their own leadership development—91% of CEOs required outside help to develop leaders (themselves included) and optimize talent.
• CEOs and executive teams want to develop leaders so that they can inspire performance and get the strategy executed. A majority said that they need external help for their own leadership development.

Conclusion – C-suite executives want external help for their own leadership development to inspire and develop leaders and build dream teams to execute strategy.  They don’t have enough confidence in their internal talent development processes and prefer help from external consultants.

Read: CEO coaching – the what why and how of it

How were things before the pandemic?

The Predictive Index survey was conducted late last year in 2020 when the world was deep into the pandemic.  How were things before the Covid crisis?

In a recent study (conducted before the covid crisis), McKinsey found that the average life-span of companies listed in Standard & Poor’s 500 was 61 years in 1958. Today, it is less than 18 years. And that is not all.  McKinsey believes that, in 2027, 75% of the companies currently quoted on the S&P 500 will have disappeared, only 25% will remain.  Things are no better for small and medium enterprises.  Only 25% survive their 10th birthday. 75% close down before that.  Even for successful companies, it is a challenging environment to survive, thrive and sustain.

It was already a VUCA world!

Even before the crisis, we were already in a VUCA world.  Volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous.  Global competition, the fast pace of change that is getting faster, flatter organizations, new technologies, continuous change and disruptions, and then the pandemic.

The pandemic only hyper-accelerated the already VUCA world.

The change and disruptions that were likely to happen in 5-10 years have been squeezed into less than a year.  For example – In normal times,  the transitioning to remote work may have taken at least a few years.  Pandemic forced most organizations to get it done in a few months!  It only accelerated what was already a VUCA world.

Covid crisis is a wake-up call

The VUCA world has been a reality for at least a decade or more.  Companies holding on to their old strategy and their outdated leadership paradigms of the 20th century are now exposed. Although Command and control are outdated but old habits, die hard.  The status quo is remarkably resilient.  It resists any attempt to change it.  The pandemic was a serious wake-up call for leadership and organizations stuck in the past.  The new normal means it is now a case of a change or die!

To quote Warren Buffet – Only when the tide goes out to do you discover who has been swimming naked.

Many companies and their leadership teams are still stuck in the 20th-century beliefs.  They may have been doing OK before the crisis but are now both exposed and vulnerable.

The new normal may be the opportunity of the decade – Are your leaders ready to leverage it?

Is the pandemic a crisis or an opportunity?

The first order of business for CEOs and their teams was to adapt, stabilize, and survive quickly. So what is next? Under normal circumstances, the status quo is resistant to change.  The dismantling of the status quo and unlearning the long-ingrained habits is a tedious and lengthy process that takes immense effort and many years.  The silver lining of the pandemic is that the crisis has already dismantled the status quo.

The opportunity of the decade?

This pandemic may be a once-in-a-decade (or even once-in-a-lifetime) opportunity. It is an opportunity to rebuild leadership, culture, and processes from scratch.  It is time to put the final nail in the coffin for the old paradigm of Command and control.  It is time to take advantage of its quick demise due to the crisis and rebuild for the new normal. The question is, are you now playing offense or defense.  Playing defense will only help you in the short term.  Revamping leadership and culture will help survive, thrive, and sustain in the long term.

You may be leaving money on the table.

The pandemic hurt some industries, some were neutral, and some benefitted.  Even if you are a successful company and navigated the crisis with flying colors, you may be leaving money on the table.  You may not be leveraging the business performance to the full extent.  And there are always issues of sustainability in the VUCA world.

We already know about the classic examples of Nokia and Kodak.  Extremely successful companies who could not sustain and be almost out of business.

But there are more recent examples also. Think about Intel.  They practically had a monopoly in making microprocessors for PCs and laptops.  Do they make any processors for mobile phones? They don’t!  How about Microsoft?  Do they have an operating system for mobile phones? They don’t!  Think about Google.  They had the first-mover advantage, and they could have been the next Facebook and the next Netflix.  They already had Orkut and YouTube years before Facebook and Netflix.  They could not capitalize on these opportunities and “left money on the table.”

If you are not optimizing business strategy, leadership development, and talent strategy, you will definitely leave money on the table in a VUCA world.

