Author: Tejas

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  

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

Developing leaders vs. leadership development

Developing leaders vs. leadership development. Is there any difference? Yes, indeed. And the chances are that not knowing the difference is costing you a lot!

Many organizations, top management, and talent management professionals don’t really understand the difference.

This incorrect paradigm results in billions of dollars in leadership programs that largely go to waste.

In this article, I want to clarify the differences and share pointers to maximize the return on investment (ROI) of their leadership development efforts..

Keeping pace with the VUCA world

Senior leaders today face an extremely challenging business environment. The rapid pace of change, global competition, and changing customer preferences are just a few of the many challenges.

The acronym VUCA, volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous, is an apt description of a business world leader that leaders must learn to adapt to and thrive in.

Hence, the pace of learning and leadership development must keep pace with these rapid changes in business conditions.

Developing leaders is a priority

In countless surveys over the years, CEOs and top executives have confirmed the importance of developing leaders. Leadership development is usually one of the top 3-4 priorities of organizations. Organizations are spending a lot of time, money, and effort to develop leaders.

In 2014, in the United States alone, an estimated $60 billion were spent in various initiatives to develop leaders.

Now that we are at the end of 2020, that figure probably has grown even larger. Add to that – the worldwide investment in developing leaders by organizations outside of the United States – in Europe, Asia (especially China and India), South America, and the rest of the world – Organizations are spending staggering amounts of money on developing leaders.

Leadership development is not working!

One would think that with such enormous amounts of money spent, the state of leadership in organizations must be at a peak. Unfortunately, it is quite the opposite.

While most CEOs consider developing leaders their top priority, only a minority of the CEOs think their leadership development initiatives are effective. This is echoed in survey after survey over many years. What are the reasons for this discrepancy?

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

Too much focus is on leader development and not enough focus on leadership development

Let me explain the distinction between leader development and leadership development.

Leader development can be defined as developing the knowledge, skills, abilities, confidence, and behaviors of an individual leader to make her more effective. The focus is often on developing the individual. It lacks a comprehensive and systemic perspective.

Leadership development can be defined as building an environment where people in the organization develop leadership skills, abilities, behaviors, and attitudes.

It is about building a network of relationships amongst individuals where they support one another and work towards a greater good. It is about building a leadership culture.
Leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum. Leadership involves people, and hence it is a social and interpersonal process.

Watch: Drive Business Results by Leveraging Leadership

Research by McCauley and Day

Here are some pointers from the research by McCauley and Day, as listed on Wikipedia

• “Leadership development is defined as the expansion of a group’s capacity to produce direction, alignment, and commitment (McCauley et al.), in contrast to leader development which is the expansion of one’s ability to be effective in leadership roles and processes.”

• “Leader development is described as one aspect of the broader process of leadership development (McCauley et al., 2010).”

• “Leader development focuses on developing individual knowledge, skills, and abilities (human capital), whereas leadership development focuses on building networked relationships (social capital) among individuals in an organization.”

• “In leader development, the focus is on intrapersonal skills of self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-motivation; leadership development focuses on interpersonal skills of social awareness and social skills (Day, 2000).”

• “Leader development keys in on the assumption that effective leadership occurs through the development of individual leaders, whereas leadership development is a function of the social resources that are rooted in relationships (Day, 2000).”

Please don’t call it leadership development!

In fact, the researchers argue that what most organizations coin as leadership development should actually be labeled as leader development!

Leader development is a subset of leadership development. Unfortunately, too much of the focus of organizations has been on developing individual leaders. And the consequences of this wrong paradigm can be seen in the outcomes.

Agreed that many methods and processes for leader development can be improved, but this single-minded focus on developing leaders at the expense of leadership development is a major culprit for huge amounts of investment going down the drain.

Focus on the seeds or the soil?

This difference in leader development vs. leadership development can be nicely explained using a simple analogy. If you want to plant an apple orchard, should you focus only on the quality of the apple seeds? Or should you consider the soil in which the seeds will be planted?

Even if you have the best seeds, if the soil and the environment in which the seeds are planted are not suitable, the results will be disappointing at best. To grow the best apple orchard, you cannot choose one over the other.

You have to focus both on the seeds and the soil. In good soil, an average seed will flourish. In bad soil, even the best of the seeds may wither.

Going from leader development to leadership development

In the same way, organizations should not focus only on developing individual leaders but also devote equal focus and resources to organization-wide leadership development.

“Organizations cannot choose one or the other approach, but instead, a bridge must be anchored on either side of leader and leadership development for effective development to occur (Kegan, 1994). Therefore, it is important to develop the intrapersonal capabilities to serve as a foundation for interpersonal competence and link both leader and leadership development together.”

If you only develop individual leaders, will it result in effective organizational leadership? Not really! We may develop the individual’s leadership capacity.

Still, it does not necessarily mean that the individual will be able to apply these skills effectively unless supported by the team and the company culture.

Read:  The fundamental problem with executive education and leadership development programs

How do you increase the focus on leadership development?

Here are some pointers on how to enhance the focus on leadership development to ensure that you are getting a good return on your leadership development initiatives

• Stop sending a few people to episodic leadership development programs!

When organizations send just a handful of leaders to short-duration episodic leadership programs, it is a complete waste of time and money.

A three-day program at a B-school on “Influential leadership” may look good on a leader’s resume but does little in terms of changed behavior at work.

First of all, such programs assume that all participating leaders need the same instruction to convert them into an ideal “influential leader.” Each leader is different. The context and culture of the organization they work in are different.

The “case studies” taught have little relevance or application to each leader’s specific situation and circumstances. No wonder such programs do little to benefit the leader or the team in terms of improvements at work.

• Customize leader development to the individual and the context

Standard cookie cutter “leadership programs” don’t work. They assume that all leaders need the same improvement, and a standard curriculum would address that need.

The fact is that each individual has different strengths and different improvement areas. They have different backgrounds and experiences.

They each work in a culture that is unique to the organization. Unless we identify and work on individual improvement areas specific to the leader, there is little chance of improving the leader at work.

• Involve the leader’s team members in the leadership development initiative

As mentioned earlier, leadership doesn’t happen in a vacuum. It is a social and interpersonal process. Involving team members in the leader’s development is one of the best ways to extend leader development into leadership development.

This can be done through 360-degree feedback, collecting suggestions for the leader’s improvement, and assessing the team members’ improvement. Involve team members at every step of the way.

• Have a comprehensive long term leadership development strategy

Leadership development is a process, not an event! Some organizations track the man-days spent on leadership development. Others track

how many leaders have been “trained” in leadership. The number of different programs and topics is also part of the tracking measurements. Such disjointed programs have little benefit.

A comprehensive leadership development strategy that spans years and covers the entire population of leaders is needed.

Read: How we helped our FMCG Client to move from leader development to leadership development

Let us help you move from leader development to leadership development

• Stakeholder centered coaching program

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.

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 leaders in an entire section or division

We also advise our client to cover the leaders in an entire section, division, or 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 5 day B school program

Our coaching program that lasts 12-15 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 12-15 month process. The rest of the time, the leader in applying the learnings at work with his/her 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 his/her 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?

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Conflict management at workplace is one of the essential skills for managers and team leaders. Having the right conflict resolution strategies can make the difference between a constructive conflict – where the goal is to come to the best solution for a particular issue.

A destructive conflict – where emotions run high, tempers may flare, relationships are strained, and performance suffers. Unresolved conflict is expensive. It wastes time and money. It is often the case in many workplaces. Fortunately, with proper conflict management at the workplace, it is also easy to address.

Here are some examples of workplace conflicts

• Manager and subordinate disagree on the performance evaluation

• Manager gives detailed instructions on tasks, but the employee hates the manager’s “micromanagement”

• During discussion, one employee, tends to raise his voice, other feels insulted, and it starts an argument

• Heated arguments and hurt feelings between departments – during the budget discussion meeting

• Giving feedback on an assignment – boss thinks it was bad, the employee completely disagrees

And there are many more that may you see at your workplace.

Conflict management definition

Conflict is a serious disagreement between two or more people or groups, usually because of the differences in their opinions, intentions, needs, or interests. Conflict arises when opposing parties are not able to come to an agreement or a compromise.

Conflict management definition – the process and techniques of managing conflict at the workplace to reduce the negative impact of conflict while taking advantage of the positive impact of any conflict.

Is conflict good or bad?

That brings us to the next question. Is conflict good or bad? Can conflict have a positive impact?

The work we do today is complex, uncertain, ambiguous, and constantly changing. There are no clear answers, and there are no decisions that are 100% correct.

Any plan or strategy is a hypothesis and the best guess based on the information available at the time. It has to be proven right through the process of trial, error, learning, and course correction.

Hence, conflict of ideas is essential to fostering learning, creativity, and innovation, better decision-making, and improved performance on the team.

On the other hand, destructive conflicts in organizations can lead to a variety of undesirable outcomes. Stress, anxiety, strained relationships, decreased productivity, missed deadlines, poor customer service, and higher turnover are some of the negative effects of a destructive conflict.

Conflict management at the workplace and having the right conflict management strategies are essential to ensure that team members have a balanced outlook on the conflict. Conflict is inevitable. Conflict of “ideas” is even desirable.

Conflict is not a problem. Conflict can be good, or it cannot be good bad. The way team members perceive conflict and the way leaders approach and manage conflict makes all the difference.

Patrick Lencioni’s concept of the conflict continuum

Patrick Lencioni, the author of the book – The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, proposes the conflict continuum concept.

At one end is artificial harmony, where everyone agrees, only superficially. At the other end is destructive conflict – where people are at one another’s throats.

Artificial harmony

If people remain silent and avoid conflict, it leads to what Lencioni calls artificial harmony. Everyone on the team agrees to everything, but only superficially. They avoid conflict in the meeting. They hold back their ideas and opinions during the meeting.

But then there is the meeting after the meeting! Around the water cooler, at the coffee break, where they question the ideas and decisions made in the meeting. Needless to say, they are not committed to the decisions and course of action.

They may even sabotage the decisions and course of action taken, especially because their ideas were not heard in the meeting. Artificial harmony has a negative impact on the engagement, commitment, and performance of the team.

Image Source – https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-ZSIBr6aEE4I/VuCvaMGBntI/AAAAAAAADH8/LHSKtIXAaWk/s1600/Lencioni-5.png

Teams have to learn and be comfortable to engage in constructive conflict. Conflict allows all ideas, opinions, points of view to be put out in the open.

They can then be listened to, discussed, and debated. The ultimate goal of the team is to come to the best possible solution to a work problem.

Unless different points of view are considered and evaluated, you may leave many good ideas on the table.

Destructive conflict

However, conflict can also get out of hand if it is not managed properly. Tempers may flare. People dig in their heels. They want to get their way. They are unwilling to listen to the other’s point of view.

There are personal attacks and insults. Relationships are strained. Opposing parties not only avoid collaborating on future projects, but they may also even attempt to sabotage others’ efforts.

The ideal conflict point

Somewhere between the two extremes, probably right in the middle, is the ideal conflict point. Everyone’s ideas are considered and debated, and decisions are made. The benefit of ideal conflict is that it allows a better commitment from the team to the final decision.

When everyone’s ideas are considered and listened to, people commit to the final decision, even if it was not the decision they had proposed.

