Getting to a leadership position is not easy.  Staying there is often even more difficult! It is quite common to see a leader successfully guide a company through one challenge and then fail to face other less pressing issues. 

A study by HBR reported that two out of five Fortune 500 CEOs fail in their first eighteen months.  At the mid-career level, a lot of leader’s career stalls, and are often passed over for promotions. 

How does a leader avoid such a fate and keep growing as a leader and keep moving up the career ladder?  What are the ego trap and Leadership Derailers leaders fall for?

The wise advice to the newly appointed General!

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith, the world’s number one leadership thinker and executive coach, narrates an incident with a newly promoted General in the US army.

Read the summary of two best-selling books by Marshall Goldsmith What Got You Here Won’t Get You There-Marshall Goldsmith-Book summary and Triggers – Marshall Goldsmith-Book Summary

At a dinner and a cocktail party, the new General was approached by a veteran, experienced and wise General. He asks a few questions to the newly appointed General and shares some words of wisdom with him.

Wise General – “Have you noticed lately that people tend to laugh at all your jokes?”

New General – “Yes, I have!”

Wise General – “When you share a nugget of your wisdom – everyone nods their heads in unison, and no one disagrees with any of your ideas?”

New General – “Yes, it is true!”

Wise General – “Well, let me tell you something! You are not that funny. Nor are your nuggets of wisdom any good! It is the star on your shoulder – that tells them that you are a General – that is getting you these rave reviews. Don’t forget that, and don’t let it get to your head!”

Getting honest feedback as we move up the career ladder

As we move up the career ladder, it becomes more and more difficult to get honest feedback. People around us avoid telling us unpleasant truths. They learn to highlight our “good” deeds and shower praise upon us. Essentially, we get watered down truths at best and unfettered and sometimes insincere praise at the worst.

We only hear one side of the story–how good we are! Unfortunately, this continuous positive reinforcement eventually gets into most leader’s heads. It is hard for the leader to stay grounded, and the leader suffers from what Marshall Goldsmith calls “success delusion.”

Unless the leader makes a concerted effort to solicit honest feedback, people simply won’t volunteer honest and useful feedback.

360 degree assessment to solicit honest feedback

One of the best tools to get honest feedback from team members is using the anonymous 360 degree feedback assessment.  It measures how the leader’s team members see the leader and help overcome leadership blindspots.  If you’d like to know more about 360 degree feedback, read the article. 

Read:  360 degree feedback A complete guide with questionnaire

The Emperor’s new clothes

We have all read the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” The Emperor’s ministers, family members, the common folks–all saw that the Emperor had no clothes on, and he was naked. But no one wanted to tell the emperor the unpleasant truth that he was naked.

When you are a leader and in a position of power, subordinates, colleagues, and peers hesitate to tell you anything unflattering. Getting the unfiltered truth from them becomes increasingly difficult. And this becomes a problem sooner than later. When a leader stops getting candid feedback, he loses touch with reality.

He will stop learning, changing, and improving. In a fast-changing VUCA world, that puts the brakes on the leader’s further growth, or in the worst-case scenario, gets them fired.

Read:  Feedback is a gift-leadership feedback is a huge favor

Author Jen Shirkani in her book Ego vs. EQ. – outlines eight “leadership ego traps,”–which are basically leadership blind spots. The first ego trap is – “Ignoring the feedback you don’t like.”

New York mayor Ed Koch was known for stopping commuters (average citizens) in the streets and asking them the question–“How am I doing?” It is a powerful question, especially when the leader asks that question directly to his leadership’s recipients–his subordinates and frontline workers.

Read: The 8 Ego traps that derail a leader’s career

How do you know for sure how you are doing as a leader?

I often pose the same question to the leaders I coach during my executive or leadership coaching engagement. Often the reply is that– “I am doing well or I am doing OK.” I then ask–“How do you know that?” And “How you  know that for sure?”

Eventually, it leads to the discussion of getting unfiltered, honest, and anonymous feedback through the 360-degree feedback tool.

It allows subordinates to share honest feedback with the leader without the discomfort or fear of giving the same feedback to the leader’s face.

When I share the feedback from the 360-degree tool with the leader, there is one sure shot tell that determines whether the leader will get better or not? What is it? If the leader accepts the feedback, she is likely to become an even better leader.

If the leader tends to ignore, discount, or malign unflattering feedback, the leader will have difficulty getting better.  This will eventually prevent the leader from progressing or moving up.

Stalling or derailment of a leader’s career

Jen Shirkani quotes a study done by PDI Ninth House. A study of 39,000 leaders found a significant correlation between “inability or unwillingness to see one’s own faults” and the stalling of the leader’s career’s derailment.

Leaders who were “out of touch” with the way their direct managers perceived them and rated them in performance reviews were more likely to derail (low performance, demotion, or even being fired).  How much more likely?  629% more likely!  That is a significant drag and a detriment to any leader’s career.

Read: Henry Ford FAILURE story & bad leadership & Lessons for leaders

How does a leader avoid success delusions or ego traps?

Be like the good kings in the olden days!

Good kings used to tour their kingdoms dressed as common folks without the entourage in the old days. Why? So that they can see and hear firsthand what common people were saying about the king.

To get the unfiltered and honest truth about the people’s condition and what they really thought about the king’s performance and behavior. Well, the modern-day version of that technique is the 360-degree feedback process.  It allows the leader to get an accurate picture of how others see her.

Get a wise General on your side!

Wouldn’t it be great if all leaders had a wise adviser like the experienced General?  Such an adviser would help the leader stay grounded and avoid the success delusion and the ego traps? Help control the derailing behaviors that hurt the leader’s career? The modern-day version of that wise General is a leadership coach (often referred to as an executive coach)!

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

A leadership coach is the best investment for a leader’s career

A leadership coach or an executive coach will do what a sports coach does for an athlete. Take any sport and any successful athlete at the top of their game.  Although they probably are the best in the world, they still have a coach!  Why?  To provide an outside perspective, objectively see the athlete, to point out areas of improvement – so that the athlete can stay at the top of their game and get even better.  A leadership coach may be the best investment a leader can make to improve their leadership skills and develop their career.  

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 don’t have to pay us.

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

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

How to become a leader?  How to become a better leader?  Answers from 35+ years of research by Kouzes and Posner

How to become a leader?  How to become a better leader?  Think about the question for a moment and try to come up with some answers.  I often ask this question to the participants in my leadership training programs.  I get a lot of different answers, but here are some common answers. Later I discuss the answer derived from over 35+ years of research by Kouzes and Posner.

• Vision
• Strategic thinking
• Communication
• Determination
• Commitment
• Managing change
• Influence
• Planning and execution
• And a few more!

What is one essential element for anyone wants to be a leader? How to be a leader?

I then ask – what one thing is essential to become a leader?  The participants of my leadership training programs debate on what is that one essential element.  What is your opinion on that one essential element? Let me warn you that this is a trick question!

The one essential requirement of leadership today is followers!  Willing followers! Without willing followers, no one can be a leader! Anyone can have a position of power.  Everyone has subordinates – but they may not be willing followers!  The days of command and control are long gone. Leadership today is nothing but influence.

“Become the leader that people would voluntarily follow even if you had no title or position.”  Brian Tracy.

How to become a better leader? What do followers look for in a leader whom they will follow voluntarily?

Kouzes and Posner, the authors of the bestselling book “The Leadership Challenge,” answer this question based on over 35 years of research that analyzed thousands of personal-best leadership experiences.

The authors asked over 75000 respondents via a questionnaire–What qualities should a leader possess that inspire the followers to follow the leader willingly?  Therein lies the answer to the question – How to become a better leader?

Read: How leaders become leaders – Why what you know about leadership development may be wrong!

After surveying for over 35 years, Kouzes and Posner found four leadership qualities and behaviors consistently that are essential.  These four leadership qualities received over 60 percent votes across countries and cultures over the three and a half decades.   These four qualities and behaviors are.

1. Honest
2. Forward-looking
3. Inspiring
4. Competent

Four essential qualities on how to become a better leader

Be Honest!

Honesty is the number one quality followers look for in a leader.  Some synonyms of honesty that followers used to describe this same quality were ethical, principled, truthful, and having integrity.  Honesty is closely related to values. Followers want to know the values and principles that the leader believes in and will adhere to – even in the toughest of situations.  Honesty is admitting and accepting the reality of a business situation as it is. It also means that he admits his strengths and improvement areas openly. Honesty is also tied to authenticity.  She has to be herself and cannot pretend to be someone else.

Be Forward-looking.

A leader’s focus should be on the future–looking forward.  Learn from past mistakes, but forgive, forget and move on.  She also has to describe clearly the destination she plans to take everyone to.  She must have a vision that takes followers to better and exciting destinations than they currently are.  It is the quality that inspires everyone to commit and work hard towards achieving that vision.

Be Competent.

Does the leader understand the overview of the business, competitors, and markets?  Does he have a track record of delivering results through people? Understanding of business and the ability to get the best out of people make a leader competent.  Without being competent, you are unlikely to succeed, and the followers are unlikely to want to follow such a person.

Be Inspiring.

This one quality elevates a good manager to the level of a good leader.  We all have an inherent need to believe in something, have a purpose, and know that what we are doing at work is making a difference.  Millennials especially are looking for meaning and purpose in what they do at work. An inspiring leader can provide meaning, purpose, and a sense of belonging to a greater good.  Inspiring leaders are energetic, enthusiastic, and dedicated to their mission and purpose, and these emotions cascade down to the followers.

To summarize, Kouzes and Posner’s research of 35+ years have identified 4 essential qualities of leaders.  When we exhibit these qualities, followers willingly follow us.

If you want to become a leader that people would follow even if you had no title or position, these are the essential elements to work on and develop.  Over 35 years of research by Kouzes and Posener has confirmed over and again the fact that anyone willing to develop these qualities and behaviors becomes a better leader.  They can develop these four qualities and behaviors.

Read: Leadership coaching that delivers a 95% success rate

How to become a better leader and develop these 4 behaviors?