New normal will need a new kind of leadership – Are you developing the right leadership skills?

What factors are needed to THRIVE?

What is needed in such an environment to survive, thrive and sustain it?  Speed, flexibility, experimentation, learning faster than the pace of change, collaboration, and utilizing your diverse teams’ collective intelligence to stay ahead of disruptions.  Learn more quickly than the speed of change.  Create a culture of high performance.

Which matters more? Culture or Strategy?

A strategy is cool and sexy.  Changing culture is complicated and messy.  You can ignore culture at your own peril!  Growing talent to implement the strategy is critical.  And yet, many CEOs underestimate the need for it. 

To quote Peter Drucker:  Culture eats strategy for breakfast.

Culture will eat your strategy for breakfast, employee motivation for lunch, and change and innovation for dinner!  Any strategy that doesn’t account for implementing a supportive culture is likely to fail.

Read: Culture eats strategy for breakfast

What drives profits – Korn Ferry study

 

Here is a study by the Korn Ferry Hay group.  What factors impact any company’s bottom line?  They found five factors that influence a company’s bottom line.

• Strong franchises: Think of an Apple or a Coca-cola.
• Munificent environment:  Supportive of favorable environment like in the Silicon valley
• Intellectual property: Think of a Qualcomm or Pharma company.
• Regulatory barriers:  Protective tariffs and obstacles imposed by countries
• Massive resources:  Think of Google or Proctor and Gamble.

These five factors combined account for 65% of a company’s bottom line.

What about the other 35% of the bottom line?

Leadership behaviors drive organizational culture – and corporate culture drives business performance and bottom line.  It is the only factor that is entirely under the circle of influence of the company!  Thus developing leaders is the best way to improve the bottom line. 

The linchpin of team performance – A culture of psychological safety

Google spent two years and millions of dollars and resources to find out what makes real work teams effective.  Google conducted over 200 interviews, studied 180 real work teams, considered 250+ variables (team composition and dynamics), and used Google’s immense intellect and computing power to run statistical and other analytics models to hone down on factors that impact team effectiveness.

Google found that team composition, who was on the team, didn’t impact team performance much.  They honed down on five factors that affect team performance, and all five factors were related to how the team interacted.  The single most crucial factor was psychological safety.  Google called it the “linchpin” of all other factors. 

Watch the webinar

The Leader’s Role in Creating Psychologically Safe Workplaces

New leadership culture for a new normal

VUCA world and new normal needs a different leadership.  The pandemic has accelerated volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity.  A new style of leadership is imperative in the new normal. 

• We have moved from Command and control to empowering and nurturing talent.
• We have moved from the leader as a boss to the leader as a facilitator.
• We have moved from team members do what they are told to team members are vital contributors of knowledge and insights.

To thrive and sustain in the hyper VUCA world’s new normal, organizations need to unlearn and relearn faster than the rate of disruptions. 

To quote Alvin Toffler – The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn and relearn.

Which of these is the most difficult? Learn, Unlearn or Relearn?  Usually the unlearning is the most difficult.  Thanks to the pandemic and the disruptions, the unlearning has already started!  The status quo is already dismantled.  It provides the decade’s opportunity to create a culture that will help thrive and sustain for the long term.

In business environments with complexity, uncertainty, and interdependency – you need to create a culture of psychological safety so that you can utilize the collective intelligence of your talent.   Amy Edmondson’s research has shown that psychological safety lacks in many work teams.  Developing leaders in the new normal should include teaching them skills to create a culture of psychological safety.

Who and what creates the culture (of psychological safety)?

The level of psychological safety varies on teams, even in groups within the same organization.  This is true even for organizations that have a “good” culture. The research also shows that the single most crucial factor contributing to the level of psychological safety on teams is the team leader’s behaviors.   It is a critical competency for a 21st-century leader.  A culture of psychological safety is essential for high-performance culture, where teams learn faster than the pace of disruptions. The collateral damage of lack of psychological safety is immense.  Many progressive organizations now focus on developing leaders to thrive in the new normal by systematically focusing on teaching them how to create a culture of psychological safety in their teams. 