Lencioni observes that people tend to err on the side of artificial harmony not to spoil their relationships with team members. He suggests that teams should try to move towards the ideal conflict point and not fear going a little beyond it to the other side.

The real test of a team’s health is when teams can go past the ideal conflict point and then return to normal without any collateral damage. Once teams have done this, performance accelerates.

Differences are inevitable – destructive conflict is preventable

Why does conflict arise? We all have different backgrounds, education, experiences, attitudes, perceptions, needs, and abilities. No two individuals are exactly alike, and no two individuals will always have the same opinion in every situation.

We see the world through our own unique perspective. It is through the lens of opinions, assumptions, experiences, and biases.

Unfortunately, our unique perspective is subjective, incomplete, flawed, and distorted. We think that we see reality as it is. The truth is that we all see our own little version of reality.

Five blind men and the elephant

A fantastic example of this is illustrated by the story of five blind men and the elephant. The first blind man holds the elephant’s tail and concludes that the elephant is like a rope.

The second blind man grabs the elephant’s leg and proclaims that the elephant is like a tree’s trunk. The third blind man leans against the elephant’s side and declares that the elephant is like a wall. The fourth blind man holds the elephant’s ear and thinks that the elephant is like a fan.

The fifth blind man holds the elephant’s trunk and concludes that the elephant is like a python.

Each one of these five blind men is both right and wrong. Right because from their perspective and their lens of the world, their assumptions are correct.

However, they are also wrong. To get the whole picture, we must look at the elephant from all perspectives. To resolve the problem, we need to consider all perspectives (each one of them is probably partially right) and understand the whole problem (be able to look at the whole elephant)

Two main sources of workplace conflicts

The main sources of workplace conflicts are interpersonal reasons and organizational sources. Here are a few examples of both

1. Interpersonal sources of conflicts

a. Difference in personalities of the people involved
b. Difference in communication styles
c. Difference in motivation
d. History of working together
e. Difference in education, background, experience, approaches, etc.

2. Organizational sources of conflicts

a. Unclear job descriptions
b. Ambiguity in roles
c. Competition for limited resources
d. Company politics and silos
e. Perception of inequality (or favoritism)

Conflict management at the workplace – Conflict resolution steps

There are many tools and frameworks available to understand and resolve conflicts. I am going to discuss two popular tools and their conflict resolutions steps

Conflict resolutions strategies with the LECSR Tool

LECSR is an acronym<>

L – Listen
E – Empathize
C – Clarify the issue
S – Seek Permission
R – Resolve

The LECSR tool allows conflict management at the workplace through both conflict prevention and conflict resolution. As soon as you see the signs of a disagreement turning into a conflict, call the involved parties and apply the six steps of LECSR to the situation.

Listen

When we speak, we are only repeating what we already know. In the example of five blind men and the elephant, each person may end up repeating what they know.

Listening allows others to share their perspective so that the listener can consider other perspectives. It also conveys to the speaker that you are interested in their perspective.

Listening is one of the key leadership skills. Listening is an active process. Almost all of us can become better listeners at any age or any stage of our careers.

Listen without interrupting. Listen without judgment. Keep an open mind and be curious. Listening does not necessarily mean that you agree with the other person’s perspective. It means that you understand their perspective.

Paraphrase what the other person said and get a confirmation of your understanding of their perspective. If emotions are high, allow other parties to vent their feelings without interruption and without taking them personally. Be genuinely interested and concerned.

Here are some pointers

“Tell me more about….”
“Can you give me an example of that?”
“When, how, where, what happened….”

Empathize

Empathy is the ability to put yourself in the other person’s shoes. To see, understand, and feel things that the other person is experiencing.

Again, it does not mean that you agree with their perspective or position. It means that you understand them. Empathy is not sympathy.

Sympathy is when you feel compassion or pity for someone’s predicament. Empathy is experiencing the situation as the other person sees, feels, or understands.

With most reasonable people, they want to share their inputs. They want to be heard and understood. This is a critical step. Unless this hurdle is overcome, people may not be able to move to the next step.

Here are some pointers

“I understand where you are coming from.”
“If I were in your situation, I would probably be doing the same thing.”

Clarify the Issue (conflict)

After listening and empathizing, the next step is to clarify the conflict situation.

Before resolving the conflict, establish a clear understanding of the situation from all sides. Paraphrase the situation and explain the positions of the conflicting parties.

Here are some pointers

• “What you’re saying is… is that correct?”
• “If my understanding is right, this is what you are proposing.”

Seek Permission

If you are lucky, you may end up diffusing conflict just by listening, empathizing, and clarifying. The involved parties may now be ready to sit together and resolve the conflict themselves.

However, if the conflict is not yet resolved, avoid the tendency to jump in with advice. Unwanted advice is almost always unwelcome.

Too many managers and leaders tend to jump into “advice” and “problem solving” mode. There is a critical step here to seek permission first.

When you seek to understand, you may find you tend to problem-solve instead of listening. Keep on track by being someone who seeks permission.

Before you ask questions, make sure that you have asked the person if they are ready for you to ask. (Perhaps they have more to share first.)

You can wait to tell your side after the other person has expressed all of his/her concerns and feels clearly understood.

Here are some pointers

• “May I bring up a few points that you may have missed?”
• “Can I propose a couple of ideas to consider?”
• “Now that we understand each other, can we brainstorm some ideas to move forward?”

Resolve the Issue

Now that both parties have listened, empathized, clarified the issue, asked for permission, and discussed options – they can start to resolve the conflict together.

A conversation framed in this way prevents escalation of conflicts and allows the issues to be resolved. Sometimes we may have to agree to disagree or have a solution that does not satisfy all the parties completely.

With the conflict resolution steps in LECSR, conflict can be brought out instead of suppressed. Conflicts can be diffused, and they may seldom turn into destructive conflict.

Read: Everything you ever wanted to know about executive coaching and leadership coaching

Conflict management at work – Conflict resolution strategy

Conflict resolutions strategies using the Crucial Conversations framework

Another viral and research-based tool for resolving conflict is the framework of the Crucial conversation. It is from the best-selling book – Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by authors Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzer

What is a crucial conversation?

The book defines a crucial conversation as – “A discussion between two or more people where the stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong.”

In other words, a crucial conversation is a situation prone to conflict. Managing crucial conversations is akin to conflict management at work.

Crucial conversations have three characteristics.

• The stakes are high – may be a budget allocation meeting or a performance appraisal conversation

• Opinions vary – each department thinks that they deserve a larger portion of the budget, the employee thinks she deserves the promotion – boss may think otherwise

• Emotions run strong – High stakes and varying opinions are often accompanies by strong emotions. If not handled properly, things may quickly get out of hand during a crucial conversation.

Examples of crucial conversations (or conflict situations)

Crucial conversations are part of our professional and personal lives. Apart from the examples shared earlier, here are some examples from the book or conflict situations or crucial conversations

• Giving the boss feedback about her behavior

• Critiquing a colleague’s work

• Talking to a team member who isn’t keeping commitments

• Talking to a coworker who behaves offensively or makes suggestive comments

• Giving an unfavorable performance review

• Talking to a coworker about a personal hygiene problem

• Ending a relationship

• Asking a friend to repay a loan

• Asking a roommate to move out

Read: The Collateral Damage of Poor Leadership Behaviors

Three possible outcomes of conflicts aka crucial conversations

1. We can avoid them.

2. We can face them and handle them poorly.

3. We can face them and handle them well.

This is akin to our fight or flight response that is programmed in the primitive parts of our brains. Our brains are continuously scanning our environment for any danger.

This comes from the time when early humans lived in the African Savannahs. This is a survival mechanism that has helped humans survive against stronger and faster predators.

When you see a sabre tooth tiger – taking quick action – either be ready to fight the tiger or flight – run-away was the key to survival. In our modern world, we rarely face any life-threatening situations. Crucial conversations and conflict situations trigger this response.

We can fight the situation. We run away from the situation. We can get violent, or we can remain silent. Neither of the two options is productive.

We have to learn to manage crucial conversations well and learn conflict resolution strategies.

The crucial conversation framework offers a research-based conflict resolution strategy.

Image Source – https://www.thinksmarterworld.com/crucial-conversations/

7 step process for conflict management at the workplace

Here are the 7 steps of conflict management strategy using the framework of the Crucial conversation

Step 1: Start with Heart

In the heat of the conflict, we sometimes lose track of the desired outcome, and things may get personal. Start with heart means asking the following questions and keeping them in the forefront during the conflict resolution process.

• What is the outcome that I desire?
• What is really at stake here?

Here are some more questions to ask before going into conflict resolution discussions

• What do I really want for myself?
• What do I really want for others?
• What do I really want for the relationship?
• How would I behave if I really wanted these results?

Almost always, our relationships at work are not transactional. Ideally, we would want to resolve the issue and maintain a good working relationship. Knowing this allows us to keep our emotions under check.

Step 2: Learn to Look

Look for signs of a crucial conversation between yourself and others. Indicators can be physical, emotional, or behavioral. Tightening of stomach muscles, anger or fear, shouting, pointing fingers, etc. We want to identify and reinforce the mutual purpose and create a dialogue around how to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome.

Monitor the conversation – are we in dialogue more, or have we moved to attack or defensiveness. Use statements like “It seems like we have moved away from dialogue into being stuck in our positions” or “I’m sorry. It seems I haven’t allowed you to explain your point of view.”

Step 3: Make it Safe.

When emotions tend to run high, and conversation has moved away from dialogue, do something to get back to safety. Offer apologies, humor (self-deprecating humor – a joke on self and not at other’s expense), a tea break, or a 10 minute time out are good ways to diffuse tension and make it safe again that the dialogue can proceed.

Read my article on – Psychological safety at work – Why you need it and how to develop it

Step 4: Master My Stories

As human beings, we cannot perceive reality as it is. We tell ourselves stories about the situation and make up our own version of reality in our heads. This stirs up emotions based on our interpretation of reality. And then we act accordingly. For example – Let’s say your spouse is late from work. What would be your reaction? It would depend on how you interpret the situation and what story you tell yourself.

If you tell a story that he/she may be involved in an accident, then your emotions may be of concern and worry. If you tell a story that he/she doesn’t care about you and cares only about work – you may feel angry and upset. If you tell a story that he/she is late because he/she may be cheating on you – you will probably have emotions of jealousy, anger, despair. How you behave when your spouse arrives home depends on the story you have told yourself.

It is very important to realize the stories we are telling ourselves about the situation during a crucial conversation. We may end up twisting facts, ignoring data, and living in our own imaginary world. Here are some pointers

• What is my story? How has my story led me to these conclusions and emotions?
• Do facts support my story?
• Separate your interpretations from the data and facts
• Change your story and revise your response accordingly

Step 5: State My Path

Start by stating your perspective and your interpretation of the event. State clearly that this is your version of the story. Use mitigating phrases. Use I statement instead of you. State facts, not opinions. Here are some pointers

“I have noticed that you arrived late three days last week.”
“I did not get any response from you for my last four emails.”

Step 6: Explore Other’s Paths

Just as you stated your path, the next step is allowing others to state their paths – how they arrived at their position in this conflict or crucial conversation. Be curious and non-judgmental. Listen with empathy. Paraphrase what you understand. Here are a few statements that will help you explore other’s paths.