In life and leadership – knowing is not the same as doing!  We know we should exercise more, watch less TV, listen more, not lose temper, etc.  But do we do these things consistently?

The best way to change behavior and develop these leadership behaviors is through leadership coaching.  Coaching provides the structure, support, and accountability that allows the leader to learn new skills and convert them into habits.

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 don’t have to pay us.

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

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

The single biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success

(according to the new book by Gallup)

Gallup organization conducted “the largest study on the future of the workplace.”  After Tens of Millions of In-Depth Interviews With Managers, Employees, Economists and Leading Organizations – the single biggest factor in any organization’s long term success is … Please read along to find the research answer and the book on the same topic by Gallup.

You can buy the book by clicking here – (This is a Non-affiliate link)

Gallup – The leader in scientific polling

Gallup organization is an American analytics and advisory company founded by George Gallup in 1935.  It is the pioneer in scientific polling.  In 1936 the influential magazine  “The Literary Digest” predicted that Alfred Landon would win the U.S. presidency.  Contrary to the popular, Gallup correctly predicted the winner – Franklin Roosevelt.   This event popularized the company and made it a leader in American polling, which it has remained to date.

Gallup organization has conducted millions of polls worldwide over the last eight decades.  In their latest book – It’s the Manager – CEO Jim Clifton and Chief workplace research scientist Jim Harter offer conclusions from their “largest study on the future of work.”

In-depth research of millions of data points

According to Gallup, the research for the book included –

• a review of everything we could find across almost all leading institutions and management literature — as well as our own data from more than 30 years of U.S. and global workplace tracking
• tens of millions of in-depth interviews with employees and managers across 160 countries
• in-depth round table interviews with CHROs from 300 of the world’s largest organizations
• interviews with several of the world’s preeminent economists

The major problem of businesses worldwide

From the research study, Gallup concluded that the short-term (5-10 years) problem worldwide and businesses worldwide was declining productivity – as measured by GDP per capita.  The main culprit for the slowdown in productivity is the failure to maximize human potential. Lean management and Six Sigma have helped improve the processes and the quality of global production. Over the last thirty years, the “defects” in processes have been eliminated largely.  However, according to the book, the “defects” in how organizations manage their human capital needs to be worked on.

Failure in maximizing human potential

Today – Organizational defects “aren’t failures in processes but failures in maximizing the human potential”  Over the last thirty years, the business environment and how people work has changed at an unprecedented level.  People want to work, live, and connect with others in dramatically different ways.  But how we manage has been stuck in a time capsule over that period.  Productivity growth has stalled because organizations are not maximizing the potential of their employees.  Outdated management practices have stifled employee engagement and productivity.

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

It’s the Manager – the single biggest factor to any organization’s long-term success.

Research also concluded that the managers or team leaders account for 70% of the variance in employee engagement scores.  And hence the title of the book – It’s the Manager – Gallup finds that the quality of managers and team leaders is the single biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success.

The book offers leaders and aspiring leaders 52 tips to maximize human potential in organizations.  These 52 tips are divided into five major headings.

• Strategy: How to use strategy to create a culture of high performance. Teams that work together and make quick decisions.
• Culture: Some insights based on the research on why culture is probably the most important factor in organizations’ success.
• Employment Brand: Millennials think differently.  Tips for creating a culture and a brand that allows companies to attract, hire, and keep the best talent.  How to work on creating a workplace that is desired and coveted by talented employees.
• Boss to Coach: Command and control are officially dead.  How to change managers’ approach from bosses to coaches to serve the needs and wants of employees.  Today employees want managers who help them utilize and maximize their talents and not fit them into a standard job description.
• The Future of Work: One size fits all does not work in a rapidly changing workplace. Managers must be agile and responsive to constant and never-ending changes such as diversity and inclusion, artificial intelligence, analytics, remote work, and flexible schedules. Training managers for such a business world is essential.

Read: Guaranteed measurable results delivered for our FMCG client

How do organizations achieve these outcomes?

According to the book, culture change begins with changing the beliefs of CEOs and CHROs.  As the authors point out, the management practices have not kept up with workplace changes and changes in employee’s expectations.  The next step is changing what the managers and team leaders believe.

For decades, shareholder returns have been the holy grail of businesses.  However, things have changed.  In a “purpose” driven economy, people’s needs have to be a priority, or else there will be no improvement in productivity.  If companies learn, change, and adapt to new ways to manage people and teams, the growth in productivity, revenue, profits, and employee engagement will be dramatic.  The new purpose of business, which is also to the future of work, includes maximizing human potential.  The book argues that this change in mindset will change everything.

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

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 of 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

References

https://www.gallup.com/workplace/246092/new-book-uncovers-gallup-best-management-insights.aspx

https://www.forbes.com/sites/kevinkruse/2019/05/10/new-book-from-gallup-managers-must-behave-like-coaches-not-bosses/#64d03a87213b

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gallup_(company)

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

Executive coaching is probably the most effective and the most popular leadership development tool.  Companies ranging from startups to large multinationals use executive coaching to support their leaders.

In this article, I will answer the following questions.

• What is executive coaching?
• Why do companies hire an executive coach?
• What are the best executive coaching programs?
• Which are the top executive coaching firms?

What is executive coaching?

It would be an understatement to say that today’s business environment is challenging for top executives.  Constant and rapidly accelerating change driven by technology, relentless cost-cutting, flatter organizations,  global competition, and many other challenges take up a leader’s time and energy and keep them awake at night. We often expect the leaders and executives to figure out things for themselves in this constantly changing world.  We expect them to have all the answers. We expect them to keep their skills updated, work under pressure, and change and innovate to stay ahead of the competition.  A leader may likely do these things herself, but the fact is that most executives need help.  That is where executive coaching comes in.

Read:  Everything you ever wanted to know about executive coaching.

Executive coaching is probably the best tool available for the leadership development of the executive.

It is a personalized and confidential relationship between the coach who is a trained professional and the executive being coached.  Executive coaching helps leaders to take stock of their current level of competencies to maximize their strengths and overcome areas of weakness. It also helps the leader see how others perceive his/her behavior, which helps improve the relationship with and the team members’ engagement.  The executive coach also clarifies goals, strategy, and plan for action, focus, and accountability.

Why do companies hire an executive coach?

In a study conducted by Diane E. Lewis, companies identified various reasons for hiring executive coaches. Here is the list of the top five reasons, with the percentage of respondents citing that particular reason in parentheses.

• • • For developing the leadership skills of high-potential individuals (86%).
    • To improve the odds that newly promoted managers would be successful (64%).
    • Development of management and leadership skills among their technical people (59%).
    • Rectifying behavioral problems at the management level (70%).
    • To help leaders resolve interpersonal conflicts among employees (59%).

Other surveys have also confirmed leadership development as the primary reason for hiring an executive coach.  The perception of coaching has also changed from remedial (needed to fix something wrong with the executive) to developmental (the company is investing in my development).

Executive coaching also meets multiple talent management needs.

• Developing high potential employees.
• Leadership pipeline and succession planning.
• Help leaders transition up and across.
• Overcoming derailing behaviors of otherwise technically brilliant employees.

Read: Executive Coaching that fits multiple talent management needs.

Which are the best executive coaching programs?

No dearth of coaching providers!

Most of the top consulting firms offer executive coaching programs.  Top business schools and leadership development consulting firms also offer executive coaching programs.

There are many executive coaching programs and approaches available in the market. Unfortunately, the bar to enter executive coaching is low.  Many agencies “certify” any individual willing to pay the fees and attend a weekend program.

There is a lot of variation in the coaching approach depending on the coach.  There is also uncertainty about areas of development for the executive that the coach is helping with.  Often the question – “What area of improvement is the coach and the leader is currently working on?” is not crystal clear.  And it often changes with time during the duration of the coaching engagement.

Buyers beware!

Unfortunately, most leaders and human resources professionals are not clear about what coaching methodologies to use and which ones work. Sadly, the choice is often based on the coaching vendor’s marketing and branding instead of the coaching process’s effectiveness.  Most coaching agencies cite the satisfaction level of the leader as the measure of their success. While it is good that the leader liked the coach, the real question is, did the leader improve as a result of executive coaching?

Measuring success

How do you measure the effectiveness and the success of any coaching program? A coaching process’s true measure is the leader’s behavior change at work as observed and anonymously rated by the leader’s team members.  The leader’s behaviors determine the culture of the team.  The culture results in engagement and performance, or a lack of it, as it may be the case.

The behavior change of a successful adult is a difficult feat to accomplish.  Hence it is necessary that the coaching process is structured, uniform, and well defined.

An excellent executive coaching program should also be supported with large-scale and statistically significant studies on the program’s effectiveness.

One of the most popular and widely used executive coaching programs worldwide is the stakeholder-centered executive coaching approach.   It is often considered the best executive coaching program for top leaders of multinational companies.  Over the last 40 years, it has been used to coach over 400,000 executives in over 60 countries – including executives from 150 of the Fortune 500 companies.

In a survey of 11,000 leaders on four continents, over 95% of the leaders using the stakeholder-centered process improved.  The same process is available worldwide through 3000 coaches in 200 cities of 55 countries in multiple languages.

What is stakeholder-centered executive coaching? Why is it considered one of the best executive coaching programs?

Here are the key defining points of the stakeholder-centered executive coaching process that make it probably the best executive coaching program. It is one of the top executive coaching programs in the world.  It is also the largest executive coaching network in the world.

Supporting successful people

Stakeholder-centered executive coaching helps successful leaders become more successful. It is not to “fix” a low performer. This list also includes people who are identified as “high potentials” and expected to take up future leadership roles.

To grow their leadership behavior effectiveness.

Leadership behavior effectiveness makes the leader aware of his behaviors and their impact on the team members.  Behavior change helps establish better relationships, better employee engagement, and improved performance of the team.  It also includes rectifying derailing behaviors.  These are the annoying behaviors of otherwise good leaders.  Often such behaviors become a hindrance to smooth team functioning, and stakeholder-centered coaching helps leaders improve their own derailing behaviors and change the perception of the team members.