Read: Psychological safety at work – Why you need it and how to develop it

Sink, swim, or set up to succeed – How are you developing your leaders in the new normal?

Leaders have huge responsibilities.  A lot is riding on leadership.

Think about your executive leadership team.  Who reports directly to the CEO, and who reports to those people.  This is your senior leadership team.  How many leaders does your organization have on the senior leadership team?  Now, what is the total employee count of your organization? It is not uncommon to have a senior leadership team of 30 leaders responsible for driving results through 1000 employees.  Leaders need help and support. CEOs, CXOs and CHROs, and CLOs need to take up this challenge and responsibility.  Are you using a sink or swim approach to developing leaders in the new normal?  Or are you supporting them and setting them up for success?

Is leadership development working?

Typically companies develop leadership by sending leaders to a B school or an in-house leadership development program. An estimated $62 billion were spent worldwide on leadership development in 2014.  That figure is now likely to exceed $100 billion. 

One would think that with that kind of money spent, leadership should be at an extraordinary level.  But it is not!  The numbers on the effectiveness of leadership programs are both shocking and depressing!

While 89% of CEOs consider developing leaders their top priority – only 10% think their leadership development has any business impact.  Kristi Hedges wrote an aptly titled Forbes article –  If you think most leadership development programs are a waste of time and money, you may be right!

HR, talent management, and leadership development departments have failed to deliver programs that have a clear business impact.

And then there is E-learning. E-learning is a fantastic tool, but often it is overhyped, especially for leadership development.  To assume that E-learning will teach executives leadership is like believing that you can teach someone to swim by having them watch a video on your LMS!! 

The way most organizations are developing leaders for the new normal and the hyper VUCA world is not working!

Ten tips to get a measurable ROI from your leadership development initiatives

Here are ten tips to get a measurable return on investment from your leadership development initiatives.

Stop sending a few people to episodic leadership development programs (internal or external)!

Disjointed internal and external leadership development programs do little to alter their actions and behaviors at work.  A hypothetical case study at a B school may look good in a simulated environment – but does it have real relevance to the job?  Some companies spend millions and many years before realizing that the check the box leadership development programs contribute little.  Don’t make that mistake. 

Have a comprehensive long term leadership development strategy

Leadership development is a process, not an event.  It is not something that is “done.”  Without aligning leadership development to strategic direction, even an effective leadership program will underperform.   A comprehensive strategy for developing leaders is needed.  The leadership development plan should span many years and cover the entire population of leaders.

Align leadership development to the organizational context, strategy, and strengths

Every organization has a strategy and strengths aligned to the strategy.  Think of two very successful companies – Starbucks and Walmart.  Starbucks has built the business on providing superb customer service.  Walmart has succeeded due to its ability to run a lean, low-cost operation to pass on the savings and offer the lowest prices.  Would a one size fits all B school leadership program help them both leverage and align their leadership strengths?  Obviously not.  Leadership development needs to align with organizational context, strategy, and strengths.

CEOs and C-suite teams need to take responsibility for leadership and culture.

Developing leaders start at the top. It begins with the CEO and C-suite team. They have to be personally invested and involved in the leadership development initiatives. CEOs cannot delegate this critical responsibility solely to the Human Resources and the talent management departments.  They can certainly help in the process, but developing leaders’ primary responsibility remains with the CEO and the C-suite team.  Their primary responsibility is to create a culture that allows others to do their best work.  Developing leaders and role modeling the behaviors is the best way to create a high-performance culture. 

Customize leadership development to the individual leader

Standard curriculum and competencies(one size fits all approach) don’t work in leadership development.  Covering broad themes in leadership programs doesn’t work.  Instead of focusing on 1-2 specific individual skills needed to improve the leadership performance at work. 

Utilize the collective intelligence of diverse teams

Leadership is a relationship.  Leaders and teams both need to take the journey of development. Involve the team throughout the leader’s development.  The team’s involvement helps utilize the collective intelligence of the groups.  When the leaders’ role models their own growth, the team usually goes along.  This has a multiplier effect on engagement and performance.