“Here is how I see things. Do you see this differently?”
“What’s going on that makes you come to this conclusion?”
“I’d really like to get your take on this”
“This is how to see it. Have I misunderstood?”

This will allow both parties to understand each other. Emphasize the areas where you agree. Clarify areas where there is a difference of opinion. Once again, emphasize mutual purpose and mutual respect.

Step 7: Move to Action

Agree on the next steps. What will happen? Who will do it? By when? How will we report/monitor progress?

Read: Psychological safety at work: What is it and why do you need it

Conclusion

Conflicts at work and in personal lives are commonplace. Conflicts around ideas are desirable to find the best solution to a particular problem. However, conflicts may get out of hand if not managed properly. Conflict management in the workplace is an essential managerial and leadership skill.

The two conflict resolution strategies discussed were the LECSR tool and the framework of the Crucial conversation. Use them both to sharpen your conflict management skills in the workplace.

Get the best leadership coaching to improve conflict management skills for your leaders and teams

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 (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.

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Reference

https://virtualspeech.com/blog/crucial-conversations
https://sourcesofinsight.com/crucial-conversations/ The crucial conversations framework for understanding and resolving conflicts
Velsoft – Conflict resolution – LECSR framework

Diversity and inclusion at workplace yield “dividends” in many respects. Lack of diversity and inclusion acts as a “tax” on work teams’ engagement and performance.

Diversity and inclusion at workplace – the backdrop

In just the last four decades, we have witnessed significant advancements in computers, the internet, mobile phones, technology, logistics, supply chain, and many other related areas.

The end of the cold war between the Russian Federation and the United States, signified with the fall of the Berlin wall, opened up relations and trade between the two superpowers and the rest of the world. Business is now global, and the world is now interconnected.

It is now common to see diverse employees in all aspects of the word – gender, ethnicity, language, religion, country, race, color, age, sexual orientation, political beliefs, or any other ideologies.

In a global and interconnected business world with a diverse workforce, diversity and inclusion have become essential leadership competencies. Research has shown that diversity and inclusion at workplace improve both employee engagement and financial performance.

What is diversity?

The dictionary definition of the word diversity means having or being composed of different or diverse elements. Diversity at the workplace refers to a mix of diverse employees in terms of race, religion, gender, physical ability, language, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, etc. However, diversity is also about openness to any differences – intellectual, political, ideological, social, cultural, beliefs, attitudes, abilities, physical attributes, or even preferences.

Similarity and differences

We are similar in many aspects. As human beings, we all have similar needs and wants. We want to earn a good living, take care of our families. We want to be loved, accepted, and be happy.

We are also different in other aspects – No two human beings are exactly alike! We are all unique and one of a kind. We can notice the visual differences immediately. Race, disability, language are some such examples. There may be differences in ideas, opinions, preferences, life experiences, approach, and so many other areas if we go further.

Diversity – The anthropological perspective

Nomadic age

For over 100,000 years, human beings and early humanoids lived a nomadic life as hunter-gatherers. They had no permanent structures and moved from place to place in search of food and shelter. They stayed in their own groups and didn’t trust other groups, especially if they looked and behaved differently.

Agricultural age

The discovery of agriculture allowed humans to settle in one place and form societies. The agricultural age lasted about 10,000 years or so. Human beings learned to settle down, form bonds with other people, and agriculture and trade flourished. We learned to live and interact with different people. But their interactions were limited to within the geography or their villages or kingdoms they lived in.

Industrial age

Then came the industrial age. Most farm jobs were lost due to mechanization. People moved to cities to work in factories. They learned to work and live with people from different backgrounds and cultures. This was probably the beginning of diversity in the workplace. The industrial age lasted about 200 years.

The information age

In the last four decades, we have moved from the industrial age to the information age. The rapid advancements in computers and technology in the ’70s and the ’80s started shifting from the industrial age to the information age (or the digital age).

By the late ’80s and early ’90s, internet and mobile technologies accelerated the shift digital or information age from the industrial age.

Thomas Freidman’s 2005 book, The World is Flat, captures this shift quite comprehensively. The convergence of technology (transatlantic cable with high internet speed) and events (the Y2K – the year 2000 computer problem that needed programmers that the US did not have enough of) allowed India, China, and many other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing.

Soon, India became the back office of the western world. The global shipping, supply chain optimization, and relatively cheaper and reasonably skilled labor force; allowed China to become the manufacturer of choice for the entire western world.

The last decade – 2010 to 2020 – has brought even better technology for global communication and collaboration. As a result, the workforce in multinational companies is now even more diverse and even more global. A manufacturing company may have plants on several continents.

A software company may have employees collaborating on the same project from several different countries. Companies, both large and small, have to learn to employ and deploy a diverse workforce, often worldwide.

What is inclusion?

Here is a good definition of inclusion from SHRM “the achievement of a work environment in which all individuals are treated fairly and respectfully, have equal access to opportunities and resources, and can contribute fully to the organization’s success.” Inclusion is a culture and a workplace environment where diverse employees feel comfortable and included and can contribute and thrive.

In the United States, equal opportunity and affirmative action laws have mandated companies to follow fair practices in hiring and promoting employees. There are penalties for any systemic discrimination based on any attribute of Companies took notice and made some progress in diversity by hiring people from varied backgrounds. For many years, companies considered diversity as something that they had to put up with. However, in the last decade or two, companies have started understanding the benefits of a diverse workforce and their inclusion.

Diversity by itself doesn’t lead to inclusion. Organizations need to do much more than hiring people with diverse backgrounds. They need to establish practices, policies, culture that allows everyone to feel that they belong irrespective of their backgrounds. It is about valuing people for who they are and what they bring instead of focusing on differences. It is about being intentional to overcome our unconscious biases. It is about systematic and concerted efforts towards the goal to include everyone irrespective of their background. It is about challenging the status quo and business as usual.

What is the opposite of diversity and inclusion?

The opposite of diversity and inclusion may be discrimination based on race, religion, gender, physical ability, language, ethnicity, social class, sexual orientation, etc. Companies have made some progress in terms of diversity, but a lot more needs to be done.

For example – Gender inequality in the workplace. Although women comprise over 50% of the population, there are just a few women CEOs or board members in companies worldwide. Women get paid less than men for doing the same work. The World Economic Forum’s gender gap index’s worldwide average was at 68%.

Companies are making a concerted effort in the right direction. You can see titles of chief diversity officer or chief inclusion officer in large companies to foster diversity and inclusion at workplaces.

The impact of Millennials on diversity and inclusion at workplace

Millennials have entered the workforce in large numbers, and they have seriously challenged the work practices that have spilled over from the industrial age mentality. Millennials demand workplaces where everyone is respected, treated with dignity, and has equal opportunity to learn, grow and prosper. Millennials are more purpose-driven, and they care less for profits at the cost of social justice. Millennials are a now significant percentage of the workforce in the western world. Companies have changed a lot of policies to accommodate them.

Impact of Social movements on diversity and inclusion at workplace

The world has seen several social movements that have either helped or hurt diversity and inclusion at workplace and in communities.

Divisive politics and policies: Politicians use divisive tactics to shore upvotes and gain power. One prime example is President Trump in the USA. His divisive politics and policies have encouraged fringe elements to commit discriminatory practices. His administration has also encouraged divisive politics and led to divisive parties’ rise with extreme views across Europe and Asia.

Black lives matter movement

The video of a white police officer choking a black man George Floyd despite his repeated pleas, “I can’t breathe,” spread like wildfire across the world. It brought to light many aspects of racial discrimination and infuriated people from all around the world. It was a tragic incident, but it sparked a movement that will surely help the cause of diversity and inclusion at workplace and communities. The Black Lives Matter movement has compelled and empowered companies to address racial disparity and take positive actions.

Me too movement

On October 15th, 2017, American actress Alyssa Milano sent a message to her follower on Twitter’s social media platform. The tweet read – “If you’ve been sexually harassed or assaulted, write ‘me too’ as a reply to this tweet.”
Within 24 hours, the post went viral and generated thousands of replies, comments, and retweets. Ordinary women and celebrities from around the world shared their personal stories of sexual harassment or assault.

A majority of them spoke up for the first time about being raped, fending off aggressive bosses or co-workers, and having to remain silent for fear of losing their jobs.

What are the benefits of diversity? (Why is it needed?)

For many years, companies thought of diversity as something to be “dealt with.” Talent acquisition departments had diversity quotas. They did their best to check the boxes and report annual diversity numbers. For example – if a company hired an employee who is female, belongs to a minority race, and is partially disabled – it meant that the company could check off three separate boxes against their diversity quotas!

However, in the last couple of decades, research has shown, and companies have realized the benefits of diversity and inclusion at workplace. Diversity and inclusion at workplace is not just the “right thing to do,” but it also has significant business benefits.

Larger talent pool:

Diversity starts with hiring practices. Hiring a diverse workforce allows companies to tap into a larger talent pool. It can be people who understand the local culture, speak a local language, or are familiar with a particular country’s statutory requirements.

Varied perspectives:

Diversity fosters a larger variety of ideas and approaches. If you have employees from the same college or cultural backgrounds, it can lead to groupthink and stifle change and innovation.

Better team performance:

Research has shown that diverse teams perform better. However, there is a catch. It is inclusion and psychological safety on the team. To take advantage of diverse teams and workforce, leaders and organizations must drive fear out and create a psychologically safe workplace.

The business case of diversity and inclusion at workplace

Diversity and inclusion are humane values. Any human being who means no harm to others deserves to be treated fairly and respectfully. We also feel that diversity and inclusion at workplace should help engagement, change, innovation and performance. Can we make a business case to be for diversity and inclusion at workplace?

In an article in 2015, Mckinsey’s research found that top companies (those ranked in the top 25% for diversity in terms of gender, race, or ethnicity) are more likely to have above-average financial returns to their industry average. On the other hand, companies in the bottom 25% were statistically less likely to achieve above-average returns.

In the United States, EBIT earnings before interest and taxes rose 0.8% for every 10 percent increase in racial and ethnic diversity on the senior-executive team of a company. In the UK, higher gender diversity on the senior executive teams brought in the highest financial returns. EBIT rose by 3.5% for every 10% increase in gender diversity.

Mckinsey concluded that diversity is probably a competitive differentiator that gets better with time. Many other studies have found a correlation between diversity and inclusion and better organizational performance.

Diversity and inclusion at workplace – a core leadership competency

Diversity and inclusion have become a core leadership competencies for the 21st-century leader. Without this competency, the leader will have a difficult time utilizing the talent of the diverse workforce.

Organizations have made significant progress with diversity. Inclusion remains a challenge. One of the essential ingredients of a diverse and inclusive workplace is the leader’s behaviors.

Our Global leadership 360-degree assessment, GLA 360, includes the competency of “Appreciating diversity” as one of the emerging competencies. This assessment allows the leader to gauge herself on 15 different competencies, including the competency of “appreciating diversity.”

Read more about the Global leadership assessment (GLA 360)

We also offer leadership coaching that helps the leader develop the essential competencies of a global leader. In fact, we are so confident of our coaching process that we often work with our clients on a no-growth no pay basis. If the leader doesn’t measurably improve – as anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members – you don’t have to pay!