Often people are promoted to a higher role without much support due to business emergencies like an urgent project or a senior leader leaving the organization.  Leadership coaching also helps leaders transition into a higher role.  It also helps the leader transition across into another role within the company – when such a need arises.

Through Feedback / Feed-forward from Stakeholders on the Job

Feedback allows the leader to realize the blind spots that may act as the leadership bottlenecks.  However, once they receive the feedback, most of the focus is on feed-forward.  Feed-forward is asking for suggestions from team members (stakeholders) for improvement for the future.  This takes the focus away from the past – which cannot be changed, to the future – which can be improved if the leader acts on the stakeholder’s suggestions.

In their professional job environment

Unlike life coaching or some other executive coaching programs, stakeholder-centered executive coaching focuses solely on the executive’s professional development.  It does not focus on personal issues, which are often addressed in life coaching.

To create pre-defined results.

The executive being coached usually determines the agenda of life-coaching. The agenda may also change during the span of the life-coaching engagement. Stakeholder-centered executive coaching assesses the leader on pre-defined leadership competencies.  The assessors are the leader’s stakeholders – team members who frequently interact with the leader.  Superiors, subordinates, peers, and sometimes customers or vendors.  Once the leadership bottleneck competencies are identified, the executive coach and the leader work on improving these pre-defined competencies for the entire executive coaching engagement duration.

As acknowledged by the stakeholders

Stakeholders are the leader’s team members who frequently interact with the leader.  They are at the receiving end of the leader’s behaviors.  In other words – they are the “customers” of the leading product.  No one else is in a better position than the stakeholders to assess whether or not the leadership behaviors are good and whether they are improving.  In the stakeholder-centered executive coaching process, as the name suggests, stakeholders are at the center.  Ultimately, they decide whether or not the leader has improved her behaviors through an anonymous survey.  We consider a leader to have improved, not because the leader says he has improved, or the coach says he has improved, but only when the stakeholders (through an anonymous survey) confirm that the leader has improved!

Using a well-defined process/system for 6-12 months

Stakeholder centered executive coaching process is a well-defined and tried and tested process.  It is designed to appeal to the leader’s ways of thinking and leverage them to improve.  It is also a process that has been used to coach more than 400,000 executives in more than 60 countries – including executives from 150 of the Fortune 500 companies.  The process is highly effective.  In a survey of 11,000 leaders on four continents, more than 95% of the leaders using the stakeholder-centered process improved.  Stakeholder-centered executive coaching usually lasts from a minimum of six months up to a year and a half.

Technology–assisted – Virtual OR Face to face

Technology has advanced, and video conferencing is a norm in any large organization.  This is especially true after the pandemic. Although nothing beats the human touch when establishing rapport and connection, video coaching is the next best thing to being together.  Besides, online software and tools allow continuous communication rapport between the coach and the leader. Scientifically designed online tools also support the leader in between coaching sessions with reminders and accountability.

Read: How to find the best executive coach for you or the leaders in your organization.

Conclusion: 

What is stakeholder-centered executive coaching? Why is it the largest and one of the top executive coaching firms?

It is the process of

• • • Supporting successful people
    • To grow their leadership behavior effectiveness (including developing specific competencies, transition up or across,  and overcoming derailing behaviors)
    • Through Feedback / Feedforward from Stakeholders on the job
    • In their professional job environment
    • To create (predefined ) results.
    • As acknowledged by stakeholders
    • Using a well-defined process/system for 6-18 months
    • Technology-enabled – Virtual or in-person

Selecting the right executive coaching program, firm, and coach is critical.

Selecting the right executive coaching firm, the right executive coaching program, and the right executive coach is critical to any executive coaching intervention’s success and effectiveness. Not spending enough time and not doing due diligence may result in a waste of time, money, and effort and may tarnish the reputation of the Human Resources or top management, who usually are the executive coaching intervention sponsors.

Read: 9 Reasons Why Executive Coaching Programs Fail in Organizations.

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 of 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 don’t have to pay us.

Access to our scientifically designed online platform

Scientifically designed online platform to help the leader form habits and achieve leadership growth

• Track and measure every aspect of your development plan
• Everything in a single place – actions, metrics, notes, journal, and more
• Convenient one-click access on any device – anywhere, anytime, any device
• Timely reminders of actions and activities
• Access to files, resources, videos, and activities
• Book summaries, role-play, and more.
• Continuous and non-stop personal care and support of the coach
• Two-way communication with the coach continuously
• Encouragement, support, and accountability

Other Value additions

Unlike training programs, our process is time and resource-efficient

• It takes only 1 to 1.5 hours per month of a leader’s time.
• The leader learns and applies for his/her own work with his/her own team.

Compare that to the leader going to a leadership training program.

• Cost of the training program
• The financial cost of time away from work
• Productivity loss due to time away from work
• Little application at work of the concepts learned in the training program.

The benefits cascade down to the team.

• As the team members are involved in the entire process, they also improve.
• The leader becomes the role model of desired behaviors, and it rubs off on the team.

The leader becomes the coach.

• The final session is to help the leader become a coaching leader.
• The entire coaching process is designed to deliver measurable leadership growth for the leader.

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

Click the button below.
SCHEDULE NOW!

References

What is executive coaching?

What is executive coaching? td-org

 

Why is leadership important? How does it contribute to the success of organizations?

Organizations today work in a disruptive and rapidly changing business environment. Does leadership matter in such an environment? Why is leadership important? How does leadership development contribute to the successes of organizations? Here are some hard facts to answer the question – Why is leadership important?

Organizations, at times, fail to understand the importance of leadership. The primary reason is that the impact of leadership is intangible and difficult to measure. However, there is a powerful relationship between good leadership and employee engagement and performance.

Is leadership important to an organization’s performance? What is the relationship between the performance of an organization and the quality of its leadership? This is the question that I will try to answer in this article.

Employee potential versus Employee performance

How much of your capability or potential do you get to use at work? If we count your total potential at 100%, how much of it do you get to use at your job?  Is it 10%? 25%? 50%? 90%? Or a full 100%?  Think about it for a moment and just give the number that comes to mind.  What is your answer?

Over the years, I have asked this question to thousands of participants who have gone through my leadership training or coaching programs – and the average comes to roughly 50%!

Most employees feel that they have many more skills, capabilities, and talents than they get to use at work. Leadership behaviors determine how employee potential get utilized at work. Under the right leadership style, the same employee can perform much more efficiently and be more engaged at work.

Imagine paying a 100% salary to use only 50% of your entire human capital’s capabilities and potential!

Working for a good leader vs. working for a not so good leader

Throughout our careers, most of us have experienced working under a good leader. In all likeliness, we have also worked under a not so good leader! Recall your personal experience. How was it working under a good leader? How about working under a not so good leader? What were the differences?

Who could use more of your capabilities and potential? The good leader or the not so good leader?

The answer is obvious – good leaders bring out a lot more of an employee’s total potential. Good leaders encourage others to work to the best of their abilities, inspire them, and abet their motivation. They have a clear vision about things they say and give the right direction whenever required. Such leaders possess traits that people willingly follow.

On the other hand, poor leadership behaviors have a measurable and significant detrimental effect on the entire team.

Read the article on the collateral damages of poor leadership behaviors-Poor Leadership Behaviors & its Collateral Damage.

Read: Which is the best leadership development program?

Our anecdotal experience is supported by more than 35 years of research by Kouzes and Posner.

Why is leadership development important?

• It matters to people’s commitment to work.
• It matters to their willingness to work hard and take the initiative.
• It matters to the meaning they derive from their efforts.
• And it matters to their overall ability to perform beyond the ordinary.

Good leaders bring out the best in individuals, teams, and organizations. Extraordinary performance requires extraordinary leaders. The leader’s personality has a significant influence on any organization’s performance or any group of individuals. The leader’s traits and values enable the employees to perform optimally and accelerate their performance to a great extent.

What factors contribute to an organization’s success? Korn Ferry Study

A study by the KF Hay group identified five factors that contribute to any organization’s success.

1. Strong franchises:  Strong brands act as a moat.  Example – Coca-cola, Apple, etc.
2. Munificent or beneficial environments: An environment helpful to business. Example – Silicon valley for technology.
3. Intellectual Property Rights: Patents and copyrights protect companies against competition and hence help their financials. Example – Qualcomm, Pharma companies.
4. Regulatory Barriers: Regulatory barriers protect the entry of competitors benefiting the existing players’ telecom in the middle-east and some African countries are expensive, but companies are highly profitable
5. Massive Resources: Capital, natural resources, the scale of operations act as a competitive advantage.  Example: Google, P&G, Nestle, etc.

These five factors combined account for 65% of the financial performance of any organization.

Leadership accounts for 35% of the bottom line!

The other 35% of the performance is attributed to leadership behaviors and the culture it creates! Leadership behaviors account for 35% of an organization’s financial performance, which makes it the single most crucial factor.  Leadership behaviors drive organizational culture. Organizational culture, in turn, drives business performance. How did Korn Ferry measure performance? Based on the profits, balance sheet, and people engagement levels in an organization.

If leadership accounts for more than a third of an organization’s performance, what are the implications?  It means that leadership development is the single most massive lever available to drive an organization’s performance! And it is probably the only factor that is entirely within the circle of the influence of the organization.

Harvard study: Good leaders develop more leaders under them!

Here is the conclusion from a Harvard study that compared good leaders vs. bad leaders.  What criteria did they use to identify the good vs. the bad leaders? The leaders who were in the top 10th percentile of their peer group were considered as good leaders, while those who ranked in the bottom 10th percentile were found to be the not so good leaders.

Subordinates of good leaders are 2.5 times more effective leaders themselves compared to subordinates of bad leaders!

Read: Is leadership development important? Effect of good or poor leadership on the bottom-line

Good leadership has a cascading (and a multiplier) effect – all the way down to the front line employees.

Good leaders develop more leaders under them, who, in turn, develop people under them. This cascading and multiplier effect of ethical leadership can be felt at all levels of the organization, all the way down to the front line.

Leadership makes the difference!

Most large companies today, have access to a similar pool of talent. They also have similar access to capital, technology, and other resources. What is the differentiating factor? What makes one company successful while others may go out of business?