Connect leadership learning to the application at work

Many B school leadership programs rely on case study methodology.  A hypothetical case study may look good in a simulated environment – but does it have real relevance to the work?  Leadership frameworks and theories appear elegant in the classroom but have little practical application.  Besides, most leaders don’t need to learn more.  They have undergone several leadership programs and understand the theory very well.  They have difficulty in applying the learning to the actual work with their real work teams. 

Measure what matters-not vanity metrics!

There are many vanity metrics—person-days of training, percentage of leaders, covered, number of training programs, etc. Then there are surveys – “nice” place to work etc.  And there are awards! Best-in-class training or leadership development – awarded to so and so company or individual.  These are vanity metrics and don’t really matter much.  What really matters is the impact at work. What matters is the behavior change at work – as observed and anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Focus on changing both mindsets and skillsets

Any program that doesn’t help with skillset,  toolset, and mindsets is unlikely to deliver lasting change in behaviors. 

Start with and include the entire executive team.

Start with and include the entire C suite team.  You are always leading by example – whether you know it or not, believe it or not, like it or not, want it or not!  What message are you sending to others when you say that – hey, these guys under me need leadership development, not me!   Including the entire executive team in leadership development also has a multiplier and a cascading effect.

Keep these 10 tips in mind while designing your leadership development programs. 

Read: How to create and implement an organization-wide leadership development plan

Leverage your leadership THRIVE in the new normal

Take advantage of the opportunity of the decade to reset your leadership and organizational culture.

Are you ready to play offense and not just defense?  Are you prepared to thrive and not just survive in the new normal?

NAL Triple Advantage Coaching delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from start-ups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Coaching

• Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.
• Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader – Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Individual development areas for each leader are aligned to the business strategy.
• Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.
• The leader becomes the coach for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams.  It is like kaizen for your leadership development.
• Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short duration leadership program at any reputed B school
• Guaranteed, measurable leadership growth as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.
• No growth, no pay: We work with many of our clients on a no growth no pay basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t grow, you simply don’t have to pay us.

Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today: no cost or obligation and no sales pitch.

Tushar Vakil – Top 100 most influential thought leaders to follow in 2021

We are happy to inform you that our founder and consultant at New Age Leadership, Tushar Vakil, has made it to the power list of the top 100 thought leaders to follow in 2021.  People Hum identified the top 200 most influential thought leaders across the globe as selected them to be on their list.  Tushar Vakil is ranked amongst the top 100 thought leaders on the list of 200 influencers.

2020 was a disruptive and challenging year.  Are you curious to know what it in store for this year? Well, 2021 is the year when we re-build and strive to get back to normal – but not the old normal – a “new normal”.  As a leader, are you looking for ideas on how to overcome threats and take advantage of opportunities in 2021, in the “new normal”?

Then you must follow and read these 200 most influential thought leaders across the globe. This list is carefully curated by PeopleHum (more about them later in the article).  They bring in diverse, rich, and global perspectives on the future of work and the future of leadership. The expertise of these influencers vary and include Human Resource, Technology, Leadership Development, Recruitment and Hiring, Employee and customer experience, Diversity and Inclusion, Organizational Cultures, and many more.

The list includes some of the most recognized names like

1. Marshall Goldsmith
Marshall Goldsmith, the world’s #1 executive coach, and thinker, comes first in the top 300 thought leaders. He talks on coaching young leaders, embarking on their leadership journey, and shares various techniques to successful leadership especially in these times of crises.

2. Dave Ulrich
David Olson Ulrich is a university professor, author, speaker, management coach, and management consultant. Ulrich is a professor of business at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan and co-founder of The RBL Group.

3. Peter Bregman
Peter Bregman is CEO of Bregman Partners, a company that helps successful people close their leadership gaps, grow as leaders, and inspire the people around them to get great results. Best-selling author of 18 Minutes, his most recent book is Leading with Emotional Courage.

4. Arthur Carmazzi
The world’s top leadership professional and Chief Awesomeness Officer at Directive Communications International takes us on a journey to understanding organizational transformation for business success.
And on the list is our founder Tushar Vakil.

Read the entire list here
Tushar is passionate about leadership.  Good leadership is needed more than ever. He believes that leadership development is the best lever available for better companies, better countries, and a better world.
He is an Executive, leadership, and team coach Master Facilitator, and Keynote Speaker. He is a leadership coach and trainer certified by Marshall Goldsmith – World’s number One Leadership Thinker!