Read:  Three employee engagement strategies that every leader must know

Ways to foster diversity and inclusion at workplace

Here are some of the multiple ways organizations can foster diversity and inclusion at workplace

Organizational policies

• Recruitment and performance management are two essential policies to ensure both diversity and inclusion at workplace. Have a clearly defined recruitment process to reach out to diverse communities and colleges to attract and hire diverse talent.
• Ensure a good performance management process that eliminates any biases – gender, race, age, etc. and promotes and rewards people based solely on performance.
• A good onboarding process allows a new employee to know and work with all the team members quickly.
• Acknowledge and celebrate a variety of religious and cultural practices. Allow people flexible holidays for the festivals they celebrate.
• Regular training on sensitivity for all employees and team leaders.
• Clearly define anti-discriminatory policies and enforce them publicly and visibly. This encourages the right behaviors while discouraging and punishing any inappropriate behaviors that violate the policy.
• Having a forum to discuss diversity issues openly and report problems anonymously.

Foster a culture of psychological safety

Here are a couple of definitions of psychological safety.

“Being able to show and employ one’s self without fear of negative consequences of self-image, status or career.”

“Psychological safety is the belief or perception of the team members that one will not be punished, humiliated, or face any consequences for openly sharing their half-formed ideas, silly questions, concerns or mistakes.”

Simply put, psychological safety is the answer to this question – Can I be myself, or do I have to hold back on this team? Inclusion and a sense of belonging are enhanced in a culture of psychological safety.

Here are a few ways to foster psychological safety on your team

• Be inclusive in interpersonal settings & in decision-making
• Conversational equality and role rotation in meetings
• The leader role models vulnerability
• Demonstrate curiosity and listen genuinely

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

To quote Dr. Amy Edmondson, the pioneer of the research on the topic, “Psychological safety at work takes effort. It’s not the norm. But it’s worth the effort,”

In conclusion

Diversity and inclusion at workplace are not just about headcount numbers and recruitment policies. Progressive companies know that diversity and inclusion are a competitive advantage that allows them to outpace competitors. Diverse and inclusive workplaces result in higher employee engagement, lower attrition rates, higher commitment, openness to change, and higher innovation levels. Diversity and inclusion is a critical leadership competency for the 21st-century workplace. Coaching leaders on diversity and inclusion is one of the best ways to improve your organization and stay ahead of the competition.

References

The inclusion dividend – Why Investing in Diversity & Inclusion Pays Off – 2013

Feedback is a gift! Leadership feedback is a huge favor! I am sure you have heard the phrase – feedback is a gift. What is the feedback? Why is it a gift? And why is leadership feedback a big favor? These are the points I am going to cover in this article.

What is the feedback?

Simply put, feedback is any information you receive about yourself. Feedback may be subtle, or it may be obvious. Any of the following fits the bill of feedback.

• Review of your cooking by a friend
• Your spouse’s comment about your outfit!
• Your spouse’s comment about your outfit!
•  When your son’s eyes light up when he sees you in the audience at the school play
• When you are the last one to be picked on a team!
• When you wear a sweater that your mom knit
• When the colleague doesn’t invite you for her b’day party
• How many likes (or not) on social media
• Your boss’s feedback on your work
• Your annual performance review
• A formal 360-degree feedback

Feedback is what gets ranked, judged, thanked, commented on. In fact, feedback is everywhere if we observe closely

History of feedback

The term feedback originated as a scientific term in the 19th century. The feedback loop was used in electrical and sound circuits. After the 2nd World War, industrial relations and performance management were started in organizations. The management version of the feedback started then. Feed corrective information back (to the workers) – and hence the feedback. Today the term is widely used in both personal and professional contexts.

 

 

Why is feedback a gift?

Let us think of a successful consumer product. How do you improve it? The simple method to improve it is to ask some representative sample of consumers. Ask them to rate the product. Then ask them for suggestions on how to improve the product. Without feedback from customers, there is little chance of improvement.

As it is true for a consumer product, it is also equally true for us as individuals and employees. How do I become a better friend? Ask my friends for feedback and suggestions to become a better friend. How do I dress better? Well, ask for feedback from others on your dressing. Then ask how you can dress better. How do you become a better spouse? A better father? A better sister? Well, you get it by now. Ask for feedback on how you are doing currently, and then ask how you can become better.

Feedback is a gift because feedback allows you to improve. There can be no improvement without feedback. Feedback is essential for learning and growth.

In today’s workplace, feedback plays a crucial role in developing talent, improving morale, aligning teams, solving problems, and boosting the bottom line.

Leadership feedback is a huge favor.

As we move up the career ladder, the quality and quantity of feedback go down. When we are in a position of power, people avoid giving us honest feedback in managerial or leadership positions. We only get watered down feedback or even plain flattery. Why? First of all, we are uncomfortable giving honest and candid feedback to someone to their face. Secondly, they may be in danger of facing the consequences. The leader may retaliate, punish, or give a lower performance rating, or hold back a promotion.

When a team member gives honest feedback to a leader on her face, he is doing the leader huge favor. They are overcoming two things. First is the discomfort of telling someone the unpleasant truth. Second, they are taking a risk to their standing, reputation, punitive consequences, or career growth. Hence their leadership feedback is a huge favor. Feedback is a gift.

What is even more interesting is that they could have chosen to share the same feedback to others – behind your back and unknown to you. They chose to give you feedback on your face. Probably because they care and they want you to improve. If they talk behind your back, you would not know. And it will deprive you of the opportunity to get better.

Read: Leadership feedback and the CEO disease.

If feedback is a gift, why is it so painful?

If feedback is a gift, why does it feel more like a dentist appointment to pull out a tooth? Why do we tend to avoid it? Why are we afraid of it? Why do we tend to reject it?

We often complain about a spouse’s snide remark on our dressing. We hate our mother in law’s critical review of our cooking. We may dislike our colleague’s candid comments on our presentation. As employees and leaders in organizations – we dislike performance reviews and 360-degree feedback.

Read: Leadership lessons I learned from my son about feedback vs. feedforward

Feedback sits at the intersection of these two basic human needs.

According to author Sheila Heen, receiving feedback sits at the intersection of two basic human needs.

First is our drive to learn. Human beings are naturally wired for learning. A human baby comes into the world with just a few basic survival skills. And yet, we teach ourselves to walk, to talk, and hundreds of other skills. We love learning. But learning about ourselves, especially honest and critical feedback, is not a pleasant experience. And the culprit is our second basic human need.

The second need is our longing for acceptance.

We all want to be loved, cared for, respected and accepted for who we are. Candid feedback makes us feel like we are being rejected. We feel like we are not enough. It hurts our pride and wounds our ego.

The tug of war between these two basic human needs – our need to be loved and accepted as we are and our need to learn and grow – is the main reason for the unpleasantness of receiving feedback.

Accepting feedback is a gift.

Do you remember a special teacher or a mentor in your life? Why are they special, and why do we remember them fondly? Because they taught us a lot. They helped us learn and grow. How? By giving us feedback in a loving, caring, and supporting way. The way they gave us feedback didn’t cause resistance. In fact, it may have challenged or inspired us to do better. It is great to have such teachers and mentors in our life.

But they are a rare breed. The rest of the people in your life who will give you feedback are mere mortals, just like you and me. If we reject feedback from everyone else, we are depriving ourselves of learning and growth. We cannot hold back our learning waiting for such special mentors. We need to learn to accept feedback as a gift – from everyone else around us.

How do we learn to accept all feedback as a gift?

By recognizing the three triggers that stop us from doing that. The three triggers are

1. The truth triggers:

The content of the feedback itself sets truth triggers off. We think that the feedback is wrong, unhelpful, or simply untrue. We think that their advice is wrong, their evaluation is unfair, who they are to tell me about this, don’t know the whole story, etc. We may go into the defensive mode or even counterattack. Sometimes we do it in real conversations, but almost always in our minds! We replay the tape again and again – with our own editing.

When your spouse tells you that you were aloof during the visit to the in-laws – it triggers a defensive mechanism. You may retort by saying, was I supposed to tap dance and greet everyone?

2. The relationship triggers

The relationship triggers are set off by the person giving the feedback. The feedback is tainted by the relationship between you and the feedback giver. What authority do they have on this topic to give me feedback? Or after all the things I have done for you, this is how you repay? The emotional baggage and the long history of the relationship may come in the way of our ability to listen to and understand the feedback. We go into counter-attack mode and discredit the feedback giver.

When your boss criticizes the report, you delivered, do you start thinking, why is he such a jerk? Does he always do this? His own reports are the second rate. And on and on.

3. The identity triggers

Identity triggers are unrelated to both the content of the feedback and the relationship with the feedback giver. Something about the feedback stirs up a deep pain from inside – mostly from our past. Someone may make a casual remark that you are clumsy. It may bring up painful childhood memories of how you always dropped things, and everyone ridiculed you and called you clumsy. We may feel overwhelmed or threatened – as this relates to our own identity.

 

Overcoming the triggers and accepting feedback as a gift

It is human to have these triggers for feedback. However, they keep us from engaging in a conversation and learning more about the feedback. They deprive us of the opportunity to learn and grow. We lose an opportunity to understand the other party and improve the interaction and the relationship.

Being aware of these feedback triggers is a good way to learn to accept feedback as a gift. Remember that there is no improvement without feedback. One of the best tools is to ask for feed-forward – which refers to asking for future suggestions.

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 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.

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Culture eats strategy for breakfast is a quote attributed to Peter Drucker, the management guru. What is the meaning of the quote? Peter Drucker was talking about organizational culture and how it impacts the execution of strategy in organizations.

Culture not only eats strategy for breakfast, but it may also eat change agility for lunch and innovation for dinner. Any strategy that doesn’t take into account the culture of the organization is likely to fail.

Leaders in organizations tend to focus more on strategy. The strategy is relatively easy to understand and create. Culture is complex and intangible and hence tends to get less attention from top leaders. But ignoring culture leads to underperformance and may even lead to the organization going out of business.

What is strategy?

Strategy can be defined as the method or plan that the organization chooses to achieve its long-term goals. The strategy is deciding the direction and choosing the path to get there. The strategy is often decided by the top management and communicated to all organization levels to execute it. One of the important aspects of deciding a strategy is to consider the organizational culture.

What is culture?

Here are a couple of definitions of organizational culture.

Stated, organizational culture is “the way things are done around here” by Deal & Kennedy, 2000

“Organizational culture is a system of shared assumptions, values, and beliefs, which governs how people behave in organizations.”

It is how people in organizations do things. It is the attitude of the people. It is also the unwritten rules and norms that employees follow. Just as every individual is unique, every organization has a unique culture. Starbucks, Google, Tata group, etc., are some examples.

When we talk about these companies, we have a perception of the culture – how the employees in this particular company get things done.

Starbucks may bring to mind a culture of customer service. Google brings to mind the casual way of work, the open offices, the employee perks, and a culture of innovation. Tata group may bring to mind their values, ethics, and care for employees.

The unwritten norms

Culture is the way people do things in an organization. Those are the unwritten rules that exert influence on the behavior of the employees.

For example – let’s say you join a new company. The work timings are from 8 am to 5 pm. That is the written rule probably in the HR manual.

However, if you see most of your team members working late till 6 pm or later, what will you do? Will you leave work at 5 pm? Probably not. You will learn to follow the unwritten rule to stay at the office until 6 pm.