The difference comes down to how much of these available resources – people and others – get utilized by the organization. Do people work as a cohesive team and for the common goals of the organization? Or are there silos and a race for individual benefits at the cost of the greater good? Leadership behaviors create the culture, which drives employee engagement and eventually business performance.

Good leadership and good organizational performance are highly correlated.

Read: Poor Leadership Behaviors & its Collateral Damage.

Develop your leaders using the best and most effective leadership program

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.

SCHEDULE NOW!

 

How to be a good leader – Why what you know may be wrong!

How to be a good leader?  Have you wondered about that? What you know about how leaders become leaders may be wrong!  According to the research by Herminia Ibarra, most traditional ways of leadership development have an incorrect approach!

Read further to find out more.

How to be a good leader? A perpetual leadership development problem

Jacob is one of the leaders and production head of a food manufacturer.  He complains that most of his day is filled with fighting fires.  He runs around the plant all day, just trying to fix things to meet the production targets and keep the plant running.  He realizes that he needs to get away from operational issues and focus more on strategic issues.  How to improve the plant’s efficiency, how to improve cross-functional collaboration, how to anticipate threats, and take advantage of possible opportunities in a rapidly changing business environment. His solution to this pressing problem is to find a two-hour time slot in his day to think.  And it seems like a good idea.  After all, having some time to think and reflect will help take a more strategic view.

Perhaps you are in a similar position as Jacob in your leadership role.  Maybe you are trying to wean yourself from operational issues and focus more on strategic initiatives.  You want to tackle more important matters that suffer due to non-stop urgent issues.  Does this solution – to set aside time to think – work?  Is it likely to make Jacob, or your own self, more strategic?  Almost certainly no!  Unfortunately, you can only learn leadership by doing things and not by thinking about things.

Real-life experiences from a leadership development expert on how to be a good leader

This perspective comes from Herminia Ibarra, the author of the book Act like a leader, think like a leader, and an expert on professional and leadership development.  She is a professor at London Business School. Previously she was a Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at INSEAD. She also served as Harvard Business School faculty for thirteen years. Thinkers50 ranked Ibarra #9 among the most influential business gurus in the world.

Read: Future of Leadership – Are your leadership skills future-ready?

How to be a good leader? Why won’t the conventional wisdom on leadership get you very far?

The approach that most leadership training or coaching programs take is changing the leader’s thinking.  It is usually done through self-reflection and introspection.  Herminia Ibarra points out that an entire industry on leadership development is based on this faulty idea.  Books, training programs, coaching interventions, and courses are designed to help find your authentic leadership style and help you become an authentic leader.  The numbers on the effectiveness of such leadership programs are shockingly dismal.

Such programs may help you identify your leadership strengths and weaknesses, but that is exactly what may be the problem – as that only describes your current way of thinking. What is needed is a change in mindset, which a behavior change can only achieve.

“It’s easier to act your way into a new way of thinking than think your way into a new way of acting.” – Jerry Sternin.

Change happens from the outside in and not from the inside out. In other words, we act as a leader first and then learn to think like a leader (thus the title of the book).

How leadership growth really happens?

Throughout her career, Professor Ibarra observed how leaders dealt with important transitions at work. Most of what she learned about successful leadership transitions goes against conventional wisdom.

The traditional approach to leadership development is to identify authentic, innovative, or inspiring leaders and then to identify what they have in common. Researchers conclude that effective leaders have certain competencies – high self-awareness, a sense of purpose, authenticity, and so on. However, there is little understanding of the journey of how leaders got there.   She concluded people become leaders by doing the real leadership work – not by attending leadership training or coaching programs.

Becoming a leader: the traditional model (think, then act) versus the way it really works (act, then think)

She coined this “reverse” cycle of first acting as a leader and then thinking like a leader as “outsight” – as it is a change from outside in vs. the traditional approach of change from the inside out or “insight.”  Below are some differences between insight and outsight.

The difference between insight and outsight

Insight                                                                          Outsight

• Internal Knowledge                                         –    External Knowledge
• Past Experience                                              –    New Experience
• Thinking                                                        –    Acting

How do you approach your leadership development?

Many companies go about leadership development traditionally by sending leaders and potential leaders to executive education programs or leadership training and coaching.  There are several pitfalls to this approach.

1. Considering leadership training as an event – Not understanding that it is a process that takes time and reinforcement at work.
2. Overlooking the context – What works in one situation or environment won’t work in other situations.
3. Decoupling of reflection from the real work – Developmental activities look good in a simulated environment but not in the real world.

To quote Debbie Lovich, who has 20 years of experience in leadership development BCG, “People don’t develop skills from simply reading a book or going to a one-off workshop. They build skills by having to do something, failing, and trying again and again.“

Read: Why leadership training fails and the fail-safe solution for it

The fundamental problem with leadership development

The fundamental problem with most of the traditional leadership development and executive education programs is that they assume that if the leader knows about it, she will do it.  We know from personal experience – how flawed this kind of thinking is.  Knowing rarely equals doing.  We know a lot about many areas.  For example, I know a lot about losing weight and getting fit.  Does that mean that I do those things regularly?  This rarely is the case.  Think about any of the leadership skills.  You may attend a course on “Working with Emotional Intelligence.”  Does that mean that you will apply it regularly and become more emotionally intelligent when you come back to work?  I am willing to bet that it rarely happens!

A flawed paradigm about how to be a good leader

And yet, we operate under a flawed paradigm that more knowledge will help fix the leadership issues.  We chase the latest program, the latest buzzword, the newest bestseller – thinking that if I just read that or attend the course – I can improve my leadership.  Intellectual knowledge is rarely a problem in leadership development.  Application of the knowledge at work, consistent follow-up, and forming the right habits is definitely is the issue.

Our leadership coaching is designed to convert knowing into doing.  We take the leader through awareness, acceptance, action, and achievement (of their leadership growth).  The model we use is tried and tested worldwide – over 1 million leaders have undergone this process.  Large-scale research study of over 84,000 leaders on six continents has proven this approach to have a success rate of 95% – which is unheard of in training and coaching.  And best of all – it comes with a no-growth no-pay clause.

Want to know about a better and more cost and time-effective approach to leadership development?

Would you like measurable results from your leadership development investment?  How about guaranteed results?  We use the Stakeholder centered one on one coaching for leaders pioneered by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith – World’s No. 1 leadership Thinker and executive coach. This leadership development approach overcomes most of the pitfalls that derail the effectiveness of a leadership development initiative.

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 of 11000 leaders on 4 continents).  It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

References: “Act like a leader, think like a leader,” a book by Herminia Ibarra.

What is the most dangerous leadership problem?

What, in your opinion, is the most dangerous leadership problem?  Is it a lack of vision?  Or is it micro-management? Or lack of accountability?  Poor execution?  What if I told you that these are mere symptoms of a real and most dangerous leadership problem? It is most dangerous, especially because leaders don’t even know that they have this problem!  The story of Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss is an eye-opening example of this!  Let me elaborate!

A transformational leadership idea?

I wanted to share a transformational leadership idea that can completely and permanently change the way we lead. The idea comes from one of the most influential books on leadership – “Leadership and Self-deception” by Arbinger Institute. Since the book was first published in 2000, it has sold more and more copies every year just from word-of-mouth reviews and has subsequently been translated into 20 languages and has become an international bestseller.

Here is one of the numerous rave reviews from Dave Brown – former President and CEO of LensCrafters – “Remarkable. Arbinger possesses the hidden key to productivity and creativity. Do whatever you can to get your hands on this material.” Curious to know about the transformational leadership idea?

The infant can’t see that she is the problem!

Imagine a six-month-old baby girl who is just learning how to crawl. She starts by pushing backward and moving around the house. Unfortunately, she gets lodged beneath a sofa and is now stuck. She is visibly upset and hates being stuck. Just as any infant would, she starts crying. She tries to get unstuck by doing the only thing she knows how by pushing back even harder. But the more she pushes back, the more stuck she gets as she is now lodged way back under the sofa. Unknown to her – the more she tries to solve the problem, the worse the problem becomes.

If this baby girl could talk, what would she say? Probably something along this line. “I am stuck. It is because of this piece of furniture. It is the fault of this sofa. I am doing everything I can to get unstuck, but nothing seems to be working.”

What the infant cannot understand is that this is a problem that she created herself! She can’t see the problem. She is “trying hard” to solve the problem, but her efforts are compounding her problem. The real problem is that she cannot see the real problem! Until she sees the real cause of the problem, nothing she can think or do will resolve the problem.

The problem is that leaders cannot “see” the problem

This is an apt analogy to describe what self-deception does to leaders. It blinds leaders to the true cause of the problems. Once “blind,” any solutions that the leader can develop are likely to compound the problem rather than solve it. To quote the authors – “Whether, at work or home, self-deception obscures the truth about ourselves, corrupts our view of others and our circumstances, and inhibits our ability to make wise and helpful decisions. To the extent that we are self-deceived, both our happiness and our leadership is undermined at every turn, and not because of the furniture.”

Unless leaders learn to “see” that they are the ones who are the root cause of the problem, anything they say or do will not resolve the problem and probably make the problem worse. “Of all the problems in organizations, self-deception is the most common and the most damaging.” Almost all other organizational problems are just symptoms of this root cause.  Dr. Ignaz SEmmelseiss’s story is an excellent example of this.

Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss & Vienna General hospital in the mid-1800s

Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss was a Hungarian doctor and a professor in the mid-1850s and worked at Vienna general hospital, a premier medical research institute. His duties included teaching, examining patients at the maternity ward, and doing research.

In Hungary and Europe in the mid-1800s, mothers had a high death rate during childbirth, especially among underprivileged women. To reduce this high rate of death, free maternity wards were being set up at many hospitals, including the Vienna general hospital. Offering free maternity services also benefitted the hospitals – as these women would become willing subjects to train the midwives (nurses) and the doctors.

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

The high mortality rate in the maternity clinic run by the doctors

Two maternity clinics were set up at Vienna general hospital. The first clinic was run by doctors, mainly by Semmelweiss himself. The second clinic was run with midwives’ help (nurses), and no doctors were involved. The two clinics were more or less identical in all other aspects.

The first clinic run by Semmelweiss had a mortality rate of 10%. One out of every ten women admitted to this clinic for childbirth died! The main cause of death was not childbirth. It was “puerperal fever,” otherwise known as childbed fever.

However, in the second clinic run by the nurses, the mortality rate due to childbed fever was only 2 %. While still high, it meant that one of every fifty women admitted for childbirth died! This defied logic. The doctors were better trained than midwives. Hence, the doctor’s death rate in the maternity clinic should be lower than the death rate in the clinic run by the midwives.

Pregnant women avoided the clinic run by Dr. Semmelweiss like a plague!

Eventually, the general public found out about the difference in mortality rates between the two clinics. Pregnant women begged to be admitted to the second clinic and avoided the first clinic run by Dr. Semmelweiss! Many women preferred to give birth on the streets instead of being admitted to the first maternity clinic. What puzzled him, even more, was that the mortality rate among women giving birth on the streets was less than the mortality rate of the first clinic run by him!

He decided to get to the bottom of this conundrum, so he started a step-by-step process of eliminating all possible differences between the two clinics. It even worked to standardized everything – diet, ventilation, birthing positions, and even religious practices. Nothing made any significant difference in the mortality rate.

The unexpected discovery

Then, Dr. Semmelweiss took a four-month leave to visit another hospital. Upon his return, he found out that the first clinic’s mortality rate had fallen significantly in his absence. It had dropped almost to the level of the second clinic run by the nurses. Although he could not figure out the reason, he could not deny the facts. He kept investigating further. Eventually, he stumbled upon the reason. The doctors who worked in the maternity ward also worked in the hospital’s research department and handled cadavers (dead bodies) as a part of their research. Simultaneously, the nurses who only worked at the maternity ward did not come in contact with the cadavers.

The cause and the cure

Dr. Semmelweiss postulated that the doctors carried particles from the diseased cadavers to the healthy mothers in the first maternity ward resulting in childbed fever and death. This was the precursor to the “germ theory” of disease – which Louis Pasteur later postulated. Dr. Semmelweiss instituted the practice of washing hands with chlorine and lime water after handling the cadavers. To his delight, the first clinic’s mortality rate dropped to 1 in 100, which meant that the death rate was now half of what it was in the maternity ward run by the nurses.

Dr. Semmelweiss regretted the deaths of hundreds of the mothers admitted to his maternity clinic. Although he intended to help the patients, unintentionally and unknowingly, he was the cause of their deaths.

Leaders cannot “see” that THEIR leadership behavior is the problem

Leaders also inflict a similar kind of harm to the morale and engagement of the people they lead, often unintentionally and unknowingly. They carry the disease of “self-deception,” which blinds them because their behaviors are the root cause of most of the problems in their teams that are often just the symptoms – low morale, lack of accountability, disengagement, and low productivity. Unless this root cause of bad leadership behaviors is addressed, nothing the leader says or does will significantly impact the morale, engagement, and performance level in the leader’s team.

How do you help leaders “see” the problems they cause?

As was the case with Dr. Ignaz Semmelweiss, leaders in organizations often don’t see that their behaviors are often the cause of many issues that they face.  There is often a huge gap between a leader’s intent and their impact!

The best way to help the leader “see” this problem is through a 360 degree assessment of the leader’s behavior on the 15 global competencies of an effective leader.  The 360 degree assessment allows the leader’s team members to anonymously rate the leader.  This candid feedback helps the leader see which of their behaviors are productive and helpful and which ones are not!

Global Leadership Assessment (GLA360) to help your leaders “see” the problem

The Global Leadership Assessment (GLA360) is rooted in groundbreaking research conducted by Marshall Goldsmith (#1 Leadership Thinker and Executive Coach), involving CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, global thought leaders, and international business executives of organizations on 6 continents. The GLA360 articulates and measures the top 15 most pressing competencies for today’s global leader. It shows leaders the areas they need to develop to succeed in a competitive business environment.

Read:  360 degree feedback A complete guide with questionnaire

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching to help leaders change

Awareness of the leadership behaviors and the problems they cause is just the first step.  For a successful adult, consistent behavior change is one of the most difficult things to do.  Support leaders with the most effective coaching program in the world.

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.

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.

SCHEDULE NOW!

Reference – The Doctors’ Plague: Germs, Childbed Fever, and the Strange Story of Ignac Semmelweis (Great Discoveries)

Poor Leadership Behaviors and its collateral damage

Poor leadership behaviors and bad leadership qualities cause severe collateral damage that is often hidden. Low employee engagement, high employee turnover, low productivity, and lack of discretionary effort are all symptoms of a single root cause – bad leadership behaviors. On the other hand, good leadership is one of the most important factors in determining the success of an organization. It directly affects employee motivation, productivity, and, most importantly, their performance.  Tolerating bad leadership behaviors is costly for the organization.  Helping leaders overcome their bad leadership behaviors significantly increases engagement, productivity, and profits.

Read: The importance of Leadership: Business impact of good and poor leadership

Most employees have encountered bad leadership behaviors

Over the span of our careers, most of us have had the unfortunate experience of working under a bad leader.  What comes to mind when you think of bad leadership behaviors?  What poor leadership behaviors have you seen in leaders you have worked for? What are bad leadership qualities, you know? A survey of 1000 employees by Bamboo HR lists the following behaviors that employees list as the top 10 bad leadership behaviors – along with the percentage of employees who considered such poor leadership behavior as a deal-breaker.

 

Top 10 bad leadership behaviors

Top 5 poor leadership behaviors that make employees QUIT

“People leave managers, not companies” is more true now than ever. An employee’s immediate boss wields more influence on how engaged and productive an employee will be.  Manager impacts more than the culture, the salary, or any other factor that is within the organization’s control.  Here are the top 5 bad leadership behaviors that are a deal-breaker. for employees

The style of management a leader follows

The management style practiced by a leader influences the behavior of his/her subordinates. Different teams, projects, and businesses need different management styles. A leader should consider the needs of his team members to manage them effectively. The wrong management style hurts everyone. Your perfect leadership style needs to align with your own skills, personality, and experience. It should also suit the culture of your organization and adhere to the needs of your team.

The condescending attitude of a manager

The issue of a condescending superior runs rampant in the business today.Condescension is usually a tone of voice where the words of a person are not the main issue. A leader communicates to his team members can make them feel as if they are being spoken down to, like a child or a brand new employee in an organization who does not understand the work. This feeling creates a sense of dissatisfaction among the employees.

Bad temper of a leader

I have learned that to become a good leader, one must rise above the passions of the moment and maintain a level head. Even in very tense situations, good leaders should be quick to listen and slow to anger. Leaders need to be patient with their team members to win their trust. Angry bosses are rarely effective, and it creates a negative influence on the subordinates.

Inappropriate behavior

At an organizational level, bad or inappropriate behavior can have a tangible impact on profitability. As a leader, one should avoid practicing any such behavior, resulting in employee dissatisfaction or hindering their performance. A leader should be concerned about his team members and make them feel valued at work.

Harassed employees

It is up to an organization’s leaders to promote an inclusive culture with a zero-tolerance policy against any type of harassment. Leaders should be aware of their team members’ problems or issues and should make sure that the employees do not face any kind of trouble or harassment while at work.

Poor leadership behaviors and bad leadership qualities are a serious drag to your bottom line.

Many surveys over the years have corroborated the fact that bad leadership behaviors lead to poor employee engagement, poor organizational culture, and low productivity.  It’s safe to say that organizations’ money on leadership development is much more beneficial than the cost it has to incur because of poor leadership behaviors.

HBR Survey on the impact of poor leadership behaviors

Still, don’t you see bad leadership behaviors as a serious problem? Look at the numbers from a survey by Harvard Business Review.  The employees who felt that their leaders were disrespectful to them admitted to the following behaviors.

• 48% intentionally decreased their work effort.
• 47% intentionally decreased the time spent at work.
• 38% intentionally decreased the quality of their work.
• 63% lost work time trying to avoid the offender.
• 66% said that their performance declined.
• 78% said that their commitment to the organization declined.
• 25% admitted to taking their frustrations out on customers.

Bad leadership behavior is detrimental to morale and productivity, but it also negatively affects the entire team.

Some obvious effects of poor leadership behaviors or bad leadership qualities are

• Lack of teamwork
• Silos within the organization
• Low morale
• High turnover
• Status quo vs. continuous change and improvement
• Low or no innovation
• Personal benefits trump team or organizational goals

In a VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous) business world, poor leadership is a recipe for disaster.

The cost of poor leadership behaviors is often hidden but they are a significant drag to engagement and performance.

DDI research found that a single poor leader’s cost to a company is $126,000 per year!

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

 

How to identify and rectify poor leadership behaviors or bad leadership qualities?

Every individual and every leader has certain behaviors that help them be a good leader.  On the other hand, every individual and every leader has certain behaviors that stop them from becoming better leaders. All leaders have their improvement areas.  The question is – How do you tell a successful leader what they need to improve?

One of the best ways to identify bad leadership behaviors before becoming a serious drag on employee engagement and productivity is to foster a culture of honest feedback. As most employees are uncomfortable offering feedback to their leaders, the best way to start is by having anonymous 360-degree feedback of all leaders regularly – at least once a year.  Once bad leadership behaviors are identified, give the leaders some coaching to address these behaviors.  If there is no significant improvement in the leader’s bad behavior, it may be prudent to let the leader go.  Sometimes, firing a single toxic leader is more than enough to improve the entire team’s morale!

An anonymous 360-degree assessment is the best way to make the leader aware of her improvement areas!  360-degree feedback aka multi-rater feedback is an anonymous survey of questions about the leader’s behavior at work.  The leader’s team members – subordinates, peers, and boss(es) fill the survey anonymously.  This ensures honest and accurate feedback.

Identify leaders’ poor leadership behaviors (and strengths)

As a leader moves up the career ladder, he/she gets lesser and lesser useful feedback.  People are uncomfortable sharing any critical or constructive feedback to the leader’s face.  In addition, rightly or wrongly, employees fear repercussions from the leader – if they shared honest feedback about the leader.

Hence the best way to identify bad leadership behaviors (or leadership improvement areas) is to conduct anonymous 360-degree feedback using a validated assessment.

Global Leadership Assessment (GLA360)

The GLA360 is a 360-degree feedback tool rooted in groundbreaking research conducted by Marshall Goldsmith (#1 Leadership Thinker and Executive Coach), involving CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, global thought leaders, and international business executives of organizations on 6 continents. The GLA360 articulates and measures the top 15 most pressing competencies for today’s global leader. It shows leaders the areas they need to develop to succeed in a competitive business environment.

To know more about 360-degree feedback and the GLA 360 degree assessment click on the following link.

Read: 360 degree feedback A complete guide with questionnaire

We offer the GLA 360 assessments starting from $99.  Click the image below to find out more.

Knowing vs. doing

The 360-degree feedback makes the leader of how others perceive her.  It helps her know her strengths and improvement areas.  Is that sufficient?  Knowing is only the first step.  Converting the knowing into doing is the key to change.

Four steps to improving poor leadership behaviors

• Awareness:  360-degree feedback makes the leader aware of how others perceive him/her and the strengths and improvement areas

• Acceptance:  Telling successful leaders that they need to improve in some areas is difficult.  Successful leaders may simply reject the feedback. Or they may justify it by saying that they get the job done and deliver results!  Convincing the leader to accept the feedback is an art best handled by an experienced coach.  An experienced coach helps the leader see the benefit in accepting the feedback and making efforts towards improvement.

• Consistent Action: If nothing changes, then nothing changes!  Awareness and acceptance are necessary.  But they are not sufficient to change the behavior.  An action plan and implementation of the plan are essential for lasting change.  Progressive organizations help leaders take consistent action with the help of an executive coach.

• Achievement: Awareness, acceptance and consistent action lead to achievement.  This achievement is improved behaviors at work, as anonymously rated by the leader’s own team members.

Supporting the leader with executive coaching:

Is behavior change easy or hard?

I often ask this question to my potential leadership coaching clients.  On a scale of 1 to 10, how easy or hard it is to change the behavior of a successful adult?  I will pose the same question to you?  Then I ask – how hard or easy it is to change the behavior of a successful adult.  What number did you pick?  Usually, the answer ranges from 8 to 10, meaning that it is very difficult to change the long-ingrained behaviors of successful leaders.

Losing weight is simple but not easy!

Imagine that you have a goal of losing weight and getting fit.  Can you achieve this goal on your own?  Of course, you can.  Losing weight is simple!  Consume lesser calories, and expend more calories on a daily basis.  One of the most popular goals around the new year is to lose weight or get fit.  But a few people go beyond the initial enthusiasm.  By Valentine’s day, the goal is long forgotten and things go back to the status quo. Losing weight is simple, but not easy!

Hiring a personal trainer

Instead of a do-it-yourself approach to weight loss, what would happen if you hired a personal trainer?  Would your chances of success go up?  Of course, they would!  Studies have shown that hiring a personal trainer improves the chance of weight loss success by a whopping 1100%.  You are 11 times more likely to lose weight with the help of a personal trainer, vs. a do-it-yourself approach. 

An executive coach is a personal trainer for leadership development

A skilled executive coach takes the leader through the steps of awareness, acceptance, and consistent action.  Without the help of an executive coach, behavior change is possible but very difficult. An executive coach is like a personal trainer for overcoming bad leadership behaviors and helping the leader become a more effective leader. A leader may be able to reign in their poor leadership behaviors on their own.  But a leadership coach improves the chances exponentially.

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

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

References

https://www.bamboohr.com/resources/infographics/bad-boss/

https://www.inc.com/marcel-schwantes/a-new-survey-finds-that-63-percent-of-employees-ab.html

Book – A leader’s gift – How to earn the right to be followed

Watch the Video on the Hidden costs of poor leadership.

Leadership lesson I learned from my son about feedback vs. feedforward

I learned a valuable leadership lesson from my son (many years ago) and got to practice feedback vs. feedforward.We know what feedback means. We give and receive feedback regularly at work and also in personal life. The concept of feedforward was pioneered by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is considered the world’s number one leadership thinker.  He also pioneered his highly effective leadership coaching process through the concept of feedback vs. feedforward.

My interaction with my son and the leadership lesson therein

I have two sons – both are now adults.  My elder son is three years older than the younger one.  This incident was from many years ago when both were much younger.

One day, when I returned from work, my younger son came to me.  He looked a little upset. I asked him what the matter was.  He replied in an emotional tone – “Dad, you don’t love me as much as you love my brother.  He is your favorite!” If you are a parent of more than one child, I am sure you must have had a similar conversation with your children!

The feedback came as a shock to me, as I truly believed that I loved both my boys equally.  It didn’t match with how I perceived the situation.

How do I respond to this feedback?  I had several ways to respond to this situation.

Option 1 to respond to the feedback – Reject it!

I could simply reject the feedback as it didn’t fit how I saw it.  My response would be – “Son – what are you talking about?  This is nonsense.  I love you both equally.  Don’t make such baseless accusations and never say that I love you any less.”

Here is a question to ponder.  Would this response help change my son’s perception that I loved him less than I loved his elder brother?  What do you think?  The leadership lesson here – If you are a leader, should you reject any feedback you disagree with?

Option 2 to respond to the feedback – reason with it

I could reason with him and prove how I treated both of them fairly and equally.  The conversation would be – “Look, son!  Whenever I bring candies or goodies, I bring them for both of you.  We celebrated the birthdays of both of you.  I bought birthday presents for both of you.  I treat you both equally, and I love you both the same.  Please don’t say that I love you any less.”

Again, the question is – Would this response help change my son’s opinion that I loved him less than I loved his elder brother?  What do you think?  The leadership lesson here – as a leader, does reasoning with people change their perceptions about you?

Option 3 to feedback vs. feedforward – accept and acknowledge feedback and ask for feedforward.

Here is the third option.  I could simply accept the feedback unconditionally and acknowledge my son’s feelings.  Here is how the conversation would go – “Son, I am sorry that you feel that way.  What can I do in the future so that you feel that I love you as much as I love your brother?”

Now, this is the feedback vs. feedforward approach.  Feedback focuses on the past.  It tends to blame the person for past actions that cannot be undone.  No amount of blame, regret, or guilt can change the past.

On the other hand, feedforward is future-oriented. It is asking for suggestions for the future to address the issue.  While nothing can be done to change the past (feedback), suggestions for the future (feedforward) offer unlimited possibilities.  Feedforward is action-oriented. Feedback is just talking about what has already happened.  There is a huge leadership lesson in understanding the difference and using feedforward vs. feedback.

So when I used the feedback vs. feedforward approach with my son and asked him for suggestions for the future – there was an uncomfortable silence for a couple of minutes.  He probably didn’t expect this response, which is not unusual.  People use feedback to complain and vent out.  I could see that he was thinking hard, trying to come up with an answer.  He then replied with strong emotions again – “Dad, you are always discussing all kinds of things with my elder brother.  Politics, technology, sports, and more.  You never discuss anything with me!”

My first reaction was to explain the fact that he was three years younger and probably wouldn’t understand many of the things I discussed routinely with my elder son. I wanted to assure him that in three years when he would be the same age as my elder son,  I would be happy to discuss those topics with him as well.  But I paused and thought about it.

Again the question is – Would that reasoning address his concerns?  Would that line of conversation change his perception?  What do you think?  I think probably not!  The leadership lesson here – do logical explanations help in changing other’s perceptions about you?

So I tried another response – feedforward vs. feedback!

Here is how the conversation progressed.

“Son – what topics would you like to discuss with me?  Do you like politics?”.

He retorted – “Dad, I don’t like politics.  I have no interest in discussing politics.”

I asked – “How about sports?.”

His eyes lit up.  He said – “Dad, I would love to discuss sports with you.”

I asked – “What is your favorite sport?.”

“I love cricket!” – he replied.

“Which team is your favorite?” – I asked.

“Indian national cricket team.” – he replied.

“Who is your favorite player?” – I asked.

“Virat Kohli,” – he said excitedly.

“What other teams do you like?” – I added.

“I love IPL.  Chennai Super Kings is my favorite team!” – He replied again excitedly.

“Who is your favorite player in that team?” – I queried.

“M.S. Dhoni.” – He reverted quickly.

“Great!” – I said.

And the conversation ended.

Changing my behavior and changing his perception through feedback vs. feedforward

Although I am not a big fan of cricket, I started paying attention to cricket over the next few weeks.  I started Googling for scores of the Indian national cricket team and the Chennai Super Kings team.  I also started checking how Virat Kohli and M.S.Dhoni had performed.  It would take me a couple of minutes of internet browsing to “catch up” on what was happening in the sport of cricket and especially with my son’s favorite teams and players.

I would then discuss the scores and the results with my son after I reached home from work—especially the performance of his favorite teams and the favorite players.  I would start the discussion, and he would excitedly fill in the rest of the details!  He was well informed about cricket as it was his passion.

So here is the question. Would this third option help change my son’s perception that I loved him a little less than I loved his elder brother?  What do you think?

Which of these three options are most likely to change my son’s opinion?  The answer is obvious. As actions speak louder than words, my efforts to implement his suggestions to make him feel loved would go a long way towards changing his perception.  If I continued working on his suggestions for a sufficient period, the change in his perception would be certain.

There are quite a few leadership lessons here.

First leadership lesson

If the people around you, family members or team members at work,  are important to you and regularly get feedback from them.  Without feedback, there is little chance of improvement – both at work and in personal life.

Second leadership lesson

As a leader, you have to ACT on that feedback regularly.

Third leadership lesson

Changing your behavior and changing other’s perceptions go hand in hand!

Read: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There-Marshall Goldsmith-Book summary

Another leadership lesson – Feedback is just that – Feedback!

Was my son’s feedback wrong? (that I loved him less than I loved his brother).   Was my perception wrong – that I loved both my sons equally?  Therein lies the interesting dynamics.  From his perspective, my son was right.  He saw me interacting with my elder son regularly and felt left out.  His perception was that I was ignoring him or that he was not important to him.  On the other hand, I was right as well.  I sincerely loved both my children.  I had no intention of loving one of them more than the other.  Both perceptions can be proven right, and both can be proven wrong.  Basically, feedback is just that. Feedback is feedback – it is neither right nor wrong!

Feedback is a gift

When someone is willing to share their feedback in your presence, it is a gift!  They could have chosen to talk about you or your performance behind your back, but they dared to share it with you.  It allows us to get better.  All feedback can be a gift if we can just put our egos aside and are willing to listen.  There cannot be any improvement without feedback.

Had I not listened to my son’s feedback, he could have carried the misconception that he was loved less probably for the rest of his life.  This feedback allowed me to course correct and address both my behavior and his perception.

Read: Feedback is a gift – leadership feedback is a huge favor

Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s feedback vs. feedforward for coaching leaders

Although I didn’t know it back then, I applied the process of “feed-forward” pioneered by the world’s number 1 leadership thinker Dr.  Marshall Goldsmith.  Dr. Marshall Goldsmith has used this simple yet powerful process to coach CEOs at Fortune 500 companies.

The seven steps of feedforward are

1. Ask
2. Listen
3. Thank
4. Think
5. Respond
6. Change
7. Follow up

Our leadership coaching using Marshall Goldsmith’s Stakeholder Centered Coaching is based on three primary concepts.

1. Feedback
2. Feed-forward
3. Follow up

We offer Marshall Goldsmith coaching in India, around the globe  It is the best coaching program 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.

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

Develop your leaders using feedback vs. feedforward

Most leadership development programs have little business impact.  The main reason is that they are intellectual in nature.  There is no application at work and little in terms of behavior change at work.

Our coaching program using feedback and feedforward has an effectiveness rate of 95%.  How do we measure success?  By measuring the change in leadership behaviors at work – rated anonymously by the leader’s team members.

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 don’t have to pay us.

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

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

Below is the video version of the article

What makes a leader highly effective?

 

Think of a highly effective leader. What qualities, traits, and behaviors come to mind when you think of any highly effective leader?

• Did you think of a leader who stays calm even in stressful situations or someone who loses his temper often?
• Did you think of someone who listens patiently or someone who talks a lot?
• Did you think of an approachable leader or someone bossy?
• Did you think of someone who is open to suggestions and feedback or someone who is “always right”?
• Did you think of a leader who is open to trying new ideas or someone resistant to change?
• Did you think of someone who genuinely cared about your well being while completing the tasks or someone
• who only focuses on results while ignoring people?
• Did you think of someone who inspires or someone who irritates?
• Did you think of someone who easily picks up the team’s mood or someone unaware of how others are feeling?
• Did you think of someone who routinely appreciated your efforts and results or someone who only criticized your mistakes?

 

Read The single biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success.

 

 

Emotional Intelligence

 

When we compare the behaviors and traits of highly effective leaders with average leaders’ traits, the difference is obvious. And that difference is emotional intelligence.

Salovey and Mayer (1990) defined Emotional Intelligence as the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them, and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions’

Daniel Goleman brought the term emotional intelligence into the mainstream with his book Emotional Intelligence – Why it can matter more than IQ. The book was published in 1995 and became a bestseller.

 

Measuring “intelligence” and predicting future success

 

Scientists and researchers have been trying to define intelligence for many years. For almost the entire last century, intelligence was measured using IQ or Intelligence quotient. IQ is the measure of cognitive capability – one’s ability to think, reason, learn and recall. Intelligence quotient tests generally include reading comprehension, vocabulary, arithmetic, and reasoning. It was believed to be an accurate predictor of future success and was used in schools, colleges, and job screening.

Predicting future job performance is the primary reason for screening candidates using IQ in organizations. However, IQ seemed to be a fairly inaccurate predictor of future success. Many people with high IQ end up doing poorly in professional and personal lives, while people with below-average IQs often succeed and prosper. Howard Gardner came up with the theory of multiple intelligences that proposed that intelligence is more than just IQ. Daniel Goleman popularized the concept of Emotional intelligence measured by EQ or emotional quotient.

 

IQ vs. EQ as a predictor of success

 

Daniel Goleman proposed that EQ was a much better predictor of success at work and in life. He cites numerous studies to drive home the importance of emotional intelligence. People with the highest IQs and brilliant technical skills don’t do very well in their careers and life. On the other hand, people with average and below-average intelligence and technical skills are highly successful in their careers and personal lives. Numerous studies done over the years have validated that EQ is three times more accurate in predicting future success as compared to IQ.

 

IQ is like an entry ticket.

 

Technical skills are needed for any profession. To be employed in their respective professions – an accountant needs to understand the basics of finance and accounting, or an engineer must know the basics of engineering. Technical skills are like an entry ticket – they are needed to get in. However, once a person has entered the profession, how far she will move up the career ladder depends a lot on emotional intelligence. If two people with similar IQs and technical skills enter the profession simultaneously, who will move up the career ladder faster? The answer is the person who has higher emotional intelligence.

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

 

Leadership and emotional intelligence

 

 

Leadership is primarily about emotional intelligence. By the time one reaches the leadership level, it is a given that they are technically sound. The differentiating factor, then, is emotional intelligence. Emotional intelligence competencies have a 3/4th contribution to a leader’s success. Successful leaders demonstrate the EQ competencies of self-awareness. They are calm and grounded, understand others’ feelings, build relationships, are driven and self-motivated, etc. Failed leaders often are critical, tend to lose control of their temper, are defensive, and lack empathy.

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

 

 

The four main components of Emotional Intelligence

 

The four main components of emotional intelligence are

1. Self-awareness
2. Self-management
3. Social awareness
4. Relationship management

 

 

Self-Awareness

 

It is the ability to be aware of how we are feeling, what our emotions are at any given moment and what is the cause of these emotions. Self-awareness allows us to see ourselves as we are and identify our strengths and areas of improvement. According to Daniel Goleman, self-awareness consists of the following three competencies.

• Emotional Awareness: Recognizing one’s emotions and their effects.
• Accurate Self-Assessment: Knowing one’s strengths and limitations.
• Self-Confidence: A strong sense of one’s self-worth and capabilities.

Self-management

 

Self-management competency is the ability to respond instead of reacting. It allows us to remain calm even when we feel strong emotions like anger, frustration, jealousy, or other negative emotions. Without self-management, we may lash out at people and act on our impulses. Self-management competency ensures that we are aware of how our behaviors can affect relationships and, ultimately, our goals and regulate our emotions.

Self-management consists of the following six competencies.

• Emotional Self-Control: Keeping disruptive emotions and impulses in check.
• Transparency: Maintaining integrity, acting congruently with one’s values.
• Adaptability: Flexibility in handling change.
• Achievement: Striving to improve or meeting a standard of excellence.
• Initiative: Readiness to act on opportunities.
• Optimism: Persistence in pursuing goals despite obstacles and setbacks.

 

Social awareness

 

Social awareness competency includes empathy – which is the ability to sense what the other person feels and understand their needs and concerns. Being aware of the environment, people, and situations and being able to manage social interactions.

The social Awareness cluster contains three competencies:

• Empathy: Sensing others’ feelings and perspectives and taking an active interest in their concerns.
• Organizational Awareness: Reading a group’s emotional currents and power relationships.
• Service Orientation: Anticipating, recognizing, and meeting customers’ needs.

Relationship Management

 

It is the ability to connect with others, build positive relationships, and positively influence others.

The Relationship Management cluster contains six competencies:

• Developing Others: Sensing others’ development needs and bolstering their abilities.
• Inspirational Leadership: Inspiring and guiding individuals and groups.
• Change Catalyst: Initiating or managing change.
• Influence: Wielding effective tactics for persuasion.
• Conflict Management: Negotiating and resolving disagreements.
• Teamwork & Collaboration: Working with others toward shared goals. Creating group synergy in pursuing collective goals.

Emotional Intelligence is a pre-requisite and an essential part of becoming a good leader. Lack of emotional intelligence in leaders results in disengaged employees and reduces business performance.

 

Read:  Which is the best leadership development program?

 

Would you like your leaders to develop their emotional intelligence competencies? Would you like the leaders to stop the derailing behaviors that undermine team performance and cause disengagement?

 

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.

SCHEDULE NOW!

References

http://www.danielgoleman.info/daniel-goleman-how-emotionally-intelligent-are-you/
https://www.mbaknol.com/modern-management-concepts/four-components-of-emotional-intelligence/

 

Building a team culture where the best ideas win – Ray Dalio radical transparency

 

Building a team culture where the best ideas win is any leader’s top priority.  Would you like to do it for your teams? When I ask this question to leaders – almost everyone raises their hand.  When it comes to knowing how to create such a culture and commit to investing time, energy, and effort to achieve those goals – leaders are not so clear.  Ray Dalio and his radical transparency have successfully built a team culture where the best ideas win and has grown his company to be the largest hedge fund in the world.

[lwptoc]

 

Harsh email feedback

 

Take a look at the following email. It is harsh feedback given by one employee Jim to another employee Ray – in a large company.

From: Jim

To: Ray D

Cc: Lionel K, Greg J, Randal S, David A

Subject: Feedback on meeting

 “Ray – you deserve a “D-” for your performance today in the meeting … you did not prepare at all because there is no way you could have and been that disorganized. In the future, I/we would ask you to take some time and prepare, and maybe even I should come up and start talking to you to get you warmed up or something, but we can’t let this happen again. If you in any way think my view is wrong, please ask the others, or we can talk about it.”

Regards

Jim

Who is giving feedback and to whom?

 

What is your guess about the designations of Jim and Ray?  One would assume that Jim must be the boss and Ray must report to him. Hence the harsh feedback from the boss Jim to his employee Ray, regarding his bad performance during a meeting.  This is what happens in most organizational cultures, where a senior person gives such a candid feedback to someon junior.

Well, that assumption would be wrong! In this case, it is exactly the opposite!  Jim Haskel works for and reports to Ray Dalio, and Ray is the founder of Bridgewater Associates.  Started as a small firm in 1975 from his apartment, Bridgewater Associates is now the world’s largest hedge fund with more than $160 billion assets under management.  Ray Dalio himself is worth a cool $18 billion.

In most organizations, no employee would dare to share such critical feedback with someone higher up the corporate ladder. If they did send such a critical e-mail to their company’s founder, they probably would get fired!  But Ray Dalio did not fire Jim.  Instead, he shared this critical email internally with all the employees.  If that wasn’t embarrassing enough, he then shared it openly at a TED talk for the entire world to see! You can watch Ray Dalio’s radical transparency TED Talk.  Ray understands that to build a team culture that learns, innovates and grows, radical transparency is essential!

 

 

Why would a top leader ask for such candid feedback?

 

Why do you think Ray would do something like this?  Was he out of his mind? Not really!  It is one of the guiding principles Ray Dalio follows at Bridgewater Associates.  He calls it radical transparency.  He encourages employees to openly share real-time feedback with anyone, irrespective of designations. 

However, there is a catch.  Share the feedback with the respective person – not with others. If they catch an employee talking behind someone’s back three times – she can be fired!  All meetings at Bridgewater Associates are recorded on video and seen and critiqued by anyone inside the company. 

Ray Dalio has the emotional intelligence to understand that leaders cannot improve without a culture of honest feedback.  Building a team culture requires honest feedback.  Leadership coaching and leadership development have a responsibility to create awareness in the leaders that feedback is important.  As Ken Blanchard puts it – Feedback is the breakfast of champion leaders!  

 

Ray Dalio and Radical Transparency principle

 

Ray Dalio credits this principle of radical transparency for the success of his company.  A culture of 100% honesty allows all ideas to be discussed and debated.  Ideas may win based on their merits and not based on the designation or the influence of the person presenting the idea.  Dalio says that this meritocracy of ideas has allowed Bridgewater to think independently and sprint ahead of many well-established fund houses to become the largest and most successful hedge fund in the world.  Ray Dalio has built a team culture and his  company where the best ideas win – by creating a culture of open and honest feedback through his radical transparency principle.   One of the most important leadership skills to develop is to be able to give and receive honest and constructive feedback. Imagine the employee engagement in any company where the leader solicits and accepts such honest and constructive feedback.

 

 

Successful companies build a team culture of sharing honest feedback. 

 

Bridgewater Associates is not alone in implementing a culture of honest feedback where everyone’s performance, and ideas, are shared and debated openly, leading to improved performance and meritocracy of ideas.  Pixar is another company that credits its success to having a culture of candid feedback.  Google founder Larry Page believes in brutally honest feedback. The purpose is to arrive at the best possible solution for a specific problem. Honest feedback allows all ideas to be discussed and debated to find the best solution.  In today’s fast-changing and VUCA (Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, Ambiguous) world,  it is crucial to be agile and nimble. Without a culture of honesty, transparency, and open feedback, it would be difficult to stay ahead of the curve. 

Read Team coaching – Everything you wanted to know about it.

 

 

Build a team culture of candid feedback in your organization

 

• Would you like to improve the performance of your company? 
• Will you like to sprint ahead of your competitors?
• Would you like your teams to be more innovative and change-ready? 
• Then you need to improve the transparency in your organization? 
• How is the quality of feedback in your organization? 
• Do teams share feedback openly? 
• Do the best ideas win?  Or are people afraid to speak their minds? 
• Do they talk about the “elephant in the room” – the difficult problem and the real issue everyone knows about but no one wants to talk about?  Or do they just beat around the bush? 
• The equation is simple!

 

Read – Organizational Culture Change Example – Alan Mulally Ford Turnaround Story

 

Good leadership behaviors = Open and transparent culture = Business performance.

 

Would you like to improve the quality of the feedback within your organization’s teams and improve the engagement and performance of your employees and the team culture?  We offer Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Coaching TEAM coaching – a yearlong intervention that helps create a culture of sharing open feedback.  In fact, it delivers guaranteed and measurable leadership growth for the teams. 

 

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 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 don’t have to pay us.

 

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

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References

Ray Dalio’s TED talk

 

If you prefer to watch the video version of this article, click the video. 

 

 

This article was originally published at https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/creating-team-culture-where-best-ideas-win-tushar-vakil/

 

Google’s Project Oxygen – How Google identifies potential leaders

 

Google is one of the most successful companies today. It is also one of the most analytical and data-driven organizations. They rely on hard data rather than opinions. As leadership development is both science and art, how does Google handle leadership assessment and development?  How does Google identify if someone has the potential to be a great manager or leader?  Read further about Google’s Project Oxygen. Get the pdf file of Google’s Project Oxygen.  Google also updated the Project Oxygen questions to reflect the growth and complexity of the company and change in how work gets done.  The new list of Project Oxygen questions is at the end of the article.

[lwptoc]

 

Google’s Project Oxygen initiative to identify good leaders at Google

 

In 2008, an internal team of researchers started ”Project Oxygen” to determine what makes a great Google manager. They called this project “oxygen” as managers are the lifeblood of any organization.

Google’s employees are mostly engineers and do highly technical work.  Their tendency was to focus on core technical things – programming, coding, debugging, etc.  Their perception was that management was a distraction that took them away from “real” work!  When the company was small, the founders, Sergei and Larry, had a flat structure with no managers!  Everybody reported directly to them. 

Then Google grew and there was a need for managers and management. How do you convince the technically brilliant employees who make decisions based on data and information, and work in a company that believes in a flat organization – that managers and management are important and add value?  

The answer was to provide them enough data through research that clearly shows teh importance of managers and management! Through manager feedback surveys over an extended period of time, Project Oxygen identified eight behaviors that predicted managerial success. The success was measured through many factors and included employee turnover, employee satisfaction, and team performance. Later they added two more behaviors to the list for a total of 10 “Oxygen” behaviors and aligned their leadership and management development training programs to develop these behaviors. 

Although these 10 behaviors were correlated with managerial success, in statistics, correlation doesn’t prove causation! Google confirmed that these 10 behaviors were indeed the cause for better managerial outcomes in two ways –

1. They confirmed that these 10 managerial behaviors preceded employee outcomes and not vice versa. 
2. They confirmed by switching employees and managers that when an employee is working under a manager exhibiting these behaviors, her performance improves. 

 

What are these 10 behaviors, and how do we know if a leader has these qualities? As it turns out, asking just the 13 questions to the manager’s direct reports does the trick!  Twice a year, employees rate their managers on a Likert scale in an anonymous survey. The leaders who rate high on these 13 questions have a statistically significant correlation to future performance measured by turnover, satisfaction, and performance. 

Just 5 minutes to identify a good leader?

 

The feedback takes about five minutes for each employee’s time!   Jeff Haden, the contributing editor at Inc.com, wrote an article titled – Here is how Google knows in less than 5 minutes if someone is a great leader.  You may read the article here https://www.inc.com/jeff-haden/heres-how-google-knows-in-less-than-5-minutes-if-someone-is-a-great-leader.html   This simple leadership assessment is very effective in determining the quality of one’s leadership.

 

Read – The single biggest factor in your organization’s long-term success.

 

Here are leadership evaluation questions as part of Google’s Project Oxygen.

 

1. My manager gives me actionable feedback that helps me improve my performance. 
2. My manager does not “micromanage” (get involved in details that should be handled at other levels). 
3. My manager shows consideration for me as a person. 
4. My manager’s actions show that he/she values the perspective I bring to the team, even if it is different from his/her own. 
5. My manager keeps the team focused on our priority results/deliverables. 
6. My manager regularly shares relevant information derived from his/her manager and senior leaders. 
7. My manager has had a meaningful discussion with me about career development in the past six months. 
8. My manager communicates clear goals for our team. 
9. My manager has the technical expertise (e.g., coding in Tech, selling in Global Business, accounting in Finance) required to manage me effectively. 
10. I would recommend my manager to other Googlers. 

Then Google asks employees to complete two other questions.

1. What would you recommend your manager keep doing? 
2. What would you have your manager change?

 

Click the link to download these question Google Project Oxygen pdf  –

Google’s Project Oxygen Pdf

 

Leadership is mostly about people, not only about technical skills – even at Google!

 

Although Google hires only the most technically sound employees, note that only one question (question number 9) is about the manager’s technical skills. All other questions are about the soft skills or the behavior of the manager or leader! Even for a company like Google, hiring only the most technically sound Engineers and programmers, what matters in their managerial and leadership effectiveness is behavioral skills or emotional intelligence. 

 

Daniel Goleman’s research has proven that emotional intelligence quotient or EQ is much more accurate in predicting future success than intelligence quotient or IQ.  IQ and technical skills are like the entry ticket to a career – technical skills are needed to get in the job. However, how far a person will progress in his/her job will depend on the behavioral skills and emotional intelligence exhibited.

The equation is simple: 

 

Leadership behaviors create culture, which in turn affects employee engagement, which in turn drives business results.  Leadership behavior (which creates organizational culture) is the single biggest factor impacting organizational performance. Jack Welch (former CEO of GE) labeled organizational culture as a lasting sustainable competitive advantage. 

Leadership development is critical for an organization to survive and thrive in today world’s ever-changing business environment. Would you like to assess and develop your leaders?   

• Identify and develop your high potentials?   
• Develop bench strength for succession planning?   
• Help leaders transition up or across through leadership development?   
• Deal with “derailers” (unproductive behaviors of otherwise successful leaders that cause team conflicts and holds them back from further success)? 

 

Global Leadership Assessment (GLA360) for your leadership team

 

The GLA360 is rooted in groundbreaking research conducted by Marshall Goldsmith (#1 Leadership Thinker and Executive Coach), involving CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, global thought leaders, and international business executives of organizations on 6 continents. The GLA360 articulates and measures the top 15 most pressing competencies for today’s global leader. It shows leaders the areas they need to develop to succeed in a competitive business environment.

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click the button below.

 

SCHEDULE NOW!