Read Tushar Vakil’s top 7 most liked articles here

• 360 Degree Feedback comprehensive article
• How to find the best executive coach?
• Leadership development in India
• Why is leadership important?
• Leadership development plan
• Leadership development program
• Organizational culture change

Watch Tushar Vakil’s most-watched videos here
YouTube
Tushar on LinkedIn
Reach out for speaking engagements or to Schedule a quick conversation (no sales pitch and no obligation) at https://newageleadership.appointlet.com/

About PeopleHum
PeopleHum is an end-to-end, one-view, integrated human capital management automation platform, the winner of the 2019 global Codie Award for HCM that is specifically built for crafted employee experiences and the future of work.

9 Reasons Why Executive Coaching Fails in Organizations

Executive coaching is the most effective leadership development tool available, bar none. And yet, year after year, companies waste enormous amounts of money and time on executive coaching that doesn’t deliver results.

The negative impact of failed coaching initiatives

Consider these negative impacts in terms of loss of time, money, efforts, and lost opportunities.

• High potential employees will miss a chance to improve upon 1-2 critical behaviors needed to move up the career ladder
• Management will criticize another highly advertised human resources initiative that didn’t live up to the hype
• Human resource department wonders what went wrong – how an initiative with so much promise could fail so miserably!
• Leaders and teams will miss development opportunities
• The organization will miss out on utilizing its potential and maximizing performance

Which is the best leadership development program?

What are the reasons executive coaching fails to deliver results in organizations? Often, companies jump on the coaching bandwagon without a systematic thought process or clearly defined action plans. These are essential for the success of any executive coaching initiative. Here are 9 questions to ask, corresponding to the 9 reasons why coaching initiatives fail in organizations.

Read:  Is your leadership development effective? Or is the money going down the drain?

9 reasons why organizations waste their money on executive coaching

Here are 9 reasons and questions that will guide you through the process to maximize the ROI on the coaching dollars. When you answer these questions, you will go through the entire thought process that allows you to plan, implement, manage, and get measurable results from the executive coaching intervention.

It will also allow you to answer questions or objections and convince the decision-makers to get buy-in and support for the coaching intervention. If you answer no to six or more of these questions, it is a cause for serious concern as there is a good chance of the executive coaching intervention may fail to deliver results.

1. What is the organization’s strategy?

The strategic direction the organization has decided will dictate what competencies will be required of the leaders and hence need to be developed through executive coaching. Although many details go into deciding the strategy,

I will take a simple example to elaborate on this point. Think about two different companies – Walmart and Starbucks. Walmart has a strategy of low-cost operation so that they can provide the lowest prices to customers. Starbucks, on the other hand, is built on outstanding customer service and a fabulous customer experience.

If you only rely on standard competency models, you may end up developing some leadership competencies in both organizations, but probably not the ones that will provide your organization with a strategic advantage.

We help companies to assess their leaders on 15 Global leadership competencies using Global Leadership Assessment or GLA 360.We then compare your leaders with the norm group of global leaders. We then help you align the competencies to strategy to leverage leadership development.

2. Do you have the support of the senior leadership team?

The senior leadership team ultimately decides whether to allocate the budget for coaching or not. And that is just the beginning. Their support is also essential throughout the implementation of coaching.

The CEO and the senior leadership team have to be convinced of the value and ROI of the coaching investment. If the CEO is unwilling to support the executive coaching, chances are she has seen prior executive coaching (or other leadership development initiatives) that failed to deliver any business impact.

One of the best ways to convince the senior leadership team is to first think of these questions and answer them thoroughly. Then make a presentation that answers these questions and clearly outlines the impact and ROI of executive coaching.

We will sit down with you to help you answer these 9 questions honestly and thoroughly. When you have done your homework and can clearly show the measurable ROI of the coaching investment that has an escape clause, you are better equipped to convince the top leadership to go ahead with the investment and provide ongoing support during the process.

3. Who should you include and how to decide?

If an organization had no budget constraints, then every leader at any level will benefit from executive coaching. But we live in a real world where most organizations have a limited budget. So decisions have to be made on who will be included in the executive coaching program.