Culture is often invisible and intangible. But it exerts a powerful influence on how employees think, feel, and act. Over time and with reinforcement (either intentional or accidental) from the leaders, it becomes self-perpetuating and self-sustaining.

The culture iceberg model

Edgar Schein, professor at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and an organizational culture expert, has proposed the culture iceberg model. Culture lives at three distinct levels.

1. Artifacts:

Artifacts are the things at the surface level of the organizational culture. It includes “visible” symbols of the culture. Things like offices, furniture, how people dress, language, tone, practices, ceremonies, etc.

Often people misunderstand the artifacts as the culture – as it is the visible part. But there is much more. Just like an iceberg, the majority of the culture lies beneath the surface and is not visible.

2. Espoused values

Values are often advertised on the company office walls and the company websites and brochures. Edgar Schein calls these as espoused values.

Often, there is a discrepancy between the values on the wall and the actual behavior of leaders and employees in the organization.

3. Basic assumptions

These are the beliefs and assumptions that people refer to when doing their work and interacting with others. These beliefs are often unconscious. They may even be perceptions and feelings that are taken for granted.

This is the deepest level of the cultural iceberg. It is the most difficult level to understand and improve.

How culture eats strategy for breakfast

Culture has inertia and loves the status quo. It resists all attempts to change. Even if the strategy is brilliant, it cannot succeed without considering culture as a factor. Is the culture supportive?

Then the strategy has a good chance of getting implemented. Otherwise, it is quite likely that the culture will eat the strategy for breakfast! Culture and strategy are two sides of the same coin.

Often strategy gets attention, and culture doesn’t. Companies pay a heavy price for ignoring culture while working on their strategy.

Planning a strategy without considering the culture is like planting the soil without considering the type of soil. If you plant the right seed in the wrong soil, the seed will die.

Similarly, if you have a strategy for which the culture is not conducive, it will fail miserably. Culture and strategy are interrelated, and they reinforce each other.

How do we create a culture where change, innovation, and growth?

Successful companies invest time, money and effort in creating cultures that differentiate them from others. Culture is a strategic advantage and a competitive differentiator. Culture impacts the performance and productivity of the organization.

It dictates how employees interact with one another, how they treat customers, how they think about quality, and how they deliver value to customers, investors, and society.

Industrial age vs. information age

In the last three to four decades, we have rapidly moved from the industrial age to the information age. In the industrial age, the value was delivered by standardization.

There was only one right and most efficient way to do things. And everybody had to do it the same way. The pace of change was slower, and there were relatively long periods of stability before there was a change in process, technology, competition, or customer demand.

In such an environment, the culture of command and control leadership thrived. Employees had to be controlled to maximize efficiency. They were rewarded and punished using the carrot-and-stick approach to management.

However, in the information age, the pace of change is frenetic. Competition is global. Advances in technology create continuous change and transformation.

Customers constantly demand more and better value and service. The best way to deliver value in the information age is to learn, change, and innovate faster than the competition.

Employees need to contribute. Management has shifted from control to empowerment. Command and control generate fear. And fear inhibits creativity and innovation. Companies have realized that culture is an important driver of performance and hence there is now a consistent focus on creating a culture where employees volunteer their discretionary effort instead of doing just enough to keep their jobs.

In fact, no 21st-century organization can afford a culture of fear. In fact, the opposite is true. Organizations create “psychological safety” so that they can maximize the contributions of their talent.

A good culture is where employees feel motivated, empowered, and rewarded. In return, they treat customers with care, concern, and respect. This becomes a self-reinforcing cycle. It can also work in the opposite direction. Unmotivated and disempowered employees take out their frustrations on customers. This creates a toxic culture that impacts the performance and profitability of the company.

Today, in a competitive and global business world – both customers and employees have a lot of choices. If they don’t feel valued, cared for, and respected – they may prefer to engage with a competitor who does value them.

Read : “Psychological safety – What is it and why do you need it?” 

Culture as a strategic and competitive advantage

Several research studies have indicated that companies that proactively focus on creating and managing their culture significantly outperform companies that let culture happen.

Instead of culture eats strategy for breakfast, the new approach is to think of culture as a strategic and competitive advantage.

Companies like Google have found that creating the right culture is key to attracting and maximizing the talent pool. Google’s spent 2 years, millions of dollars, immense brainpower, and analytics ability to find out what makes teams successful. To their surprise, they found that who is on the team didn’t matter much.

What contributed to the team’s success was the team culture and team norms. Now, this is true even for Google where most of the work done is highly technical and all of the employees are highly intelligent and carefully recruited.

How leaders contribute to creating a high-performance culture that drives the strategy

Leaders have a critical role in creating a culture that supports the strategy.

One of the best ways the leader creates a culture is by role modeling the desired behaviors, coaching the next level of leadership, and ensuring the right structures that support the right cultural norms.

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

One of the best examples of a leader driving organizational culture change and creating a high-performance culture is Alan Mulally’s turnaround of Ford Motor Company.

When Alan took over Ford, it was on the way to reporting a $17 billion loss for the year. In his 8 years as the Ford CEO, he steered the company through the Financial crisis of 2008 (without taking a bailout), restructured the massive global company, returned the company to profitability, and doubled the stock price.

And he didn’t do it just by cutting jobs and laying thousands of people off. In a company where unions rule – his approval rating stayed at 90% or more during his tenure.

This is a fantastic case study on how instead of a culture eats strategy for breakfast, creating a culture can drive it.

Read: Organizational Culture Change – The Ford turnaround story by Alan Mulally 

What kind of culture are your leaders creating?

The first step is to assess the leadership behaviors that create the culture.  Are your leaders creating the culture intentionally or accidentally? 

Are they exhibiting the behaviors that create a high-performance culture?  Or do their behaviors stifle engagement and performance? 

Assess your leaders for the behaviors which are creating your company culture using our Global leadership assessment GLA 360.  Find out more.    

In conclusion

The culture eats strategy for breakfast is true for many organizations. Leaders love talking strategy. It is tangible and visible. It is easier to understand and to create.

Culture, on the other hand, is intangible, invisible, and difficult to understand. Consequently, it doesn’t get the attention it deserves. But it exerts a powerful influence on every aspect of the organization.

Culture lives at multiple levels. Often culture is confused with artifacts. Just changing the artifacts is NOT changing the culture.

Casual Fridays or ping-pong tables may be good. But they are just the visible part of the cultural iceberg. Changing culture means changing the underlying beliefs and assumptions – the deepest part of the cultural iceberg. Leaders play a critical role in creating and sustaining the organizational culture.

One of the leader’s most important jobs is to create a culture that supports the strategy they want to implement. In fact, organizational culture is a strategic and competitive advantage.

Reference

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329140215

Guaranteed measurable results delivered for our FMCG client

Here is the real-life case study of one of our clients who approached us with specific issues and how we delivered measurable results for them. This case study outlines a sample of challenges growing organizations face and how our stakeholder centered coaching process helped deliver behavior change and a high-performance culture. While you are reading the case study, you may see your organization facing similar issues and the leaders facing similar challenges. We deliver guaranteed and measurable results through our stakeholder coaching process.

Team coaching is essential in today’s work environment. How do you improve team effectiveness?  Team coaching is the answer that is effective in terms of time, investment, and effort.

Teams have become more important than ever – team coaching should too.

To deal with rapid change, organizations have become flatter and leaner.  Power and decisions are decentralized.  The days of a single “heroic” leader are gone. Networked team leadership is taking the place of hierarchical leadership.

Teams have become an integral part of getting work done.  Most organizations get the work done through projects that involve multiple people working in teams.

An article, published in The Harvard Business Review in Jan-Feb 2016, title “Collaborative Overload,” states that ‘‘the time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50 percent or more’’ over the last two decades.

To quote Michael Jordan – Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.

Synergy vs. Dysfunction on teams

It is true in sports and business.  In cohesive teams, the whole is a lot greater than the sum of its parts.  When teams work in synergy, they achieve extraordinary performance. 

In dysfunctional teams, it is vice-versa – the whole ends up being a lot less than the sum of the parts.  Egos, personality clashes, individual agendas cause a delay in work and result in the team’s underperformance. You can put a group of 6-10 high performing individuals on a team, and their performance together may be less than optimum or just downright disappointing. 

More often than not, teams don’t live up to their expectations. A majority of the work teams fail to harness their full potential or utilize their team members’ collective intelligence.

Read another article – Poor Leadership Behaviors & its Collateral Damage.

Common team problems

Teams are plagued by common problems listed below.

• Lack of trust
• No alignment or commitment to goals
• Individual agendas
• Big egos and personality conflicts
• Silo mentality
• Unclear or fuzzy goals
• Unclear roles and responsibilities
• Lack of accountability
• Gossip and talking behind people’s back
• Lack of commitment
• Difficulty making decisions
• Lack of psychological safety  (link to PS article)

Optimizing individual performance is not enough.

For decades, talent management has focused on measuring, managing, and optimizing individual performance.  Performance management focuses on assessing, developing, and rewarding individual performance.  But it is not enough.

Individual performance seldom translates into the performance of teams or workgroups.As more and more work is now done through multi-functional teams, talent management professionals need to understand and focus on measuring, managing, and optimizing teams’ performance.

What is a team?

There is a difference between a group of people vs. a work team. We all intuitively know this fact.  Let’s define what a team is to clarify it further.

Here is a popular definition from Jon Katzenbach

“A small number of people with complementary skills, who are committed to a common purpose, performance goals

and approach, for which they hold themselves mutually accountable.”

There are a few keywords that differentiate whether a group of people is a team or not.

• Small – It would be not easy to manage a team of 50 people – then it will have to be subdivided
• Complementary skills – diverse and complementary skills are essential.
• Common purpose – purpose fuels and drives the team members.
• Performance goals – everyone is ultimately measured against the performance goals.
• Mutual accountability – they hold one another accountable.

Let’s take the example of a soccer team.  A small number of players, who have complementary skills, have a common purpose of winning the match or the championship, have performance goals (individual and team goals), and hold one another accountable for achieving the goals.  A soccer team fits Katzenbach’s definition of a team.

On the other hand, if you have a group of high potentials in an organization, they will not be considered a team.  They may or may not have complementary skills, nor do they have a common purpose and performance goals, and they don’t hold one another accountable.

Google spent 2 years and enormous amounts of resources studying over 180 teams to figure out the answer to the question – What makes teams successful?  Read the article.

Team coaching vs.Team building

“Team building” activities get a lot of attention from learning and development professionals. When do I say the word teambuilding, what immediately comes to mind?  Most people start thinking about activity-based indoor or outdoor gatherings of colleagues.

Almost everyone has attended such an activity that has a picnic-like atmosphere. These activities are fun and a welcome relief from the otherwise boring classroom training.  

Participants involve themselves in indoor or outdoor games and competitive activities. Rope courses, tree climbing, races, fire walking, and dozens of other adventurous activities challenge the participants. A resort setting and a picnic atmosphere engage the participants.

All in all, it is a fun experience for the participants.  The level 1 feedback (on Kirkpatrick’s scale) from such activities is usually excellent.  The participants, the HR or L&D department, and the training agency are all happy doing such activities once or twice a year, especially around winter months when outdoor weather is conducive.

Do these outdoor team building activities really improve the team’s behavior and performance at work?

So here is the question. Do these outdoor team building activities really improve the team’s behavior and performance at work? The simple answer is no. 

Despite the good feelings outdoor team building generates, hardly anything changes at work in terms of better behaviors conducive to developing a cohesive and high-performance team. 

Singing songs, walking or fire, climbing trees, and holding hands have little to do with teams’ real-life work and behaviors.  All in all, they are a waste of time and money. 

Outbound team building, although popular, has done little to bring in the behavior change that can transform team cohesion and performance. 

Holding hands, singing songs, climbing trees can be entertaining. But it has little to do with actual work.

Read my article on How to build psychological safety on teams. 

What is team coaching?

David Clutterbuck defines team coaching as follows.

Helping the team improve performance and the processes by which performance is achieved through reflection anddialogue.

When most people think of team coaching, they think of sports teams!  Very few managers and talent management professionals know about team coaching.  

The above definition serves both sports teams and work teams very well.

Unlike team building, team coaching, on the other hand, is a comprehensive approach to manage team interactions at work. 

It is time and resource-efficient, which is very well suited for teams who are too busy to go to training programs or indoor/outdoor team building activities.

Team coaching without time-wasting!

The popularity of individual coaching across the world acts as a testament to coaching’s effectiveness as a developmental tool. 

Can team coaching also be as effective for teams, as individual coaching is for individual performance?  The answer is a resounding yes!

Read my article on individual coaching or executive coaching. 

Our TEAM Coaching –  Year-long Executive Coaching program using Stakeholder Centered Coaching

TEAM coaching engagements create measurable leadership growth for the leader and the team as a whole using Marshall’s unique Stakeholder Centered Coaching process.  The team coaching approach has several benefits.

Resource-efficient

Since one executive coach works with all team members supporting each other in this TEAM coaching process, the whole coaching program is very time efficient. It reduces coaching fees per team member while still delivering a majority of the benefits of 1:1 coaching for the leader.

Changing leaders and teams at the same time

The team articulates one leadership growth area, and each team member defines their own leadership growth area that relates to the team focus. This creates an interdependent team effort with a common focus on producing results for their individual effectiveness and team productivity simultaneously.

Create a Team Culture of Openness to continuous change

When team members collaborate as stakeholders in the TEAM coaching programs, it creates an open culture for leadership and team culture change. Furthermore, team members feel comfortable using feedback and feedforward to drive change for themselves and their teams.

Insider expertise

Team members should be able to provide expert advice and an insider view of each other as it relates to their business, their people, and their team culture challenges. They become de facto coaches.

Coaching is a leadership skill.

Some organizations use coaching as an ‘executive intervention’ or to ‘fix a problem,’ but this is a suboptimal approach to coaching. Coaching is a leadership skill, and leaders in organizations should be skilled coaches to help their teams develop and grow. As we expect effective leaders to be highly skilled in, e.g., communication, decision making, and empowerment, leaders should be highly skilled in coaching others. TEAM coaching is a great program to instill coaching as a leadership skill in the organization.

In the TEAM coaching process, team members supporting each other as stakeholders and coaches while implementing their action plans to make change visible. This program is ideal for leaders and their (cross-functional / project) teams to measurably change their individual and collective effectiveness. This happens while they lead and develop their teams, and at the same time, develop their coaching skills further to roll out this coaching process with their direct reports.

TEAM coaching can be a very effective and cost-efficient way to grow leaders, change teams, and develop the organizational culture.

Read our other article Organizational Culture Change Example – Alan Mulally Ford Turnaround Story.

Reference:  Coaching the team at work by David Clutterbuck

If you enjoyed reading this article, you would enjoy reading my other articles

Executive and Leadership Coaching in India

360 degree feedback- A complete guide with a questionnaire

Psychological safety (PS) at work – Why you need it and how to develop it

What is psychological safety at work? Why do we need it? How to develop it in your team and your organization. In this article, I am going to answer these questions.

Do you remember the Colombia space shuttle disaster?

On January 16th, 2003, the space shuttle Colombia blasted off into space on its 28th mission.It was a sunny day in Florida, and everything seemed to be perfect about the launch. But things were not perfect.

A piece of foam had broken off from the outside of the rocket and hit the wing area during the lift-off. On Tuesday, January 21st, five days after the launch, a team of engineers at NASA had their first formal meeting to assess the potential damage from the piece of foam that had struck the wing.

They agreed that NASA should immediately observe the wing area impacted, even if the impact was minor. This could be accomplished by others using other satellites or powerful telescopes on the ground.

The team of engineers selected Rodney Rocha, an experienced but mild-mannered engineer, to convey their recommendation.

Rodney Rocha attempted to inform his superiors and request them to observe the wing’s possible damage, but he was simply brushed aside. One manager told Rodney Rocha to stop being a “Chicken Little” – referring to the cartoon character who was always running around afraid and warning others that the sky was falling.

Despite his severe concerns about the mission’s safety, he had no choice but to keep quiet.

On 1st February 2003, the space shuttle Colombia disintegrated into pieces while returning to earth. Seven astronauts, including mission specialist Kalpana Chawla, died in the tragic accident.

NASA suspended any further space flights for the next two years while investigating and eliminating what could have caused the disaster.

The investigation confirmed that the cause was the friction caused due to the damaged tiles on the wing. The same damage that Rodney Rocha and his team of engineers were trying to bring to the mission control’s attention.

Why did Rodney not speak up? Why was he not forceful? What could NASA have done to create an environment where Rodney, or anyone else on the team, could voice their concerns in an assertive way?

Psychological safety at work

The answer to the question is to create psychological safety at work. Amy Edmondson, a Harvard professor, and researcher coined the term Psychological safety.

She defines it as “a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.”

Can employees express their doubts, concerns, issues they know about? Or are they uncomfortable speaking up? Now think about your workplace.

Have you held back from expressing an opinion in a meeting? Or have you agreed to something you weren’t sure about, just because you didn’t feel comfortable in saying it?

Do you sometimes keep quiet even when you have questions but don’t want to look “dumb” in front of others?

This is what happened to Rodney Rocha. He did not feel safe to be more assertive and emphatically ask the manager to consider his concern and do the needful address.

Psychological safety at work was missing on the NASA team.

Boeing 737 Max problems & lack of psychological safety at work

Organizations frequently face the grave consequences of lack of psychological safety, as NASA did.Besides the loss of lives, there was severe damage to NASA’s reputation, and they had to halt the space program for two years.

Boeing 737 max aircraft tragedy is another example of such consequences of lack of PS at work. In March 2019, the Boeing 737 MAX passenger airliner was grounded worldwide after 346 people died in two crashes. First, it was the Lion Air Flight 610 on October 29, 2018.

The second flight was the Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 on March 10, 2019. There were 387 Boeing 737 aircraft at that time, which served 8,600 flights per week for 59 different airlines. All of them were grounded, causing severe damage to Boeing’s reputation worldwide.

The groundings became the longest ever of a U.S. airliner. Boeing also had to suspend the production of the 737 max aircraft indefinitely.

In November 2018, Boeing launched a new automated flight control system for the 737 max aircraft. Later in the post mortem done by FAA and NTSB, they found that employees had serious concerns about the automated flight control system.

They did not feel comfortable enough to voice theirs against the backdrop of a multibillion project’s delivery timeline pressures. Later in the interviews, the employees said they were afraid to speak up as they thought they might lose their job.

Whether that would really happen or not, it clearly shows that these employees did not feel PS at work.

Do these kinds of things happen at your workplace?

Now you may think that I would have reacted differently to these kinds of situations. Or you may think that this doesn’t happen on my team.

Let’s say you are working on a cross-functional team. Someone uses a jargon word during the team meeting. Some acronym, let’s say GSH!  Everybody on the team agrees that GSH is very important.

Now you don’t have a clue what GSH means!  Do you feel safe enough to make yourself vulnerable and ask in the team meeting – “I am sorry – I don’t know what GSH means.

Can any one of you explain it to me?.” Or would you just nod your head in agreement and make a mental note to check out later what GSH meant.

Or in a similar situation, the team is enthusiastic and gung-ho over a particular investment in new technology.  Everyone agrees in unison while elaborating on the benefits and ROI of this technology.  You have serious doubts about the benefits and ROI.

Do you feel comfortable disagreeing with the majority? They may be right, and you may end up looking like a jerk who is not a team player!

All too often, employees choose to keep quiet instead of speaking up. Why?  Because of the interpersonal discomfort of looking incompetent, not a team player, or negative.  And there is a cost to people not speaking up.  Most of the time, these costs are not as dramatic as in NASA and Boeing.

These are small costs in losing a moment of learning or having a different perspective of exploring a new idea.  Over time, these small costs add up.  Learning, change, and innovation suffers.

What does psychological safety at work look like?

Can the members of the team members do the following without fear?

• Offer their ideas and opinions no matter how different from the team goals or consensus or superior’s ideas
• Express their concerns and doubts to superiors
• Admit openly that they don’t know about some things at work
• Ask for help openly and comfortably when needed
• Are willing to try new things and take risks even if it means making mistakes or failing
• Admit to mistakes immediately and openly so they can be rectified
• Feel comfortable being themselves without any fear or concerns of social stigma or other repercussions

Can team members do the above-mentioned things – without the fear of being socially labeled or humiliated as being incompetent, or the crazy one or not a team player?

If they can, there is a high degree of PS at work, or else there is a lack of PS on the teams.

Psychological safety at work is not these things!

One of the concerns that most leaders have is how I have PS and accountability on my teams? Doesn’t having one means sacrificing the other? Not really.

They are two different aspects that are both important to instill in teams.

Psychological safety at work often is confused with certain qualities that are not conducive to high performance. Psychological does not mean the following.

1. Just being nice

Being polite and being nice at work is fine. But having PS means disagreeing with an idea or opinion without fear. It allows diverse perspectives and expertise to put on the table to take the best course of action.

2. Reducing performance standards

Amy Edmondson says that psychological safety does not mean reducing performance standards. Both of them are separate, and a leader can instill both in their teams.

3. Lack of accountability

A team can be accountable to one another and yet not have psychological safety. The opposite is also true. Accountability is a leader’s responsibility, and so is PS. Both are separate things.

The diagram below shows the four quadrants of psychological safety vs. accountability. The four quadrants are the apathy zone, anxiety zone, comfort zone, and learning zone. Ideally, the leader should work on PS and accountability to get the team into the learning zone.

Why do we need psychological safety at work?

20th-century standardization paradigm

Henry Ford is quoted as saying that – I wish people just brought their hands at work and left their brains home! He probably was right for the kind of work that happened at his assembly line in the earlier part of the 20th century.

Industrialization in the 20th century was all about standardization, focusing on the single best way to do things and get everyone to do it efficiently. Ideas and opinions of the employees were a distraction and a nuisance. They simply reduced the efficiency of standardized and repetitive assembly line work.

Knowledge work in the 21st century

Arguably the most insightful management consultant, Peter Drucker coined the term “knowledge worker” way back in 1959 in his book “The Landmarks of Tomorrow.” Way back then, Peter Drucker predicted information would change the way people would work in the future.

The value of work will not be derived from physical labor using their muscle power, but instead with the intellectual work using their mind power. He predicted that knowledge workers would be the most valuable assets of 21st-century organizations.