Here are some thoughts on the decision-making criteria. Without having clear criteria, individual leaders may end up nominating their “favorite” employees to coach instead of the most deserving or the ones who will have the most impact.

1. Include senior leaders first:

It is best to start a coaching program with the senior-most leaders. They have the maximum impact on the organization. They set the direction and execute the strategy. Hence investing in them will result in the highest payoff. Leaders who are at least at the director level, and/or in charge of entire departments or divisions are the right candidates. Besides, when senior leaders role model the desired behaviors, they cascade down to their team members, multiplying the benefit of executive coaching.

2. Include high potential leaders:

Whether it is through performance management, assessment centers, or succession planning, most organizations have a process of identifying high potential employees. All the high potential employees identified through such a process can be included in the executive coaching intervention.

3. Include leaders willing to change:

While this sounds obvious, we often meet leaders who are unwilling to change. This can be because of many reasons – the leader is close to retirement, she is not the right fit for a particular role, or he may have a derailing behavior that he is unable or unwilling to change. Changing the well-entrenched behaviors of successful leaders is difficult even when the leader is ready and willing. Trying to change the behaviors of a successful leader who doesn’t want to change is a waste of time and money.

We will help you select the right candidates for leadership coaching so that you can maximize the impact.

4. How will you measure success?

It is not uncommon to see organizations use the likability criteria to measure the success of executive coaching. Feedback from the leader being coached usually only means that the leader liked the coach and the coaching process. It hardly has anything to do with the business impact of the coaching! And because of these success criteria, many coaches tell the leader what they want to hear, and avoid telling them what they really NEED to hear! The coach and the leader may have great intellectual discussions around the issues, but not much will happen in terms of the behavior change at work.

The only criteria for the success of executive coaching should be a positive behavior change of the coachee at work. And this behavior change should be anonymously rated by the leader’s stakeholders – the direct manager, peers, and subordinates.

We believe that the only measure of success should be real behavior change at work. We administer 3 leadership growth progress reviews (LGPR’s) during the coaching intervention. LGPRs are anonymous surveys by the leader’s team members whether the leader has improved their behavior at work or not. This helps measure both the progress and sustainability of the desired behaviors at work.

5. How long should the executing coaching process last?

The ultimate goal of coaching is to help the leader make a sustainable change in behavior at work. The coach’s role is the support of the leader until she can do it on her own. Often, organizations enlist coaches without a clear deadline for delivering results. This is counterproductive for the leader and the organization. The coaching may go on and on as the coach is being paid by the session.

Ideally, the coaching engagement should last long enough for the leader to form habits that will sustain the behavior. A coaching process that lasts less than six months may be ineffective. Six months is not a long enough time period to sustain behavior change. The ideal time period to convert new behaviors into lasting habits is 12 to 18 months. On the other hand, if coaching takes longer than 18 months, the coaching goal may be too ambitious, the coachee may not be putting in the efforts, or the coach may not facilitating the process professionally.

Instead of feel-good coaching that may go on and on, we have clearly defined time limits. 6-12 months to sustained behavioral change at work.

6. Which coaching methodology(or process) to use?

Unfortunately, many human resources professionals themselves are not clear about their choices of available coaching methodologies. Even when they are aware, the choice is based on which coaching agencies or providers have marketed themselves well enough! There are just a few large-scale scientific studies available to measure the effectiveness in terms of behavior change at work. Most coaching agencies cite the studies that measure the likeability of the coach or the coachee’s perception if the coaching was helpful. Now, any coaching is likely to be helpful when compared with no coaching at all. But is that enough? If the coaching does not help the leader change her behavior at work, it cannot be considered effective.

Coaching methodologies can be classified into two main categories. Research has proven one method to be significantly more effective than the other. Unfortunately, most leadership professionals are only aware of the less effective method and hence tend to prefer it due to the common knowledge bias.