Today, a majority of the workforce is employed doing what Peter Drucker correctly coined as knowledge work. Engineers, architects, accountants, lawyers, physicians, computer programmers, web designers, finance professionals, technical writers, researchers are just a few of the knowledge work professions.

VUCA world of the 21st Century

Today, in the 21st century, we also live in a VUCA world. VUCA is a term coined by the US army to describe the Iraq and Afghanistan wars situation. VUCA is an acronym for Volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous. Change is rapid. There are no standard solutions or defined processes.

We have to make decisions even when we don’t have all the information or all the answers. Business strategy and solving of problems are all a hypothesis – an experiment, if you will.

We need the collective intelligence of diverse teams with specialized expertise. Unlike Henry Ford in the early 20th century, we definitely need people to bring their brains to work and put them to good use!

They need to share their ideas, opinions, and expertise – to help solve problems in a continuously changing world. Find new ways of doing things – cheaper, better, faster than the competition. Change and innovate or face extinction. We need to utilize the talent of your team to the highest possible level. How do we do that?

Psychological safety is essential to survive and thrive in the 21st century.

In an environment that was fairly stable and the processes and outcomes are well defined – like Henry Ford’s assembly line, PS may not be essential.

It may still be good to have, but not essential for business performance. But in the VUCA world of the last two decades – as with NASA’s space shuttle launch or the Boeing 737 max production – PS is essential for change, growth, innovation, and performance.

What does it take for organizations to survive and thrive in a VUCA world? It is creating psychological safety at work teams to utilize the team’s collective intelligence to keep ahead of the rapid change.

Uncertainty and interdependence

Amy Edmondson’s research has shown that psychological safety is essential for high performance on teams when the teams’ problems involve uncertainty and interdependence.  There are no set answers.  There may be entirely new situations.

It may require inputs from multiple team members who have various specialized expertise.  In most of the work done today in large organizations, uncertainty and interdependence are often present.  And hence PS has become an essential element of team performance.

Read: Poor Leadership Behaviors & its Collateral Damage

Google’s quest to figure out what makes teams successful

Individual brilliance is great, but team cohesiveness is more important. Most of the work done today is in projects involving multiple people working in teams. Talent management’s primary focus has been on measuring and managing individual performance.

But it is not enough. Analyzing and improving individual performance does not translate into the performance of teams or workgroups.

Google spent 2 years and enormous amounts of resources studying over 180 teams to figure out the answer to the question – What makes teams successful? They found five factors that are essential to any high-performing team. The most important factor? It is “psychological safety at work.”

Read: What makes teams successful? – Google’s Project Aristotle came up with these five factors that matter 

How to create psychological safety at work

Amy Edmondson suggests three types of actions leaders can take to improve the psychological safety of their teams.

1. Setting the stage

Leaders have to define the context. The vision and direction. But it needs to go a step further. Define the purpose, a cause greater than themselves, to make a difference.

Once that is done, the next step is to communicate clearly the business environment of uncertainty, complexity, and interdependence. If leaders don’t point out uncertainty and complexity clearly, people may conclude that they are supposed to know everything about their jobs.

If they don’t, people will conclude that they may be branded as simply incompetent if they make mistakes and may need to face the consequences.

A leader’s job is to make it safe for people to fail. This is not about the failures caused by incompetency or not following a standard protocol (when it exists). That is not the kind of failure a leader should tolerate.

On the other hand, when there is a need to experiment and try new things – failure should not only be tolerated and accepted, it should be celebrated! It is also OK not to know all the answers!  It is OK to experiment!  And it is OK to fail!  Or else, there may be no change, no growth, and no innovation.

Read: Alan Mulally’s most successful business turnarounds of all time at Ford Motor Company

2.Inviting engagement

Leaders often mistake the silence of a team member for their agreement. Often it is not the case. People don’t like to speak up due to social discomfort or lack of psychological safety. Or there are just a couple of vocal team members expressing their opinion.

The leader’s job is to invite opinions and ideas from everyone on the team, especially the silent team members. When everyone on the team agrees with the leader without having any opinions of their own, it is a sign for the leader to invite engagement. The leaders should watch their body language while listening to diverse opinions. It should not give away the leader’s like or dislike for a particular idea.

Asking questions is one of the best ways to invite engagement. The leader may ask any of the following questions, or a semantic version of these, to invite engagement.

• I don’t know a whole lot about it…..  You have a lot of experience here.  What do you think about this?
• What do I not know about here?
• What am I missing? What have we not considered yet?
• You have a lot of experience in ……  What do you think we should do?
• You haven’t spoken on…    What are your thoughts?
• There is a lot of uncertainty about …..   So whatever we do is a hypothesis.  We won’t know it until we try?

3. Responding productively

As a leader, what do you do when a team member completely disagrees with your ideas or opinions? Do you dismiss the team member? Do you override her opinions? Or do you ask more questions and more inputs to understand where they are coming from? Do you treat them respectfully? Do you get visibly annoyed or upset?

Listen to all ideas, acknowledge and thank the person. Continuously ask questions like – what do you think? What do we not know about…? Etc. Acknowledge risks inherent in ambiguity and uncertainty. Reinforce that failure is OK when the team is experimenting and learning new ways of doing things.

The following diagram from Amy Edmondson’s book gives a nice summary of the 3 steps to create psychological safety.

Image source – Fearless Organization book by Dr. Amy Edmondson

Watch: Leader’s Role in Creating a Psychologically Safe Workplace

How to measure psychological safety at work

Do members on your team feel safe psychologically? Measuring PS is simple and easy. Amy Edmondson has 7 questions you can ask your team to gauge the level of PS at work in your team.

For each of the 7 questions, each team member rates their perception of the team on a Likert scale of 1 to 7. Note that the item numbers 1,3 and 5 are expressed negatively and are hence denoted with an (R). You can also use a Likert scale of 1 to 5.

1. If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you. (R)
2. Members of this team can bring up problems and tough issues.
3. People on this team sometimes reject others for being different. (R)
4. It is safe to take a risk on this team.
5. It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help. (R)
6. No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.
7. Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.

This simple 7 question tool has proven quite accurate in predicting teams’ psychological safety – as per Amy Edmondson’s research. 

Complimentary Psychological Safety Assessment

Do you know the level of psychological safety on your team?  We are happy to offer you a complimentary psychological safety team assessment for your first team. Schedule a quick conversation to find out more.

SCHEDULE NOW!

In Conclusion

To solve today’s VUCA world’s problems, organizations need to use all team members’ collective intelligence, expertise, and collaboration. A leader’s job is to create a culture where people can share their ideas, opinions, and concerns openly and freely. In other words, a leader’s job is to create psychological safety at work. When it is lacking, people leave, performance suffers, and growth and change stall. When you have it, continuous sharing of ideas, experimentation, and learning happen on teams, which allows the company to change, innovate, and thrive in the VUCA world.

Get the best leadership coaching to improve Psychological safety at work in your teams.

Increase transparency, dialogue, candor, and psychological safety on your teams 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 (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 simply don’t have to pay us.

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

Click the button below.

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References – The Fearless Orgnization – Book by Amy Edmondson

Online leadership masterclass – Invest in Yourself

Online leadership masterclass – is it worth the time and effort? In this article, I will share my take on the benefits and limitations of Online leadership masterclass and courses.  You can also enroll for a 15-day test drive and get all-access to one of the best online leadership courses. The link is at the end of the article.

Can you learn leadership online?

It is a valid and critical question.  Traditionally, leadership training has been done in person.  Then came E-learning or online learning. From the early days of E-learning, technology has progressed by leaps and bounds.  Interactive content, Blended learning, Instructor-led training, and other multi-pronged approaches are now used by most large companies, business schools, and content vendors as a part of their online free leadership curriculum.

There are some benefits and limitations of online leadership courses free or paid.

Benefits and limitations of online leadership masterclass

The benefits of an online leadership course

• No time away from work.
• No need for travel
• Byte sized learning
• Better retention and application of the learnings
• Anytime, anywhere, any device access.
• Cost-effective as compared with in-person training
• Time-efficient
• Flexibility to learn whenever convenient

The limitations of an online free leadership course

• Needs structure
• Must be based on proper instructional design
• Needs the self-discipline to complete
• No interaction with other learners
• It can’t clarify doubts with the instructor.

Factors that have helped the spread of online leadership courses

In the last decade, there has been a confluence of factors that has made online leadership learning possible.  In fact, these advances have made online leadership courses, free or paid, engaging, useful, and often more effective than attending in-person leadership courses.

The magic of instructional design

• The entire curriculum is designed with the learner in mind.
• Whets the learner’s appetite for learning
• Better recall and retention of skills
• Measurement of learning is built-in.
• Flexible – anywhere, any time, and any device

The advances in technology and software

• High definition video
• Simulations
• Animations
• Learning management systems
• Customizations and learning paths
• Individualized tracking and measurements

These advancements in technology provide the learner with an engaging and stimulating experience that rivals any classroom training course.

Neuroscience – the science of learning

• Byte sized learning
• Small quizzes and tests to aid retention
• Learning aids
• Blended approach – get the benefit of online, face to face.
• Scientifically designed tools and apps to reinforce learning
• On job application and habit formation
• It helps form habits and accountability.

The application of neuroscience to learning design has resulted in more engaging content, better retention, and more effective application.

The pandemic has necessitated and accelerated online leadership masterclass and courses

The unprecedented spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has changed a variety of things almost overnight!  Training programs in general and Leadership training and coaching, in particular, have been affected severely.  Prestigious B-schools have had to take their leadership courses online.  So have most vendors of leadership courses.  Covid-19 pandemic has shifted leadership learning from in-person to online.  Online free or paid leadership courses are now a norm are likely to stay that way even after the pandemic may be over.

Conclusion: Online leadership masterclass are often more effective

The result of the confluence of these factors?  Basically, the learners get access to the best content scientifically designed and delivered by some of the world’s best teachers. The online leadership courses, free or paid, are most of the times more effective due to the confluence of the factors discussed above.

We have an online leadership masterclass that takes a blended approach of in-person coaching, online learning.

Invest in Yourself with the Leadership Masterclass online leadership course test drive7

How can the leadership masterclass benefit you?

• Get more work done efficiently from your team
• Earn the respect of all team members
• Get satisfaction and fulfillment from your career
• Get recognized and promoted as a leader
• Survive and thrive in the next normal and a VUCA world
• Avoid mid-career crisis
• Find exciting new job opportunity
• Future proof your leadership skills

Enroll in our special 15-day test drive coaching package for an unbelievably low investment of $99

Enroll Now

Inclusions in the 15-day test drive coaching package

• 45 minute live coaching session-via video call – $299 value
• 15 minute live quick check-in session with the coach – $99 value
• Get access to a scientifically designed online platform for small daily actions, microlearning, accountability, support, and habits – $99 value
• Get 24/7 access to the coach via an online platform – priceless!
• 100% no questions asked money-back guarantee any time during the first week – Risk-free!