1. Psychological coaching

The focus of psychological coaching is to find the reasons for a leader’s behaviors. It often includes personality assessments that will shed light on the “personality” or “tendencies” of the leader. The popular assessments used are FIRO-B, MBTI, 16PF, HPI, etc. These tools allow the coachee to understand why she behaves in a certain way and helping her change it. The premise is that if you understand why then you can work on the how. The coach is the “expert” and often at the center of the coaching process and is responsible for behavior change.

2. Behavioral coaching

Behavioral coaching methodology assumes that

1. we exhibit behaviors that are rewarded and
2. we tend to avoid behaviors that are discouraged or punished.

Our current behaviors are developed as a result of interactions with friends, family, colleagues over time. We do more of what is rewarded and tend to avoid what is “punished” or dissuaded. Although behavior coaches agree that every individual is born with certain traits and tendencies, they don’t worry about the past and why the leader behaves in a certain manner.

By the time you are a grown adult and a leader in the mid-forties, there is little use in finding out I am this way because of my parents and wanting to blame them! Behavioral coaches’ focus is to help the leader change future behavior while interacting with the stakeholders.

In the earlier part of an employee’s career, the behaviors that are rewarded are based on individual achievement. As the employee moves up the career ladder, these same individualistic behaviors may become a hindrance in getting work done by others.

Behavioral coaches work from the premise that a leader will develop new or different behaviors through the same process they learned their current behaviors! Through reinforcement of desired behaviors and dissuasion of the undesired behaviors. The coach interviews the leader’s team members and conducts 360-degree feedback of the leader to understand which behaviors are useful and which ones are derailing.

Can you guess which of these two methodologies is effective? Most human resource professionals get it wrong. As I mentioned before, it is in part due to the constant advertisement, halo effect, and common knowledge bias.

A comprehensive study among 11,000 business leaders on 4 continents by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan found their behavioral coaching process to be 95% effective.

The effectiveness is measured in terms of on job behavior change of the leader as anonymously assessed by the leader’s own team members. The study was then extended to 86,000 leaders with similar effectiveness numbers.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any large-scale studies that measure on job behavior change of leaders who have undergone the psychological coaching process.

We use a stakeholder centered coaching process developed by World’s number 1 leadership thinker Dr. Marshall Goldsmith. It is a clearly defined process that delivers guaranteed and measurable results.

7. Which executive coaching provider to use and why?

Although the previous questions will help narrow down the list of the coaching service providers, there are a few important questions that you should consider.

1. Availability of coaches locally across geographies

If you prefer local coaching (as opposed to virtual coaching via video calls), the availability and reach of coaches across the locations your company does business with will become a criterion. For multinational companies, having local coaches also helps with language and culture. Even if you decide to have virtual coaching, it is good to have a pool of coaches to choose from.

2. Are the coaches full-time employees, or are do they freelance

Relatively few consulting organizations have full-time executive coaches on their payroll. Most consulting organizations work with a network of qualified and experienced coaches who are freelancers. This allows the client to access a larger pool of global coaches across geographies. The flip side is ensuring the uniformity of the coaching process.

We are the largest executive coaching network in the world. 3000+ coaches in 200+ cities in 55+ countries. All of the coaches are certified in and use the exact same process. We also support the coach, leader, and the entire process through a single online platform. This provides clarity, transparency, and uniformity among all the coaches. It also helps the leader with accountability and habit formation.

Read: What are the best executive coaching programs? Which are the top executive coaching firms?

8. How to maximize the ROI in coaching: Investment and performance guarantee

1. Investment

Coaching is the most effective tool available today. However, coaching also requires significant investment, time, effort, and support from senior leadership.

Depending upon the experience of the coach, and the level of the leader coached, the investment amounts vary. For example, for a CEO, you may want to hire an experienced coach. On the other hand, for a mid-management level, a coach with a decade of experience may be appropriate.

Executive coaching for a period of 6 months onwards starts at around $5,000 per leader. It can go to $50,000 and upwards for a CEO of a large multinational. If we look at the coaching investment in terms of the leader’s annual CTC (10% can be spent on coaching) and impact on the organization’s performance, it more than justifies the investment.

For levels below mid-management, long-term training interventions and/or team coaching may be useful and cost-effective.

2. Performance guarantee

One of the salient points of our behavioral coaching model is performance guarantee. We often work with our clients on a no-growth no-pay basis. The payment is deferred to the end of the coaching intervention. If the leader does not measurably improve (as anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members), there is no charge! Yes, you read it right! Instead of wishing, hoping, and praying that a training or coaching intervention will deliver results as promised, you can be assured of the results.

3. How involved should HR and top management be in the coaching process?

Coaching is a one on one and confidential relationship between the coach and the coachee. Due to this reason, many HR and top management professionals are not in the loop of what is happening with the leader. They have little idea about what the leader is working on and whether the leader has improved or not.

But this should not be the case. At the start of the coaching assignment, the coach should clearly outline the areas she will work on with the leader. HR should also get monthly or quarterly updates on the leader’s progress. While it is ethical for the coach to maintain confidentiality, if the coach finds anything illegal or unethical during the process, the coach should immediately report it to HR and the management.

Our 6-12 month long coaching process often costs less than sending a single leader to a short duration (a few days) leadership development program at a reputed B-school.

You don’t have to send your leaders to a program. We come to you. Virtually or in person. We offer no growth, no pay clause. If the leader does not measurably improve (as anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members), we will not charge you! We provide monthly progress reports from our online platform and 3 anonymous leadership growth progress reviews. This keeps HR, top management, and sponsor in the loop and updated on the progress.

Read Case Study – How we delivered Guaranteed measurable results delivered for our FMCG client

9. How to scale organization-wide the benefits of coaching?

There is a difference between leader development and leadership development. The focus of leadership development is to develop individual leaders. The focus of leadership development is to create conditions within the organization so that more and more leaders are created.

One of the best ways to leadership development is to enroll the entire senior leadership team in executive coaching. A leader is always leading by example – whether they know it or not, believe it or not, or like it or not. When leaders invest time and effort in their own development, the benefits cascade down to the entire team.

Many organizations start with leadership coaching for the entire leadership team. Then the coaching is extended to leaders one level down. Eventually, this helps create a culture of feedback, transparency, learning, collaboration, change, and innovation. Team members are more engaged, and performance improves.

During the coaching of the top leadership team or the 2nd level leadership team, if several leaders have the same or similar improvement areas, then some further actions may be warranted. Better recruitment, better training, clarification of values, competencies, and desired behaviors are some of the things that can be done to prevent undesirable behaviors and hence reduce the need for coaching.

Instead of just developing individual leaders, let us help you scale to organization-wide leadership development.

We will help you scale and cascade leadership development across the organization and create a culture that is conducive to developing more leaders at all levels.

Read: Developing leaders vs. leadership developmen

In Conclusion

These 9 criteria and the related question will help you select the right coaching program and vendor to maximize the value and the ROI of your coaching investment.

Tired of coaching programs that didn’t deliver?

Tired of coaching programs that didn’t live up to the hype?  Tired of management asking you to demonstrate measurable ROI on leadership development investment.

Ready to create the most impactful organization-wide leadership development program with measurable ROI with a no-growth no pay clause?

NAL Triple Advantage Coaching with Guaranteed and Measurable results

We offer our New Age Leadership – NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching that delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth. It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on four continents). Companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 use this process to develop their leaders.

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

We offer our New Age Leadership Triple advantage coaching that delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth.  It is based on a stakeholder-centered coaching process with a 95% effectiveness rate (in a study or 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

Time and resource-efficient:The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs.  We go to the leader and her team.  And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.

Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader:Every leader is different.  One size fits all approach doesn’t work.  Individual development areas for each leader aligned to the business strategy.

Involves entire team: Unlike most leadership programs, NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching involves the leader’s entire team, and it has a cascading effect – increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.

The leader becomes the coach: for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams. It is like kaizen for your leadership development.

Cost-Effective: Our entire one-year coaching engagement often costs less than sending the leader to a short-duration leadership program at any reputed B school.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth: as assessed – not by us – but anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Pay us only after we deliver results! : We work with many of our clients on a pay for results basis.  What does it mean?  If the leaders don’t improve, you simply don’t have to pay us.

Schedule a 15-minute conversation: no obligation and no sales pitch  

SCHEDULE NOW!

Reference – MAKING COACHING WORK: Ten Easy Steps by Marc Effron