Benefits of the 15-day test drive coaching package

• Discover your leadership 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 support and accountability of the coach and the online platform
• Micro learning customized for your specific needs
• Jump start your leadership development
• Experience coaching firsthand and then decide if coaching is right for you

The power of a scientifically designed online platform

• Your daily co-coach and accountability partner
• Actions from coaching insights happen in real life
• Leaders get busy and “things” come up in real life!
• Customized actions and worksheet and timely reminders help you take small actions daily
• Help you form small habits that make a huge difference over time

Features of the online platform

• Create customized actions, worksheets and metrics for you
• Create projects, tasks, and action plans suitable to your needs
• Coach will “observe” all your actions via online platform
• Encouragement, support, and accountability

Just one click access to all your activities

• Everything in a single place – actions, metrics, notes, journal and more
• Convenient one click access on any device
• Track and measure every aspect of your development plan
• Timely reminders of actions and activities
• Create actions, metrics, worksheets, journal with coach
• Two way communication with the coach on a continuous basis

All of this for an investment of only $99 for 15-day access and two live personal coaching sessions

Benefits

• Self-reflection and assessment of strengths and improvement areas
• Discover fears, limiting beliefs, and obstacles
• Accountability to self and coach
• Be more self-aware of blind spots.
• Tap into the inherent potential to discover solutions
• Gain clarity and focus
• Create actionable plans and take consistent action
• Gain more job and life satisfaction
• Contribute more effectively to the team and the organization
• Take greater responsibility and accountability for actions and commitments.
• Work more easily and productively with others (boss, direct reports, peers)
• Communicate more effectively
• Gain confidence and build momentum
• Change behavior at work

Coaching is the most effective developmental tool, bar none!

Bill Gates reiterated in his TED talk that “everybody needs a coach.”  Training is a (mostly) waste of money and time. Get a coach on your side.

Benefits of leadership masterclass from an organizational perspective

• Empowers individual leaders and encourages them to take responsibility
• Increases employee and staff engagement
• Helps identify and develop high potential employees
• Help identify both organizational and individual strengths and development opportunities.
• It helps to motivate and empower individuals to excel.
• Help leaders transition up and across within the organization.
• Help leaders overcome derailing behaviors.
• Aid succession planning
• Build a leadership pipeline

Based on the process designed by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith – World’s number 1 thinker and executive coach.

Read: Which is the best leadership development program?

How much should you invest in your own development?

Brian Tracy says – invest 10% of your earnings in your own self.  The best investment you can make is in your “earning ability,” especially in times of rapid change and turbulence.  Think about your annual salary.  The transformational leadership coaching package’s investment will probably be a lot less than 10% of your annual CTC.  And the benefits will last for years!

Think about how much money do you spend on a vacation?  Or a vehicle?  Or on mobile phones and other gadgets.  Those are expenses.  The Transformational coaching package is an investment in yourself that pays many times over.

Set an appointment with us to get the best deal for your leadership coaching package.

Do you want leadership masterclass for the leadership team in your organization?

If you are in top management or HR, L&D, etc. Think about how much money your company spends on leadership training every year. And you do that year after year! Instead, invest in the most effective leadership development coaching backed by research to be 95% effective.

Do you have an otherwise good leader but

• Is a know it and Doesn’t listen to the ideas and opinions of others? What does that do to that leader’s team members? Are new ideas discussed? What happens to their performance?
• How about a leader who doesn’t develop her 2nd line?
• How about a leader who loses his temper and doesn’t get along with others? Works in silos.

DDI estimates the financial cost of a single leader to be $126,000 per year!  What would it be worth if these leaders improved in their bottleneck areas?

With LMC, you can make it happen. Create a culture of transparency, dialogue, openness. And the culture, in turn, will supercharge team engagement and performance. Connect for special pricing for a group of 5 or more leaders.  Get guaranteed and measurable leadership growth (in their bottleneck areas) with our leadership coaching packages.

Set an appointment with us to get the best deal for your leadership coaching package.

Are the current leadership development solutions effective?

Here are some points to ponder regarding the current leadership development solutions.

• Here is a survey of CEOs from large MNCs – from a couple of years ago.  While 89% of the CEOs considered leadership development a top priority, only 10% believed that their leadership development has a clear business impact. Numbers are similar in multiple surveys over the years.
• Boston Consulting Group (BCG) concluded – “Companies Invest in Leadership Development, but the Money Is Largely Wasted.”
• Kristi Hedges rightly pointed out in her aptly titled article in Forbes – “If You Think Leadership Development Is A Waste Of Time You May Be Right.”

The current way organizations are developing leaders is simply not working.

Is there a better way to develop leaders that provide guaranteed and measurable results?

The answer is yes!  First, let me discuss one of the largest studies on what makes leadership programs effective.

What makes a leadership development program really effective?

Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan studied various leadership development programs at 8 MNC companies, involving 86,000 leaders. The companies varied in size, type of business, industry, number of leaders, and leaders’ levels.

• Lessons from 86,000 leaders at 8 large multinational companies
• What was common to all these leadership development programs?
• What didn’t matter to their effectiveness of leadership development?
• What really mattered? Read the article on What really makes a leadership program effective.

Here is the conclusion in brief.

• This is the key effectiveness of leadership development programs and behavior change at work.
• If your leadership program doesn’t have consistent follow up as part of the program design – don’t waste your money on it!
• Along with a well-defined leadership development process, consistently follow up with stakeholders is the key to the ANY leadership development initiative’s effectiveness.

Learn more about the GLA 360 tool and download a sample report

Evolution of people development – Leadership training vs. leadership coaching

Some companies regularly conduct so-called leadership training programs. This is to check the boxes and for ISO requirements – how many pieces of training, how many man-hours, etc.

Other companies may have realized that they need to measure impact. Now, most companies measure Kirkpatrick’s first level evaluation – which is jokingly known as the feel-good feedback – whether the participants liked the training or not.

A few companies have evolved to the next stage. They realize that “training programs” are NOT having any business impact. Then they opt for long-term training intervention instead of just short-duration training programs. They add assessments and follow-up to help on job behavior change of the leaders. Even then, the statistics on leadership interventions’ effectiveness, even those from big named B schools and top-notch vendors, are depressingly low.

Companies or L&D depts do this training for years, sometimes decades, with little impact on the performance.

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) concluded – “Companies Invest in Leadership Development, but the Money Is Largely Wasted.”

Progressive companies and individual leaders realize today – that leadership development training is a waste of time. A minority of the companies have realized that Coaching is the most effective way to change the leader’s job behavior and have a business impact! They invest in coaching. It includes individual assessments. It is customized to each leader’s needs. There is consistent follow-up over a long period of time. There is 360-degree feedback, regular progress assessments, and individual coaching.

Why waste time, money, and years of effort on training that have little business impact. Instead, get the LMC – coaching for your leadership development.

LMC individual assessments, personalized coaching, customized curriculum, and scientifically designed online platform help you change job behaviors and regular assessments. Unlike training that only creates awareness and intellectual knowledge, LMC focuses on applying at work and lasting behavior change.

Get leadership coaching for your leadership development.

Now there is a perception that coaching is expensive. But that is incorrect. Compare the cost of coaching for an entire year with getting a certification

or attending a one-week-long leadership program at a B school; it will cost you more than entire years’ worth of coaching. While training and certifications mostly end up forgotten in a few days, coaching delivers a measurable ROI for years to come.

Get 15-day test drive ALL access to LMC now and become an inspiring leader.

Leadership training vs. Leadership masterclass 

Think about the last leadership program you attended in the past. You probably learned a leadership model or a case study and gained some intellectual knowledge. How much of it did you apply at work? Did it change your on-job behaviors? Statistics show that most leadership programs do nothing more than waste the money and time of the participants.

Kristi Hedges aptly pointed out in her article in Forbes magazine – “If You Think Leadership Development Is A Waste Of Time You May Be Right.”

I may read a book on 100 ways to appreciate a team member, but don’t apply a single one! What good does that do? Nothing!

Leadership masterclass is different. The entire focus is on learning by doing. Applying it at work along with your team. Changing long-ingrained behaviors at work and forming different and better habits. As long as you commit to completing the daily actions – in about 30 minutes a day, you will change your work behaviors and be recognized by your team members for doing so! LMC is both time and cost-effective solution for your leadership development.

Is leadership behavior change easy?

Think about a leadership area where you can improve to become a better leader. Most leaders select one or more of the following areas.

• Manage team performance better
• Listen to and involve team members.
• Emotional control in stressful situations
• Communicate more effectively
• Delegate more effectively
• And dozens of other such behaviors.

So here is a question. How long have you been trying to get better? Most leaders say that it has been years! How much does it cost you in terms of your leadership brand value? Now think about a few of the leaders in your organization. Do they exhibit one or more of these ineffective habits? What could this be costing you and your team in terms of team cohesion and performance? DDI estimates that the cost of a single poor leader at $126,000 per year!

With leadership masterclass, we deliver measurable growth in the leader’s bottleneck areas – as anonymously assessed by the leader’s own team members.

With leadership masterclass, we deliver measurable growth in the leader’s bottleneck areas – as anonymously assessed by the leader’s own team members.

Behavior change is one of the most difficult things to do. It is simple to understand but very difficult to implement consistently! For successful leaders like you, it is even more difficult! No wonder we carry these ineffective habits for years, even decades.

LMC – the free online leadership program – is designed to help you with positive behavior change at work. It simply works! We deliver measurable leadership growth – guaranteed!

Read: Leadership Feedback & the CEO disease!<

Organizational Culture Change – leadership masterclass for your leadership team

Every leader has some strengths that make them successful. Every leader also has some bottlenecks that prevent them from achieving further leadership success. Leaders need to leverage strengths and improve in their bottleneck areas to achieve the next level of success. LMC allows you to do exactly that. Leverage your strengths and overcome your bottlenecks.

Now imagine that in your organization, the top leadership team goes through the LMC. Each of these leaders improves in their bottleneck areas and leverages their strengths. What would that mean to the performance of the organization? It will change organizational culture to a more open, focused, and high-performance culture. Get LMC for your top leadership team to institute organizational culture change.

KF Hay group identifies 5 factors that impact the organization and account for 65% of the bottom line. What about the other 35%?  Leadership behaviors account for 35% of the bottom line!  Leadership behaviors are the single largest factor and are the only factor completely in the organization’s circle of influence. Leadership development is the best tool to accelerate performance. Get LMC for your leadership team. It is the most cost-effective option. Speak with us for LMC for your entire team. We will deliver guaranteed and measurable leadership growth for your leaders, or we simply won’t charge you anything!

Leadership online masterclass – is an amazing value!

What does it cost to attend a 5-day leadership course at any top B schools – Harvard, HEC, Instead, IIM, ISB, etc.? You can check it yourself!  It runs into tens of thousands of USD per leader. Then add the cost of the leader’s salary for 5 days, travel and accommodation costs, and a lot more.

The worst part is that much of this training never converts into on-the-job behavior change.  Not because the content is not effective.  The content and delivery are definitely world-class.  However, behavior change at work never happens with a short duration program.  The content is general in nature and not customized for each leader.

With LMC, you will get all the tools for on job behavior change at a cost that is much less than a 5-day program at a reputed B school.  LMC costs less for an entire year of leadership coaching and customized learning.

• A scientifically designed online platform
• One-click, anywhere anytime, access
• 2 live sessions per month with the coach
• Customized actions and worksheets, and timely reminders help you take small actions daily.

Leadership awareness may happen in a training session, but leadership behaviors happen in real life when the leader interacts with his/her own team.  That is where leadership development really happens.

LMC excels in the on-job behavior change of leaders.

Get 15-day test  ALL access to LMC now and become an inspiring leader.
Image credit -Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash