Leadership feedback has a problem. Daniel Goleman terms this problem as the CEO disease! Is feedback in leadership important? Do leaders get good feedback for their leadership growth?
No leader would argue against getting feedback from customers regarding their products or service. Leaders know that it is the only way to improve their offerings, keep up with the competition, and have loyal customers. However, with soliciting feedback for their own behaviors, leaders are not enthusiastic.
Feedback in leadership is not up to the mark.
Only arrogant leaders would avoid soliciting feedback. Wrong! I can understand how it would be easy to think that way. The fact remains that even the most humble and well-liked leaders fall prey to this bad habit. Not intentionally.
Not because they don’t want to hear the feedback. Not because they don’t care about employee feedback. Because of their assumption that as the team is open, honest, and functional, there is no need to ask for formal feedback on their performance.
They assume that as the team is open, they will share their feedback with the leader without soliciting it formally or informally. Is that a correct assumption? What do you think?
Do leaders get enough feedback for leadership improvement?
What happens to the quality and the quantity of feedback as you move up the career ladder? When I ask senior leaders, they say that they often get feedback from their team.
When I probe further, it is easy to discover that what they are talking about is feedback about business issues – and not about the leader’s behaviors.
If they do get some feedback on their behavior – let’s say the leader doesn’t listen to other’s ideas – it is usually indirect, vague, generalized, and watered down.
They avoid spelling out the ineffective behavior clearly and specifically.
Why is leadership feedback difficult?
Why? Most people are uncomfortable giving feedback to others to their faces. If the leader is powerful or perceived as arrogant, people are afraid of the repercussions of critical feedback. Even when the leader is well-liked and admired, team members, avoid criticism to hurt the leader’s feelings. They also think overall, the leader is doing a good job, so it is OK to hide feedback on some negative aspects. Consequently, top leaders only hear positive feedback. This eventually gets into their head, and they believe that they are the best leaders!
Daniel Goleman calls this problem of leadership feedback – the CEO disease. It is a paradox. The higher a leader’s position, the more is the importance of candid feedback. The higher the leader’s position, the less likely she will get the honest feedback needed for the leader’s improvement. Leaders have more trouble getting feedback than an average employee.
From a fire hose to a trickle!
A study by the Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence confirms this. They studied one thousand employees in organizations. They classified the employees into three groups: first-level managers, mid-level managers, and senior managers. The senior managers consistently rated their own performance a lot higher than rated by their team members. This gap was lowest with the first-level managers, went up with the second level managers, and was the highest senior managers. As the employee moved up the career ladder, their self-awareness reduced, and their self-rating increased!
Any guesses why leadership feedback is reduced? It is because of the reduction in the quantity and quality of constructive feedback as they moved up the career ladder! The feedback at the level of a fire hose at lower levels turns into a trickle as the leader moves to the corporate ladder’s top rungs.
How do you overcome the CEO disease and get candid leadership feedback?
As people are uncomfortable sharing candid feedback with anyone, especially a top leader, the best way is to conduct a 360-degree assessment, aka multi-rater assessment. First, the feedback is anonymous. This allows the leader’s team members to open up. These team members include subordinates, boss or bosses, peers, and sometimes vendors or customers. Second, an external agency conducts it. This helps overcome the pre-conceived notions or biases that may exist internally. Finally, 360-degree feedback generates a lot of data. An experienced coach can help the leader generate actionable insights from the mountain of data.
Get the best leadership feedback with GLA 360 assessment.
The Global Leadership Assessment (GLA360) is a 360 leadership assessment 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.
Whereas a coach or statistician creates most assessments, the GLA360 is the first and only assessment in the market created by multinationals for multinationals.
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. This is the best leadership feedback that any leader can get to improve her leadership.
Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today
Executive and leadership coaching in India. How does executive coaching help the leaders in India? The difference between executive coaching in India and the USA? How to hire the best executive coaching services in India?
This article is about executive and leadership coaching in India
Liberalization and brief economic history of India
India had pursued a more socialistic approach since its independence in 1947 all the way into the early 1990s. The business environment was steady, and changes were slow. Exposure to the outside world was limited. Businesses operated in a relatively protected environment.
There was little competition, usually from a few local players. As a result, business practices and technological advances in India lagged the United States and Europe. Since the independence in 1947 up to the early 1990s, this lag was almost two decades and sometimes even more.
Then in 1991, Prime Minister Narasimha Rao took a path of economic liberalization. The purpose of liberalization was to make the economy competitive, more market-driven and more service-oriented. The country encouraged privatization. It allowed foreign investments.
Since then, India has never looked back. Multinational companies have not only arrived in India in a big way but now consider India as one of their key markets. Indian companies, especially in the IT and pharma industry – like Infosys or Sun Pharma, grew and have become multinational companies operating all over the world. Indian manufacturing and automotive giant Tata Group acquired giant companies in the UK – Corus and Jaguar Land Rover. And these are just a few of the many examples of the progress of homegrown Indian companies.
The benefits and costs of liberalization and globalization
Today, Indian companies compete with multinational companies both locally and globally. The gap in technology and business practices between western companies and Indian companies has now reduced to a decade or less. The open business environment has both benefitted India and brought the following challenges faced by companies worldwide.
Global competition
The fast pace of change is getting faster
Leaner and flatter organizations
Shortened business cycles
Constantly increasing and changing customer demands
Competition for good talent
All these factors have put more and more demands on company executives and senior leaders to deliver results in a dynamic and complex environment. The demands on executives are relentless and from all stakeholders – customers, employees, and investors.
Executive and leadership coaching in India
Executive coaching has arrived in India. Slowly, steadily and surely, to help senior executives with these challenges mentioned above. We can attribute its popularity to its effectiveness. Executive coaching is probably the most effective developmental method. It works even when most of the other developmental methods like training programs, executive education, self-learning through books and courses, etc. cannot achieve a sustained change in the behavior or performance.
Although executive coaching in India is in its nascent stages, it is growing at a rapid rate. Initially, as it was in the Western world also, people considered executive coaching to remedial – meant for someone who had to be “fixed”. Seniors executives were unwilling to hire a coach. Even if they hired a coach, they would not admit it openly. The perception was that coaching was for weak leaders. Strong and capable leaders would not need any external help!
In the United States or the United Kingdom, leaders consider executive coaching a badge of honor. However, there is still a stigma attached to it in India. Although more and more executives are hiring the services of an executive coach in India, there are very few executives who openly admit to having a coach. But this perception is transforming.
How does executive and leadership coaching in India help the leaders?
CEOs and C-suite executives often are lonely at the top. Despite the tremendous pressure to deliver results, they cannot openly discuss problems and issues with others, for the fear of being perceived as weak or not in control of the company. An executive coach provides a safe space to discuss issues, problems, fears, and limitations in an environment of total confidentiality.
In addition, as the company grows, there are different demands put on the executive that require different competencies. To quote Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s bestseller book – What got you here won’t get you there – executives need a different skillset and mindset as they move up the corporate ladder and as the company grows in size. The skills and competencies that have brought the executive and the company to a certain level will not be sufficient as the company grows or as the executive moves up the career ladder. An executive coach helps the leader develop new perspectives and skills to meet additional demands that come with a change in responsibilities.
Providing candid feedback to the leader
As a leader moves up the corporate ladder, the less likely she is to get candid and useful feedback that can help her get better. People around a powerful leader only give positive feedback. Negative or constructive feedback is often rare and watered down.
One of the most important tasks of executive coaching in India is to help leaders get candid feedback from all team members so they have an objective view of their own performance, their own strengths, and their own improvement areas. A skilled executive coach helps the leader create an environment of openness that allows people to share feedback (especially critical feedback) with the leader and others without the fear of being reprimanded. This culture of openness and sharing feedback allows the leader and the teams to change, grow, and innovate.
In the article, I have answered the following questions
What is executive coaching?
Why do companies hire executive coaches?
What is the difference between executive coaching & leadership coaching?
Who is the best executive coach?
Cultural differences in executive coaching in India vs. the United States (and the Western world)
The US and UK have more informal and open interactions within the company employees irrespective of designations. A junior employee can call the CEO by his first name. Sharing feedback is also more common as compared with India.
In India, things are much more hierarchical. Most employees will address their boss as “sir,” or “madam,” although it is changing with the arrival of the multinational environment and culture. It is in the culture to respect people who are elder or in senior positions. And that often means agreeing with them (yes sir, you are right sir, etc.). It also means sharing no critical feedback with them.
Feedback is often a one-way street – going down from the boss to the subordinates and not the other way around. Because of the lack of candid feedback, executives often think everything they are doing is fine. They have difficulty in changing and improving. In a fast-changing world, eventually, it creates problems. A skilled coach can help address these cultural differences with executive coaching in India.
How to hire the best executive and leadership coaching services in India?
Executive coaching is the most effective development tool for leaders–bar none. Three main reasons for the effectiveness are customization to the leader’s specific needs, confidentiality, and support. However, to get these benefits from executive coaching in India, or anywhere else, it is important to select the right coach, the right coaching company, and the right coaching method.
Today, there are hundreds (if not thousands) of coaching companies that provide coaching services in India.
As executive coaching in India is unregulated, there are few set standards and processes if any. Although there are organizations that profess to qualify and certify coaches, few people accept or recognize their authority. Many coach training companies will certify anyone as a coach. Anyone who will pay the fees and attend a weekend workshop on coaching! The coaches themselves also come from varied backgrounds–Human resources, psychology, counseling, and many other disciplines. There are also hundreds of coaching methodologies and models offered as the “right” coaching solution!
In the article, I outline the criteria and questions you should ask a prospective executive coach in India, to choose the best executive coach for you (if you are the leader) or for the leaders in your organization (if you are in Human Resources or senior management).
The fundamental problem with executive education, leadership development, and executive coaching in India and elsewhere
There is a fundamental problem with most, if not all, leadership development tools like – training, executive education, and executive coaching in India. What is the fundamental problem that reduces the effectiveness of any leadership developmental initiative?
Well, it is ignoring the basic paradigm that knowing is not the same as doing! It is true for all areas of our lives. Although, we know a lot about many things we consistently do very little of what we know. Let me give you an example I use with my participants in any leadership development program. I ask them I am trying to lose a little weight, a few extra pounds, and inches around my waist. Do they have any suggestions on how can I achieve my goal of losing weight?
And I get all kinds of answers – go for a walk, run five miles, join a gym, reduce my intake of calories and fat, eat more fruits and vegetables, and on and on. These are useful suggestions. Then, I ask them to raise their hands if they routinely implement these suggestions in their own lives! Very few people raise their hands in the answer to that question! Most of us know a lot about what do we need to do to lose weight and get fit! Knowing is not the problem! Doing it consistently is!
Knowing is not the same as doing neither in fitness nor in leadership. Leadership knowing is not the same as leadership does.
For any leadership development initiative including leadership coaching in India, to be successful, it has to overcome this challenge of converting knowledge into action.
We should approach leadership development like a fitness regime
We should approach leadership development needs like a fitness regime. If we want to get fit, a one week routine at the gym once or twice a year, will not work! We need to work out regularly, probably daily. We should base the exercise routine on our individual needs and not a standard curriculum of one size fits all. Sometimes we will miss going to the gym. We should prepare for it.
Failing, dusting ourselves off, and getting “back on the wagon” should be part of the design of the fitness routine and shouldn’t come as a surprise. Why? Because this is how human beings learn and form habits. Losing weight and keeping it off is a process and not an event. It takes time, effort and commitment. Hiring a personal trainer for our fitness regime increases our chances of losing weight and getting fit by a wide margin. How wide a margin? Research studies have shown that hiring a personal trainer increases your success rate by a whopping 1100%!
Get a “personal trainer” for your leadership development
Our leadership coaching program using Marshall Goldsmith’s stakeholder centered coaching process is like hiring a personal trainer for your fitness regime! Here, the coach is the “personal trainer” for our leadership growth! He will help you shed leadership fat and build some leadership muscles – help us reduce or eliminate leadership bottlenecks and build on our leadership strengths. And best of all – it guarantees results. If there are no improvements in leadership behavior, there is simply no charge. Period!
We offer Marshall Goldsmith coaching in India, the middle east, and southeast Asia. It is the best coaching program in India because it is exactly the same executive coaching process used by Marshall Goldsmith to coach CEOs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide. In addition, we guarantee measurable leadership growth or you don’t pay at all.
Here are some features of the Marshall Goldsmith executive coaching program in India
Guaranteed, measurable leadership growth as assessed–not by us–but by the leader’s own stakeholders
Unlike leadership training or executive education programs, it will involve the entire team while doing their day to day work
The leader becomes the coach, and it has a cascading effect on the team increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture
It is a system for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams – although it is leadership coaching for the individual leader; we realize the benefit of team coaching through the involvement of the entire team
In a study of 11,000 leaders on 4 continents–95% of the leaders using this leadership coaching process improved!
This is the exact same executive coaching process that has been used by 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to grow their leaders through CEO coaching and leadership coaching at C-suite levels
Hence we are so confident of the process we work on a no growth no pay basis (don’t try that with other vendors, lol!)
Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today
A majority of large organizations now routinely use executive coaching for their leadership development plan. Choosing the best executive coach is a critical step in the executive’s success. The process of selecting an executive coach is usually initiated by the Human Resources (HR) department with top management’s consent. It is quite similar to an interview process to hire a candidate. HR will line up a few prospective leadership coaches as candidates and set up the interviews with the leader to be coached.
Sometimes, executives jump into selecting a coach based on referrals, first impressions, or HR recommendations. As a consumer of coaching, it is always a good idea for the leader to know the entire process and know the criteria to select the right executive coach. Rushing this step or not knowing what to look for in a coach can result in a waste of time, money, and reputation for both the leader and the sponsors (HR or top management)
During the first meeting with prospective coaches, it is the leader’s job to assess the leadership coach’s ability to select the best execute leadership coach’s ability to coach to improve her leadership skills.
Here are some criteria to find the best executive coach
Is the coach supportive?
Executives are paid and rewarded for being decisive, precise, and confident. By the nature of the leadership position, it is difficult for executives to admit flaws or ask for help. However, for leadership growth to occur, these are precisely the things an executive needs to do! A coach who listens, understands, is non-judgmental, and supports will provide a safe environment for the leader to open up and address his fears, uncertainties, concerns, and improvement areas. After speaking with the executive coach, the leader should feel that the coach “gets him.” The leader should think that it is OK to open up with the coach, discuss issues, and take actions to improve.
Can the coach challenge you?
While it is good for the coach to make the leader comfortable, it is also essential that the coach challenges the leader to examine unhelpful beliefs and behaviors in a polite but firm manner. A coach who is a cheerleader will have little chance of nudging the leader out of her habitual behaviors and comfort zone. Here is a leadership quote by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith.
There cannot be any growth in the comfort zone, and there is little or no comfort in the growth zone!
The executive coach must be able to probe and uncover unproductive or unhelpful assumptions and confront the leader in a calm, polite, and non-judgmental way. A good executive coach is an expert in “tough love” and striking the right balance between supporting and challenging the executive.
Can the coach collect and deliver honest feedback about you from your team members?
Executives hold a lot of power due to their senior position in the organization. Generally, team members are reluctant to provide any critical feedback to a senior leader. The team members may fear the consequences of making the leader unhappy or maybe uncomfortable, giving crucial feedback to the leader’s face. As a result, executives end up getting anywhere from plain flattery to only positive feedback.
A skilled coach should collect honest feedback from the team members while ensuring their anonymity and respecting their boundaries. This step is essential at the beginning of the coaching engagement. The executive coach has to sensitize the team members of the benefit of candid feedback for the leader, team, and the organization. When the leader improves in certain areas, it also benefits the team members. When the team members see the benefits and are aware that their identity for individual feedback will not be revealed, they get comfortable and provide accurate and honest feedback.
Without clear and candid feedback, there will be an inaccurate diagnosis of the leader’s strengths or improvement areas. Without proper diagnosis, any cure that the executive coach may offer may be ineffective or even harmful.
The coach will collect this feedback through multi-rater (or 360-degree assessments) and behavioral interviews with each team member.
Once the feedback is collected, the coach has to deliver the sometimes unpleasant feedback to the leader in a non-judgmental way that does not elicit a defensive response from the leader. The coach also makes the leader understand the benefits of accepting feedback and improving.
Can the coach provide a structured and tried and tested process for the leader’s development?
Changing the behavior of an adult is one of the most challenging tasks. Changing the behavior of a successful leader usually is an even more challenging task. A good coach should have a tried and tested, a well-structured process for the coaching engagement that he should be able to share with you. It is essential to find the best executive coach. Too many coaches and coaching engagements are unstructured. Structure helps, especially with the busy schedule and work pressures that executives face.
The coach should provide a clear road map for the entire coaching engagement and the timelines. Some of the common steps involved in a coaching engagement are
signing a coaching contract
assessments to get feedback and understand the leader’s inherent style
reviewing the feedback
planning regular coaching meetings
involving team members to practice new behaviors
assessing the results of the efforts
helping the leader form habits that will last even after the end of the coaching engagement.
Can the coach maintain confidentiality?
During a coaching engagement, the coach comes across a lot of information that is of a sensitive and confidential nature. The coach routinely interacts with many team members to collect feedback. The coach may also be working with other leaders in the organization. Although it seems quite obvious, to keep the trust of the leader and the team members, the coach must maintain boundaries and save the information confidential. In case the coach wants to share any information with others, he should first take permission from the executive.
Can the coach help you with altering the perception of team members about your leadership behaviors?
Leaders develop a leadership style that comes from their personality, past experiences, and recent successes: each leader and her style have some inherent strengths and shortcomings. When team members work with the leader for a more extended period, they form an impression about their behaviors and style.
Just as it is difficult for the leader to change her leadership style, it is equally painful for the team members to change their perceptions about the leader that has been formed over the years, even when the leader works with the executive coach to change her behaviors, the team members’ impressions persistent and sometimes even stubborn.
A good coach helps the leader to change her behavior and simultaneously improves the stakeholder’s “see” that change. Over some time, this effort results in changing both the executive’s ineffective practices and the team members’ persistent impressions about the leader’s behaviors and style.
Is the coach a role model of the behaviors he expects the leader to exhibit?
The best way to teach anyone is to teach by your example. As they say – actions speak louder than words. Does the executive coach practice the same behaviors that he expects from the leader? Some of the acts that the coach should exhibit are
Openness to feedback – when a coach expects the leader to listen to and accept feedback from the team members, he should openly receive the leader’s input. If the coach gets defensive or evasive to feedback, it is not the sign of a good coach.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is considered the world’s number one leadership thinker and a coach, lists three essential qualities of the leaders that are successful in improving themselves through coaching engagements. The coach should also exhibit these same behaviors in the coaching interview with the leader.
Courage – Courage to tell the leader the unpleasant truths even if it may alienate the leader and possibly be rejected in the coach’s interview.
Humility – The executive leadership coaching engagement is about helping the leader. It is not about the executive coach. A coach who makes the interview process all about himself may lack the humility to help the leader.
Discipline – Nothing of significance can be achieved without a good dose of control. A leadership coach who has a disciplined approach has a much higher probability of helping the leader stick to the process and achieve results.
What happens if things don’t go right? What is the escape clause?
Even after the due diligence, there is always a chance that a coaching engagement may not go as per the leader’s expectations or the sponsors. What happens in such a case? What are the conditions of early termination? It is always a good idea to ask for the details and read the contract carefully.
A good coach will have enough confidence in their own ability and have a high level of trust in their process and experience to deliver results. A good coach will always want to have a win-win deal or walk away. Hence, either party will notice short notice to terminate the coaching contract if either party’s expectations are not met.
Does the coach have the relevant education, certifications, and experience?
Executive coaching services is a mostly unregulated industry. The barriers to entry into coaching are shallow. Coaches come from varied backgrounds – human resources, psychology, business majors, consultants, and even yoga practitioners! While there are excellent coaches from different backgrounds and vice versa.
There are a few agencies that claim to have some minimum standards of education and experience for coaches. Still, their authority is neither widely accepted, nor do they do an excellent job selecting the best coaching candidates. They seem to make a lot of money certifying coaches, while the accredited coaches by such agencies hardly have any real paying coaching clients! Anyone willing to pay specific fees can get certified as a coach by doing an online course over the weekend and “coaching” a few willing or unwilling colleagues or friends to garner experience!
Often the coaching certifications mean little. An alphabet soup coaching certifications are no guarantee in gauging the coach’s ability to deliver results for the executive.
It is good to look for a coach who has a business or other degree and, ideally, some industry experience. A good coach has experience in coaching real executives in real companies and can provide references and testimonials to vouch for the expertise and the ability to deliver results for the coaching clients. Apart from this, education and certifications are not of much importance.
Relevant experience in coaching is the only yardstick that correlates with the coach’s ability to deliver results.
Here is Marshall Goldsmith’s quote about who he considers a great coach
“The measure of a great coach is not how many degrees you have or how many books you’ve written – it’s achieving positive, measurable results.”
Will the executive coach guarantee results? Would she defer her payment only after they deliver results?
Now, this may sound radical, and it sure is! But this is the ultimate test of the coach’s confidence in their ability to deliver results. Just ask the prospective coach this question and see their response.
Is there an executive coaching service or a program that can meet all of these criteria and help me select and find the best executive coach?
Fortunately, the answer is yes! You can find the best executive coach and avoid costly mistakes! We offer Marshall Goldsmith stakeholder centered one on administrative coaching services with a no-growth pay clause. What does it mean? If we don’t deliver measurable growth in the executive’s leadership competencies, you don’t have to pay us! And the growth is not assessed by the coach, nor by the leader, but anonymously judged by the leader’s team members!
Our executive coaching India, middle-east, Asia, Europe, and USA has a 95% success rate and comes with a no-growth no pay guarantee. Our executive coaching services are one of the best executive leadership coaching programs 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.
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
Leadership is important and inspiring leaders are even more important. we are compiling 21 most inspiring leadership quotes from various books, websites, and references to ponder.
here are the 21 most inspiring leadership quotes to read upon.
For the great achiever, it’s all about me. For a great leader, it’s all about them. – Alan Mulally
Leadership is a privilege to better the lives of others. It is not an opportunity to satisfy personal greed — Mwai Kibaki
Leadership is about taking responsibility, not making excuses — Mitt Romney
Leaders are made, they are not born. They are made by hard effort, which is the price which all of us must pay to achieve any goal that is worthwhile. – Vince Lombardi
Leadership is not about a title or a designation. It’s about impact, influence, and inspiration. – Robin S. Sharma
Remember Feedback is meant to address the problem, not the person. – Travis Bradberry
If your actions create a legacy that inspires others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, then, you are an excellent leader.” – Dolly Parton
When a leader makes a promise he builds hope when he keeps it, he builds trust, and that is the game-changer – Tushar Vakil
Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself. When you become a leader, success is all about growing others. – Jack Welch
People buy into the leader before they buy into the vision. – John Maxwell
The key to successful leadership today is influence, not authority. – Kenneth Blanchard
you are enjoying reading these inspiring leadership quotes, you will love the following quotes
A good leader is a person who takes a little more than his share of the blame and a little less than his share of the credit. – John Maxwell
Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence. – Sheryl Sandberg
I am not afraid of an army of lions led by a sheep; I am afraid of an army of sheep led by a lion. – Alexander the Great
I’ve learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. – Maya Angelou
No matter how brilliant your mind or strategy, if you are playing a solo game, you will always lose out to a team. – Reid Hoffman
The leader of the past knew how to tell, the leader of the future will know how to ask. – Peter Drucker
Leadership Is Cause; Everything Else Is Effect – unknown
A leader is best when people barely know he exists…when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will all say: We did it ourselves. – Lao-Tzu
A leader is always leading by example. Whether she realizes it, believes it, accepts it or not! – Tushar Vakil
Leadership development is not a cognitive process but a daily modification of behaviors and habits on the job. – Marshall Goldsmith
If you are enjoying reading 21 most inspiring leadership quotes, you will love the following articles
We offer Marshall Goldsmith coaching in India, the middle east, and southeast Asia. It is the best coaching program in India because it is exactly the same executive coaching process used by Marshall Goldsmith to coach CEOs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide and we guarantee measurable leadership growth or you don’t pay at all.
Here are some of the features of Marshall Goldsmith executive coaching program
Guaranteed, measurable leadership growth as assessed – not by us – but by the leader’s own stakeholders
Unlike leadership training or executive education programs, the entire team will be involved while doing their day to day work
Although it is a 1 on 1 executive coaching program for leaders, it has a cascading effect on the team increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture, as the leader becomes the coach
It is a system for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams – although it is leadership coaching for the individual leader, the benefit of team coaching is realized through the involvement of the entire team
In a study of 11,000 leaders on 4 continents – 95% of the leaders using this leadership coaching process improved!
This is the exact same executive coaching process that has been used by 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to grow their leaders through CEO coaching and leadership coaching at C-suite levels. It is one of the best executive leadership coaching programs in the world.
We have Marshall Goldsmith certified coaches India, Middle East, South East Asia. We are so confident of the process that we work on a no growth no pay basis (don’t try that with other vendors, lol!)
Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today
Here are 21 quotes by John Maxwell that are encouraging and galvanizing. John Maxwell is an author, speaker, and pastor who has written several books that are on the New York Times Best Sellers List. Three of his books have sold over a million copies each. He speaks annually to Fortune 500 companies, international government leaders, and organizations like the United States Military Academy and the National Football League.
Quotes by John Maxwell 1-10
1. A leader is one who knows the way, goes the way and shows the way.
2. A great leader’s courage to fulfill his vision comes from passion, not position.
3. If you are a parent, you have probably already realized that your children are always watching what you do. And just as children watch their parents and emulate their behavior, so do employees who are watching their bosses.
4. A word of encouragement from a teacher to a child can change a life. A word of encouragement from a spouse can save a marriage. A word of encouragement from a leader can inspire a person to reach her potential.
5. Teamwork makes the dream work, but a vision becomes a nightmare when the leader has a big dream and a bad team.
6. A man must be big enough to admit his mistakes, smart enough to profit from them, and strong enough to correct them.
7. A leader is great, not because of his or her power, but because of his or her ability to empower others.
8. If you wouldn’t follow yourself, why should anyone else?
9. When people respect you as a person, they admire you. When they respect you as a friend, they love you. When they respect you as a leader, they follow you.
10. Successful and unsuccessful people do not vary greatly in their abilities. They vary in their desires to reach their potential.
John Maxwell quotes no 11-21 continue below
If you are enjoying reading these John Maxwell quotes, you will love the following quotes
Timeless and memorable John Wooden quotes
11. Leaders must be close enough to relate to others, but far enough ahead to motivate them.
12. Every person has a longing to be significant; to make a contribution; to be a part of something noble and purposeful.
13. As a leader, the first person I need to lead is me. The first person that I should try to change is me.
14. Leadership is influence.
15. Self-centered leaders manipulate when they move people for personal benefit. Mature leaders motivate by moving people for mutual benefit.
16. Everyone has the potential to become an encourager. You don’t have to be rich. You don’t have to be a genius. You don’t have to have it all together. All you have to do is care about people and initiate.
17. Good leaders must communicate vision creatively, and continually. However, the vision doesn’t come alive until the leader models it.
18. The growth and development of people is the highest calling of a leader.
19. The measure of a leader is not the number of people who serve him but the number of people he serves.
20. To lead yourself, use your head; to lead others, use your heart. Always touch a person’s heart before you ask him for a hand.
21. Real leadership is being the person others will gladly and confidently follow.
If you are enjoying reading this article about John Maxwell quotes, you will love reading the following articles
1. Gallup organization conducted “the largest study on the future of workplace” and this is the single biggest factor for any organization’s long term success
What is executive coaching? Difference between executive coaching & leadership coaching? Why do companies hire executive coaches? Who is the best executive coach? Read the article to find out.
What is executive coaching?
Leaders have a high level of responsibility for the current success and future sustainability of any organization. Organizations invest in the development of such leaders. Traditionally, executive education, training programs, mentoring, challenging assignments, job shadowing, etc., are the tools used for leadership development in organizations.
Executive coaching is a recent entrant in the list of tools for leadership development in organizations. Executive coaching focuses on the leader’s personal development for him/her to be a more effective leader.
Executive coaching is a one on one relationship between a client (a leader) and a professionally qualified coach, that focuses on increasing the self-awareness of the client’s own thoughts, behaviors, and actions, and its impact on his/her effectiveness as a leader, and to change them for the leader to become a more effective leader.
The Center for Creative Leadership’s Handbook on Coaching defines the intent of coaching as to “help leaders understand themselves more fully so that they can draw on their strengths and use them more effectively and intentionally, improve identified development needs, and develop untested potential.”
Executive Coaching involves helping leaders gain clarity about their own motivations, aspirations, and commitment to change, so that they can lead more effectively.”
The ultimate outcome of executive coaching is to help the leader make a sustainable behavior change, leading to improved performance and better relationships at work.
The origin of the word coach
Kocs was a small town in Hungary. In the early 15th century, the town was known for making a light wooden enclosure on wheels pulled by horses and used for transportation.
Now, this light wooden enclosure was state-of-the art and much lighter and faster than anything available then. Hence it became popular and later spread all across Europe over the next century and was called kocsi. The Hungarian word “kocsi”, means “of Kocs” or from Kocs or made in Kocs.
The Spanish and Portuguese coach, the German Kutsche, and the Slovak koč and Czech kočár and the English word coach – all probably derive from the Hungarian word kocsi.
These coaches arrived in England around 1580. Later, in the 19th century, the term coach was used for U.S. railway carriages. In the 20th century, the term was used to describe horse-driven carriages and later motor coaches that eventually evolved into automobiles.
In its literal sense, the word coach is a vehicle that takes a person from where they are to somewhere they want to go. In the present day, the word coach keeps the same analogy. A coach helps an individual take him from where he currently is to where he wants to go.
Not in the sense of going from one place to another, but in the sense of going from their current situation (career, physical, financial, emotional, etc.) to where they want to go – the desired goal – to be in a better shape, improve their performance, improve their finances, relate better with people, etc.
A brief history of modern coaching
The sports coach
When the word coach is used for a layperson, they usually think of a professional sports coach. Coaching, for the most of the 20th century, was associated with sports. Whether it is an individual sport like tennis or a team sport like football, it is customary to have a coach in any professional sport.
The player herself may be talented, but to compete and win at higher levels, she will utilize a professional coach’s services. There is no stigma attached to having a coach; rather, working with a renowned coach is highly desired by any athlete.
But it wasn’t always like that. In the earlier part of the 20th century, they considered the concept of hiring a professional coach to improve the performance of an athlete to be dishonorable and disgraceful. An athlete should have “natural” talent and should not need any external help.
Today, no individual athlete or a team would even think of participating in any sport at a competitive level without a coach’s help. A good coach helps the individual athlete or a team perform at their best.
Executive coaching in organizations
A similar evolution happened with professional coaching in the business environment also. Coaching in the current form started in the late 80s and early 90s. Before that, mentoring and hiring external consultants was prevalent but wasn’t termed as coaching and had a different purpose.
There was also a stigma attached to admitting that an individual needed the help of a “consultant” to help the leader overcome some form of “weakness.”
In the early years of executive coaching, hiring a coach for the executive in an organization was considered to be something that the executive was usually not proud to share with others. The perception was that if they assigned an executive a coach – he needed to be “fixed” or “remedied.”
Over the last decade or so, executive coaching has gained immense popularity. A majority of Fortune 500 companies use executive coaching as part of their leadership development initiatives.
As executive coaching has gained popularity, the availability of executive coaches has also increased significantly. Today, senior leaders consider executive coaching a badge of honor. It conveys to the leader and the others that the company considers them worthwhile to invest in their development via coaching.
Why is executive coaching so popular?
From the second world war until the Berlin wall’s falling in 1989 – businesses were predominantly industrial and manufacturing in nature. The business operation was predictable, and the pace of change was quite “reasonable” to manage. Over the last three decades, there have been many political, economic, social, and technological changes. They have impacted the way business is done.
Here are some of the significant factors contributing to these changes in the business environment.
Globalization
Advances in technology, communication, internet, and supply chain efficiency meant that a large company could produce the goods anywhere globally, where it is the most cost-effective, and sell them anywhere in the world, where it is the most profitable. It also meant that your competitor maybe anyone around the world who can produce and deliver the goods or services cheaper, faster, or better than your company. Businesses became global, and so did the competition.
Leaner and flatter organizational structure
Organizations are leaner and flatter. Less number of employees means more demand for existing employees. Flatter and less hierarchical organizations mean more independent teams that are more responsive to the changes.
The fast pace of change is getting faster.
Before the 1980s, the businesses had long periods of stability followed by intermittent change and then another stable period. Today, with the aid of technology, change, innovation, and disruption have become a norm. Transition is a continuous process. The pace of change is fast and getting faster.
Knowledgeable and demanding customers
With the availability of any information over the internet, consumers have become knowledgeable, savvy, and demanding. This puts an additional burden on businesses to deliver value to customers.
Multi-generational multi-cultural and multinational workforce
After the fall of the Berlin wall, businesses have had the opportunity to expand globally in areas that were not accessible due to regulations. They have also had to hire a workforce that was multinational, multi-cultural, and multi-generational. Engaging and managing such a diverse workforce needed a new set of skills on the parts of leaders.
High demand, competition, and turnover of talented employees
As businesses have expanded over the globe, there is an increased demand for talented employees. In the 50’s and ’60s, there was lifetime employment for any employee and probably with the same company. Today, no one expects lifetime employment, neither the company nor the employee. Employees are mobile geographically, across industries, and across companies. As a result, talented employees are in high demand. Businesses have to work hard to attract and retain talented employees.
Increased pressure on executives to deliver results
All of these factors have a significant impact on businesses. They have also placed an enormous amount of stress on the leaders expected to navigate this complex environment and deliver value to stakeholders in terms of revenue, profits, and customer satisfaction.
A new business environment needed a new approach.
The world, and consequently businesses, have become more complex, global, and subject to continuous change. Although the term VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) was originally used by the United States military to describe the extreme conditions in Iraq and Afghanistan, VUCA accurately describes the present day’s business environment. VUCA world has also forced the change in leadership style from autocratic and to more of a catalyst, facilitator, and coach. In fact, the coaching style of leadership is both highly desired and highly effective to lead in a VUCA world.
The advent and the rise in popularity of coaching coincide with the rapid change in the business environment since the late ’80s. As the business environment has changed since the late ’80s, executive coaching has also evolved in lockstep.
Organizations are recognizing the importance of executive coaching to support and develop senior executives to survive and thrive in the VUCA world of business today. That is the reason for the explosive growth and high popularity of executive coaching in organizations.
What is the difference between executive coaching and leadership coaching?
The word executive generally refers to someone in a senior position in an organization – usually at the C-suite level – CEOs and board of directors, etc. Executive coaches were hired for these senior leaders to support them and help them be more effective in the dynamic business environment. However, as coaching has become popular, and its benefits became clear, executive coaching was cascaded down to multiple organizations. Today, executive coaching is an essential part of leadership development for leaders at all levels – from C-suite all the way down to first-line managers. Today, executive coaching is a part of the competency framework, talent management, and learning and development functions in most large organizations.
The desired outcome of coaching has also evolved over the years. Initially, in the 1980s, coaching was often internally used to derail behaviors or advice in specific areas. Often the coach was internal – a person from Human Resource who would engage in the coaching. Sometimes, an external professional was hired to advise and perspective for a specific domain knowledge like finance, business development, legal, etc.
The perception then was that if a leader was being coached, he needed to be “fixed” or “remedied.” An executive would rarely declare in public that he was being coached. It was a sign of “weakness.” It meant that the leader was not capable of leading on his own and needed help!
The changing perception and reach of executive/leadership coaching
Since then, we have come a full circle around. Today, a majority of coaching is used for the development of high potentials and high performers.
Executive coaching has gone from stigma to a badge of honor. If the organization does not include a leader in a coaching program, often the perception that the organization does not consider the leader a high potential or worthwhile to invest in a coaching program for that leader. Often, executives may leave the organization if they believe that they are not investing enough in their continuous development.
Executive coaching has also spread geographically around the world. Initially, most coaching engagements were in the United States and Western Europe. Now executive coaching has spread to Asia, especially India, Africa, the Middle East, Eastern Europe, and South America. In fact, a majority of growth in executive coaching is being contributed by these countries and regions.
Why do companies and leaders 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.
To develop the leadership skills of high-potential individuals (86%).
To improve the odds that newly promoted managers would be successful (64%).
To develop management and leadership skills among their technical people (59%).
To correct behavioral problems at the management level (70%).
To help leaders resolve interpersonal conflicts among employees (59%).
According to an executive coach and author Anne Marie Valerio, a typical coaching engagement helps the executive with one of the following three areas. Almost every situation that leads to hiring an executive coach can be classified into one of these categories.
Skill development
Typically, skill development areas are either interpersonal or self-management skills. For example, better communication with team members, ability to influence or present in front of board or investors, or better manage your own time and priorities. Leadership is managing other people and getting results through others. When you are dealing with people, behaviors matter a lot. Once termed as soft skills, they now have become power skills for any executive.
Emotional intelligence – which includes competencies of self-awareness, self-regulation, social awareness, and relationship management – accounts for three-fourths or more of the difference between a high-performing executive compared with an executive whose performance is in the bottom 10th percentile. An executive coach helps the leader become aware of the gap between his intention and impact on the team members.
Improve current performance
Enhance performance by leveraging strengths and working on improvement areas. Performance may be hindered by the leader’s behaviors which may be problematic for team members. According to leadership guru Marshall Goldsmith, executives and leaders are successful because of certain behaviors and despite other behaviors! A technically brilliant leader may be abrasive or have other behavioral patterns that may offend other team members. Working on improving such behaviors increases the effectiveness of the executive and helps improve performance.
Often executives have to take up new roles and new challenges either up the hierarchy or across to another division. This usually happens in response to an urgent business need, and the leader has no time to prepare for the transition. It often is the sink or swims approach. Unfortunately, a large number of executives are unsuccessful when transitioning up or across an organization. An executive coach helps the leader transition into the new role and help him perform, increasing its value.
Develop future competencies
The pace of change today is fast and getting faster. Organizations have to focus on current profits as well as future sustainability. The pace of change today in the business world is fast and getting faster. Artificial intelligence, robotics, analytics, technology are accelerating the pace of change at an unprecedented rate. This requires the executive or the leader to keep up. And keeping up means developing newer competencies needed to succeed in the future.
Rapid changes in political, economic, social, and technology have made it imperative for leaders to develop the future competencies. Some examples of emerging competencies are technologically savvy and can engage a diverse workforce.
Leaders also have to look across the horizon to anticipate opportunities and threats and guide them to seize opportunities and eliminate or be prepared for the threats. An executive coaching engagement allows the leader to take a more strategic view and develop future skills.
Dr. Marshall Goldsmith is considered the best executive coach in the world. Here is what some of the most respected publications think of Dr. Marshall Goldsmith.
Thinkers 50 – World’s most influential leadership thinker (2015 and 2011), top ten business thinker, top-rated executive coach (2015, 2013, and 2011).
Forbes – One of five most-respected executive coaches.
Wall Street Journal – Top ten executive educators.
American Management Association (AMA) – Fifty great leaders who have impacted the management field over the past eighty years.
INC Magazine – America’s #1 executive coach.
The Times (UK) – 15 Greatest Business Thinkers in the World.
Executive coaching for your leaders using Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s stakeholder centered coaching.
We help you develop leaders in your organization using the stakeholder centered executive coaching pioneered by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith – the world’s number one leadership thinker and executive coach to the CEOs of the Fortune 500 companies.
You get the exact same executive coaching for your leaders, which Dr. Marshall Goldsmith has used for his Fortune 500 CEO clients. In fact, we guarantee that the leader will improve measurably, or you don’t have to pay.
We help leaders to develop skills, help their performance, and help them develop future competencies. We offer guaranteed and measurable leadership development coaching along with emotional intelligence assessment to develop specific competencies.
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 simply don’t have to pay us.
Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today
What keeps otherwise smart leaders from achieving the next level of career success? What stops them from moving up the career ladder? What are the barriers? Marshall Goldsmith’s aptly titled book – What got you here, won’t get you there – describes some of those barriers.
Barriers to further career success
What stops intelligent, hard-working, and driven leaders from breaking through to the next level of career success? What keeps otherwise smart people from achieving the next level of career success?
Think about it for a moment. What answers did you come up with? When I ask this question to the leaders who participate in any of my leadership training programs, I get some answers.
Fear – Fear of failure and fear of rejection have killed more dreams than any other single factor! When we are afraid, we don’t want to take chances. We avoid taking action. And that does not help in achieving further career success.
Lack of focus – We live in a world filled with continuous distractions and interruptions. The choices we have are endless. This often overwhelms us. Without focusing on a few things we are great at, it is difficult to achieve significant results.
Lack of time – Lack of time and lack of focus are closely related. When we get involved in too many things unrelated to our primary goals and focus areas, we suffer from a dual problem—lack of focus and lack of time.
Inability to change – The world is changing at a frenetic pace. Technology, communication, artificial intelligence, and a confluence of many other factors are speeding up the frenetic pace of change. Unless we change and adapt, it is unlikely that we will achieve further success. Staying in the comfort zone and not wanting to change is more a recipe for career failure than career success in a fast-changing world!
Often, the skills to reach the next level of career success are different from the skills that brought us to the career ladder’s current rung. We tend to hang on to the skills and the approach that brought us the current level of success. Unfortunately, holding on to them and not changing is what holds us back from reaching the next level of success. What got you here won’t get you there!
The root cause that stops intelligent leaders from reaching the next level
What if I told you that all these answers are mere symptoms of a deeper root cause? What is the root cause that prevents leaders from achieving the next level of success? Well, the answer so obvious and in such plain sight that we often are blindsided by it and cannot see it! What is that answer? It is a success. Yes, that is right! When we achieve a certain level of success in life or leadership, we stop doing many of the things that made us successful in the first place. What got you here won’t get you there!
The paradox of success – What got you here won’t get you there!
When we become successful, we become superstitious. We want to keep doing the things that made us successful in the past. In a fast-changing world, doing the same things doesn’t bode well.
We become a little more fearful and stop taking chances. What made us successful is exactly that – taking chances, trying things, failing, learning, and moving ahead. While climbing the ladder to success, the focus was essential. We get good at a few things. When we are successful, we have more choices, we have more time and more money – and often, it results in a lack of focus and dilution of efforts. Success often takes us away from the essential things that made us successful in the first place, and hence success becomes the reason for failing to get to the next level of career success and achievement.
What got you here won’t get you there! Won’t help you move up the career ladder?
Bill Gates rightly said – “Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can’t lose.”
To quote Einstein, “We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them.”
Marshall Goldsmith warns successful leaders in his bestselling book aptly titled – “What got you here, won’t get you there!”
How to reach the next level of career success as an intelligent leader?
One of the best ways to break through to the next level of success as a leader is to work with a leadership coach.
The coach also helps the leader uncover limiting beliefs that hold the leader from reaching the next level of career success. A leadership coach helps the leader understand their strengths and weaknesses. The coach then helps the leader to leverage her strengths and improve weaknesses. Executive coaching (aka leadership coaching) is the best tool for behavior change. Leaders who support an executive coach have a better chance to move up the career ladder.
Read: How to get promoted and avoid mid-career crisis
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
Google’s Project Aristotle. Google spent 2 years and enormous amounts of resources studying over 180 teams to figure out the answer to the question – What makes teams successful?
These are the five factors they found are essential to any high-performing team. The most important factor is “psychological safety,” a term coined by Harvard Professor Amy Edmonson. It affects organizational culture and team effectiveness
The Why of Google’s Project Aristotle
Individual brilliance vs. team effectiveness
Individual brilliance is great, but team cohesiveness is more important. Most of the work done today is in projects involving multiple people working in teams.
An article, published in The Harvard Business Review in Jan-Feb 2016, titled “Collaborative Overload,” states the following. Over the last two decades – ‘‘The time spent by managers and employees in collaborative activities has ballooned by 50 percent or more.’’
Talent management’s primary focus has been on measuring and managing individual performance. But it is not enough. Analyzing and improving individual performance does not translate into the performance of teams or workgroups. Hence the focus on what makes teams successful led to Google’s Project Aristotle.
To quote Michael Jordan – Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.
It is true in sports and business. In cohesive teams, the whole is a lot greater than the sum of its parts. When teams work in synergy, they achieve extraordinary performance.
In dysfunctional teams, it is vice versa. The whole ends up being a lot less than the sum of the parts. You can put a group of 6-10 high-performing individuals on a team. Yet, their performance together as a team may be disappointing; how a group of individuals performs together as a team is unpredictable at best.
Google’s Project Aristotle – What makes teams successful? What makes the team effective?
In 2012, Google set out to answer this important question – What makes teams successful? Google coined it “Google’s Project Aristotle.”
The name Google’s Project Aristotle comes from the Greek philosopher Aristotle’s quote – “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”
Obviously, this is not a new idea! Many companies, academicians, sociologists, and psychologists have attempted to find the answer to this exact question.
A lot of this previous research on what makes teams successful often included easy subjects. These experimental teams often comprised Graduate students – in an artificial college environment and not real-life work at the office.
However, Google wanted to study real work teams. With Google, things are a little different. Google is a very successful company with access to enormous amounts of resources.
They spent 2 years studying 180 real and diverse teams at Google. These were not experimental teams but were real teams doing “real” work in a corporate setting.
Google has a data-driven approach. Even when they are studying what makes people and teams click. Unlike many of the feel-good theories of management, Google relies on hard data and facts. They conducted over 200 interviews conducted. They analyzed over 250 different attributes of teams. They defined what comprised a team.
They also defined how to measure team effectiveness. They measured it in terms of the leader, team manager, and team members’ performance and opinions.
They collected both quantitative and qualitative data and used their brainpower to analyze the data. They sought to find the “algorithm” that would predict what makes teams successful.
The “recipe” for what makes teams successful
Google wanted to find a “recipe” for what makes teams successful. Initially, Google researchers thought that ingredients could be
put in a few of the high performers on the team
add an experienced manager
please give them a free pass to all resources
And the expectation was that you would have the output in terms of a high-performing team. Google found that this wasn’t true at all! No matter how many times they arranged and rearranged the data – they could not find a specific pattern that was unique to high performing teams!
The constitution of the team or its Geographical location didn’t matter a lot. Neither did the composition of the team matter much. What mattered more were the “team norms.” Team norms are how the teams interacted. Who was on the team didn’t matter much. Instead, how the teams worked together made the difference.
What factors didn’t matter a lot for the team’s effectiveness
To their surprise, Project Aristotle researchers discovered that several common factors thought to impact team performance and effectiveness DID NOT matter much.
The variables that didn’t matter much to the team’s effectiveness at Google:
The collocation of teammates (sitting together in the same office)
Consensus-driven decision making
Extroversion of team members
Individual performance of team members
Workload size
Seniority
Team size
Tenure
5 Factors common to effective teams at Google
Google found 5 factors common in their quest to answer – what makes teams successful.These five factors are listed below in the order of their importance.
Psychological safety:
Team members feel safe taking risks and being vulnerable in front of each other without the fear of being embarrassed, ridiculed, or facing any other consequences.
Psychological safety refers to an individual’s perception of the consequences of taking an interpersonal risk or a belief that a team is safe for risk-taking in the face of being seen as ignorant, incompetent, negative, or disruptive.
In a team with high psychological safety, teammates feel safe to take risks around their team members. They feel confident that no one on the team will embarrass or punish anyone else for admitting a mistake, asking a question, or offering a new idea.
On dependable teams, members reliably complete quality work on time. The opposite of dependability is shirking responsibilities. Team members get things done on time and meet Google’s high bar for excellence.
Structure and clarity:
Team members have clear roles, plans, and goals. Every team member clearly understands job expectations. He/she also knows the process of fulfilling these expectations. The consequences of the individual team member’s performance are also clear.
They can set goals individually or at a group level. The goals must be specific, challenging, and attainable. Google often uses Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to help set and communicate short and long-term goals.
Meaning:
Finding a sense of purpose in either the work itself or the output is important for team effectiveness. Work is personally important and meaningful to the team members. The meaning of work is personal and can vary amongst many factors. These factors can be: financial security, supporting family, helping the team succeed, or self-expression for each individual.
Impact:
Teams have to feel that their work and their output are making a difference. When teams see their efforts contributing to the organization’s goals, they feel that their work impacts. Team members believe that their work matters to the company and the customers.
How to apply the learning of Google’s Project Aristotle to your teams at our organization?
Google’s research team wanted team members to understand what was going on with their teams. So they created a survey for teams to take and discuss amongst themselves. Survey items were questions based on the five factors of team effectiveness. Your team can use these same questions in your organization.
Psychological safety – “If I make a mistake on our team, it is not held against me.”
Dependability – “When my teammates say they’ll do something, they follow through with it.”
Structure and Clarity – “Our team has an effective decision-making process.”
Meaning – “The work I do for our team is meaningful to me.”
Impact – “I understand how our team’s work contributes to the organization’s goals.”
After everyone on the team had anonymously completed the survey, the scores were shared with the team. A facilitator would be present to start a dialogue and a discussion to understand the survey scores’ details and plan to improve team effectiveness.
Our team coaching helps your teams improve on the Five factors of team effectiveness.
Amy Edmondson’s research on “psychological safety.”
Harvard professor and organizational behavior researcher Amy Edmondson coined the term psychological safety. She defines psychological safety as “a shared belief held by team members that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking.”
How to measure psychological safety?
Amy Edmondson observed that the level of psychological safety varied considerably, even on teams within the same organization.
She has devised a 7 question survey to measure the level of psychological safety within a team. Team members anonymously answer these questions on a scale of 1 to 7. Here are the 7 questions.
If you make a mistake on this team, it is often held against you.
Members of this team can bring up problems and tough issues.
People on this team sometimes reject others for being different.
It is safe to take a risk on this team.
It is difficult to ask other members of this team for help.
No one on this team would deliberately act in a way that undermines my efforts.
Working with members of this team, my unique skills and talents are valued and utilized.
FREE team assessments
We are happy to offer a FREE assessment for your first team based on the five factors of team effectiveness. We also offer the psychological safety assessment, FREE for your first team.
The teams with a higher level of psychological safety outperform teams with a low level of psychological safety. The FREE assessment allows you to gauge the level and work on improving psychological safety, usually through a team coaching process.
If you would like to take advantage of the complimentary assessments, click below to schedule a quick conversation and get the process started
Watch the webinar: Webinar on Google’s Secret Recipe to Build a High-Performance Team
Conlusion of Google’s Project Aristotle
Google spent a lot of time and used its enormous resources to provide a research-based answer to the question of what makes teams successful. They also studied “real work teams” at Google. To their surprise, the team constitution (who was on the team) didn’t matter a whole lot.
What mattered was how the team members interacted – or the team norms or culture. They found five factors common to effective teams at Google.
The most significant factor was “psychological safety” – a term coined by Harvard researcher Amy Edmonson. The 7-question survey and ensuing discussion with a facilitator are the best way to improve your teams’ effectiveness.
Google’s Project Aristotle in the new normal
In 2020, the world faced an unprecedented crisis of the Covid pandemic.
For a few months, the world came to a standstill. Eventually, companies figured out ways to let employees work from home. They installed the required technology and processes to allow remote teams to work together.
Is Google’s Project Aristotle relevant in the new normal? I want to discuss a couple of interesting factors from the study.
The collocation of teammates (sitting together in the same office): Google found that teammates’ collocation didn’t impact team effectiveness much. It wasn’t in the top five factors that impacted team effectiveness.
Due to the pandemic, a large number of employees are working from home. Although working from home is a work in progress, whether the team works in the same office or works from home shouldn’t be much of a team effectiveness factor. This is an interesting point.
As of March 2021, many companies are considering a hybrid workplace – in-person plus remote work. While many companies are concerned about the productivity and effectiveness of remote teams, it shouldn’t be a significant factor, especially after the processes and habits have been installed properly.
Psychological safety is even more important in the new normal: Google found that psychological safety was the linchpin of the five factors that impact team effectiveness. Psychological safety is even more important to help teams collaborate during the pandemic and thrive in the new normal. The pandemic has caused disruptions and uncertainty, which increase the need for team learning and team collaboration. Without a climate of psychological safety, team members may have difficulty sharing their concerns, ideas, and issues. Without psychological safety, remote teams may remain ineffective. The culprit, in such a case, is not the remote work or remote teams. The lack of psychological safety on the teams is whether the teams are remote teams or collocated teams.
New normal needs a new kind of leadership
The pandemic has drastically changed the way we work. Many remote workers and remote teams are likely to stay remote even after the crisis is over; the new normal needs a new kind of leadership. The new normal requires rapid learning, quickly adapting, and using the entire team’s collective intelligence to stay ahead of disruptions.
Are your leaders prepared?
In other words, the new normal needs a culture of psychological safety. Are your leaders ready to not just survive but thrive in the new normal? Are you supporting your leaders to adapt to lead in the new normal? Or are you taking the sink-or-swim approach?
Taking a sink-or-swim approach can be costly. Rapid disruptions create both threats and opportunities. Taking advantage of the opportunities and avoiding the threats requires a leadership that is prepared. Please don’t leave it to chance. Support your leaders with our leadership and team coaching programs and set them up for success!
Watch the webinar: Building Your Leaders to THRIVE in a post-Covid World.
Set up your leaders and teams for success in the new normal
Our team coaching delivers guaranteed and measurable growth in team effectiveness.
We offer stakeholder-centered team coaching that delivers a measurable and guaranteed improvement in team effectiveness.
Team coaching is a very effective and cost-efficient way to grow leaders, change teams, and develop the organizational culture that ensures that teams deliver results.
TEAM coaching engagements create measurable leadership growth for the leader and the team using our unique process.
Benefits of team coaching
Resource-efficient
Since one executive coach works with all team members supporting each other in this TEAM coaching process, the whole coaching program is very time efficient. It reduces coaching investment per team member while still delivering a majority of the benefits of 1:1 coaching for the leader. For the cost of a group training program, you can deliver team coaching for your leaders and teams.
Changing leaders and teams at the same time and culture
The team articulates one leadership growth area, and each team member defines their leadership growth area that relates to the team focus. This creates an interdependent team effort, focusingon producing results for their effectiveness and team productivity simultaneously.
Create a Team culture of openness to continuous change
When team members collaborate as stakeholders in the TEAM coaching programs, it creates an open culture for leadership and team culture change. Team members feel comfortable using feedback and feedforward to drive change for themselves and their teams.
Insider expertise
Team members should provide expert advice and an insider view of each other related to their business, their people, and their team culture challenges. They become de facto coaches. It also allows the organization to utilize the collective intelligence of the team members.
Coaching culture is a leadership skill.
Some organizations use coaching as an ‘executive intervention’ or to ‘fix a problem,’ but this is a suboptimal approach to coaching. Coaching is a leadership skill, and leaders in organizations should be skilled coaches to help their teams develop and grow. As we expect effective leaders to be highly skilled in, e.g., communication, decision-making, and empowerment, leaders should be highly skilled in coaching others. TEAM coaching is a great program to instill coaching as a leadership skill in the organization.
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 of 11000 leaders on 4 continents). It is used by companies ranging from startups to 150 Fortune 500 companies to develop their leaders.
Here are some of the salient benefits of NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching
Time and resource-efficient: The leader does not have to leave work to attend training programs. We go to the leader and her team. And it only takes 1.5 hours per month. The rest of the time, the leader is working to implement with her team.
Separate and customized improvement areas for each leader: Every leader is different. A one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t work. Individual development areas for each leader aligned with 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’s 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
Most inspiring Simon Sinek quotes. Carefully chosen and curated quotes by Simon Sinek. Simon Sinek quotes on leadership are the most insightful. Simon Sinek is a bestselling author and an inspiring motivational speaker. Two of his books Start with Why, and Why Leaders Eat Last are best sellers on many lists like the New York Times and Amazon.
Here are 21 of the best quotes by Simon Sinek, carefully chosen, and curated for you.
Quotes by Simon Sinek 1-10
1. If you hire people just because they can do a job, they’ll work for your money. But if you hire people who believe what you believe, they’ll work for you with blood, sweat, and tears.
2. People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
3. The great leaders are not the strongest, they are the ones who are honest about their weaknesses. The great leaders are not the smartest; they are the ones who admit how much they don’t know. The great leaders can’t do everything; they are the ones who look to others to help them. Great leaders don’t see themselves as great; they see themselves as human.
4. Confidence is believing in yourself. Arrogance is telling others you are better than they are. Confidence inspires. Arrogance destroys.
5. Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it.
6. Don’t show up to prove. Show up to improve.
7. The goal is not to do business with everybody who needs what you have. The goal is to do business with people who believe what you believe.
8. There are only two ways to influence human behavior: you can manipulate it or you can inspire it.
9. Value is not determined by those who set the price. Value is determined by those who choose to pay it.
10. As the Zen Buddhist saying goes, how you do anything is how you do everything.
Simon Sinek leadership quotes 11-21 continue below
He is an exceptional speaker and his TED talks and YouTube videos are amongst the most-watched list. Two of his must-watch talks are listed below.
11. It is better to disappoint people with the truth than to appease them with a lie.
12. When people are financially invested, they want a return. When people are emotionally invested, they want to contribute.
13. What good is an idea if it remains an idea? Try. Experiment. Iterate. Fail. Try again. Change the world.
14. There is a difference between listening and waiting for your turn to speak.
15. If you want to be a great leader, remember to treat all people with respect at all times. For one, because you never know when you’ll need their help. And two, because it’s a sign you respect people, which all great leaders do.
16. To succeed takes more than the desire to win. It also takes the acceptance that we could fail.
17. A team is not a group of people who work together. A team is a group of people who trust each other.
18. If you want to feel happy, do something for yourself. If you want to feel fulfilled, do something for someone else.
19. A leader’s job is not to do the work for others; it’s to help others figure out how to do it themselves, to get things done and to succeed beyond what they thought possible.
20. Always plan for the fact that no plan ever goes according to plan.
21. Some see risk as a reason not to try. Some see it as an obstacle to overcome. The risk is the same; to try or not depends on your perspective.
If you are enjoying reading these Simon Sinek quotes, you will love the following quotes
What is the compound effect? What does leadership development have to do with the compound effect? Find out how to use the compound effect to supercharge leadership development. Use, Marshall Goldsmith leadership coaching with the power of the compound effect for leadership development for leaders in your organization.
A hypothetical example to illustrate the power of the compound effect
Consider this hypothetical example that illustrates the power of the compound effect. Imagine that I have offered you freelance programming work. You have two options to get paid.
Two options – small improvements consistently vs. staying the same
Option 1 is to get paid $10 per week. However, if you improve your skills by 10% a week, your salary will proportionately increase by 10% every single week.
This option requires you to improve your skills on a weekly basis. Not a huge jump in the skill level, but small, continuous, and constant improvements.
Option 2 is to get paid a fixed amount of $5000 per month. With this option, there is no need for any improvement in skills. There are no additional increases either – the salary stays the same.
Which option would you choose? Here is the table detailing the accumulated total salary for both options.
Which option would you choose?
At the end of the first month, option 1 would give you a total salary of $51. While option 2 would fetch you a cool $5,000.
Months two and three are equally depressing for option 1 – with a total salary of $126 and $235 respectively at the end of months two and three. At the end of 3 months, option 1 will get you a meagerly amount of $235. Option 2 would fetch you a cool $15,000.
At the end of 1 year, option 1 would add up to $15541 while option 2 is still way ahead with $60,000. Still lagging option 2 by a significant amount.
The power of the compound effect
However, by the end of the 16th month, option 1 has caught up to option 1 – with $86,762 vs. $80,000 for option 2!
And by the end of the 24th-month option 1 has compounded to a cool $2.2 million while option 2 is lagging way behind with a meager sum of $120,000.
How does the compound effect relate to our behaviors and leadership development?
Here are a few real-life options to consider.
What if you ate a chocolate bar a day for a year? What if you instead exercised 20 minutes a day for a year?
What if you watched TV for 1 hour a day for an entire year? What if instead, you read 10 pages of a good book a day for a year?
You would get completely different results.
Small choices + consistency + time = significant results
Seemingly small choices made daily don’t appear to make any difference in the short term. But consistently making the small choices add up to drastically different outcomes over time. That is the power of the compound effect.
Leadership development is no different! Small changes in leadership behaviors applied consistently over 12-18 months add up to extraordinary results!
We offer Marshall Goldsmith’s stakeholder centered executive coaching for leadership development that capitalizes on the principle of the compound effect. Why is coaching important for leadership development? How is it beneficial?
Leadership coaching is the most effective way to ensure that leadership improvement takes place. Executive education and training programs help in creating awareness for change – however behavior change requires customized solutions, consistent follow-up, and accountability.
Executive coaching provides it by design. Marshall Goldsmith executive coaching is one of the best leadership development programs available in India and worldwide through a network of over 3000 certified coaches who provide the same consistent executive coaching process used by many of the Fortune 500 companies for their leadership development coaching programs.
Leadership behavior effectiveness is making 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.
Marshall Goldsmith stakeholder centered coaching helps leaders improve their own derailing behaviors and change the perception of the team members.
Often people get promoted to a higher role with little support. This is often because of business emergencies like an urgent project or a senior leader leaving the organization.
Leadership coaching 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 / Feedforward from Stakeholders on the Job
Feedback allows the leader to realize the blind spots that may act as their leadership bottlenecks. Most leaders have one or more poor leadership behavior that they may not be aware of.
Such toxic leadership behaviors often end up hurting the engagement and the performance of the leader’s team. However, once they receive 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 of stakeholder’s suggestions.
Coaching the executive and improving on poor or toxic leadership behaviors creates effective teams and organizational culture that promotes employee engagement and performance.
As acknowledged by the stakeholders
Stakeholders are the leader’s team members who interact frequently with the leader. They are at the receiving end of the leader’s behaviors.
They are the “customers” of the leadership product. No one else is in a better position than the stakeholders to assess whether the leadership behaviors are good. They can also assess whether the behaviors are improving. In the Marshall Goldsmith stakeholder centered executive coaching process, as the name suggests, stakeholders are at the center.
Ultimately, they decide whether the leader has improved her behaviors. This is done through an anonymous survey. We consider a leader has 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 12-18 months
Marshall Goldsmith’s stakeholder centered executive coaching process is a well-defined and tried and tested process. We design it to appeal to the leader’s ways of thinking and leverage it to help the leaders improve. It is also a process that has been used to coach over 400,000 executives in over 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, over 95% of the leaders using the stakeholder centered process improved. Marshall Goldsmith stakeholder centered executive coaching usually lasts from a minimum of six months up to a year and a half.
The compound effect of Marshall Goldsmith Stakeholder Centered Leadership Coaching
Day by day and week by week, small changes in the leader’s behaviors – based on the suggestions given by stakeholders – don’t seem like much, but compounded over the period of 12-18 months, they help the leader significantly improve her leadership effectiveness. That is the power of compounding applied to leadership coaching using the Marshall Goldsmith stakeholder centered leadership coaching process!
Here are some features of the Marshall Goldsmith executive coaching program
Guaranteed, measurable leadership growth as assessed–not by us–but by the leader’s own stakeholders.
In addition, unlike leadership training or executive education programs, it will involve the entire team while doing their day to day work.
The leader becomes the coach, and it has a cascading effect on the team increasing team effectiveness and improving organizational culture.
It is a system for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams – although it is leadership coaching for an individual leader; they realize the benefit of team coaching through the involvement of the entire team.
In a study of 11,000 leaders on 4 continents–95% of the leaders using this leadership coaching process improved!
This is the exact same executive coaching process that is used by 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to grow their leaders through CEO coaching and leadership coaching at C-suite levels
We are so confident of the process we work on a no growth no pay basis (don’t try that with other vendors, lol!)
Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today
What is extreme ownership? As a leader would you like to inspire an organizational culture of “extreme ownership” in your team members? What kind of organizational culture would it create for your teams? What can it do for team performance and team effectiveness? How will it help improve your leaders in 2020 and spark an organizational culture transformation in your organization?
Ramadi, the hot spot of insurgency during the Iraq war
In the spring of 2006, Jocko Willink, a Navy seal for US armed forces, was stationed in Ramadi, Iraq. Ramadi was the hotspot of insurgency in post-war Iraq. Terrorists controlled the Ramadi area by any means necessary – urban warfare, torture, murders, and even rapes. US forces suffered heavy casualties as the terrorists were improvising and using advanced tactics. Jocko Willink and Leif Babin’s Navy SEAL unit faced an impossible mission: help U.S. forces secure Ramadi, a city deemed “all but lost.”
The unfortunate incident that inspired extreme ownership
One morning Jocko was in charge of an operation in a suburb of Ramadi. It was a combined and complex operation involving the navy seals, US army soldiers, and US marines. Their instruction was to clear outbuildings and set up positions to fight the enemy. Friendly Iraqi soldiers were to arrive later to provide additional support.
Jocko’s team, the navy seals were engaged in a heavy gunfight while attempting to evacuate a particular building. Jocko heard on the radio that a friendly Iraqi soldier was shot. The team immediately called in for the support of heavily armored ground troops and air support to strike that particular building. With the morning fog came the fog of war – bringing with it the chaos and the confusion – gunfire, enemy attacks, screaming, wounded and bloodied soldiers, and even death.
A big mistake
Even through this confusion, Jocko’s gut instinct told him that something wasn’t right. He called in to hold off on the airstrike and went to the building to assess the situation himself. He discovered that the navy seal team wasn’t firing on the enemy, but firing on their own men inside the building! Call it the confusion of war, an error of judgment, bad luck or even blame it on Murphy’s law – But Jocko’s team had committed one of the cardinal crimes of war – firing on their own people! The causalities were one Iraqi soldier dead, two wounded, one navy seal injured and everyone on the team shaken!
When Jocko went back to the command center, he found an email waiting from his commanding officer asking him to shut down all operations and wait for them to arrive at the scene. Unfortunately, the email had arrived just after he had left to go to the scene of the event and check things himself. Now Jocko had to report the incident up the chain of command, and there would be a postmortem done.
Who was at fault? Pass on the blame or take extreme ownership?
The senior officers were determined to find out what went wrong and who was responsible. Jocko had to be ready for his debriefing. He understood that someone had to be held accountable and would be fired for this horrible incident. He went over the details of the terrible incident to figure out what may have caused this grave error in the planning and execution of this mission. He found that there was plenty of blame to go around!
But he didn’t feel that it was the right thing to do. He wondered what would happen to the morale of the team if he pointed fingers at some of the team members whose actions may have contributed to this grave incident. When he was just minutes away from the debriefing, he suddenly realized whose fault it was. There was a single person responsible for this entire mess.
When he walked into the debriefing room, the senior officers and his team members, including the wounded navy seals, were eagerly waiting for his answers. Jocko’s commanding officers and his team members may have expected finger-pointing and blame to be passed on to others. Commanding officers may have been ready to “investigate” him and team members may have been ready to “defend” themselves.
Extreme Ownership
Jocko said that he knew that there was a single person he had identified who was responsible for this unfortunate and horrible incident. Who was that person? Jocko said that it was his OWN fault. As the leader in charge of the operation, he took complete and full responsibility for the incident. If the seniors thought that he should be fired, he was ready to accept the punishment. He understood clearly that if his team had to put things behind and bounce back to normal, he himself had to take complete and total responsibility. But when Jocko took “extreme ownership” and complete blame, something strange started happening!
Inspiring Extreme Ownership in others
One after another, the team members raised their hands and shouted that it was their fault! “I didn’t keep the Iraqi soldiers updated of our mission.” “I didn’t pass the information over the radio quick enough.” “I didn’t identify my target correctly and shot an Iraqi soldier.” Many of the team members admitted to their role that may have caused things to get out of hand. Instead of passing on the blame or defending themselves, the team members were taking responsibility for their own actions!
Jocko didn’t get fired! Because Jocko had taken full responsibility, the team members trusted him even more than before. Their respect for Jocko had increased. They realized that Jocko really “had their back” and would never dodge responsibility and would never pass the blame. When their leader took “extreme ownership” it inspired the team to take ownership instead of passing on the blame.
Imagine what would have happened if Jocko had passed on the blame to other members on the team. Would it have inspired ownership? Would it have helped build trust? Would the team’s subsequent performance be hampered? That is the difference between a leader taking complete responsibility and ownership – even when there are things that are out of the leader’s control – vs. leader passing on the blame and creating a toxic leadership culture.
Jocko then promised to everyone that he would never let this happen under his watch. He outlined his plan – new tactics, new procedures, and new training – to ensure that this never happened again.
Extreme Ownership is a game-changer in 2020
What a leader does when things go wrong, can either inspire an organizational culture of ownership or instigate an organizational culture of blame and passing the buck. As a leader, don’t make excuses. Don’t pass on the blame. Don’t let your ego get the better of you. Swallow your pride. Even when there are situations and circumstances that are beyond your control, take complete responsibility! For everything! Your mistakes, your shortcomings, and team results. Don’t we take complete responsibility for successes as a leader? Why not take complete responsibility for the problems and failures?
In battle and in business as well as in life – a leader must take “extreme ownership”. It is a game-changer! It inspires the team members to do the same. It transforms team culture. It lights the fire in people to take their performance to the next level. It is a leadership super-power!
How do your extreme ownership as your organization culture?
Would you like the leaders in your organization to become better leaders? Take more responsibility and ownership instead of passing the buck? Even extreme ownership like Jocko Willink did? We help leaders do just that – take ownership of their behaviors and outcomes through the process of feedback and feed-forward using Dr. Marshall Goldsmith’s stakeholder centered leadership coaching.
Why is coaching important in leadership development? How is it beneficial? Leadership coaching is the most effective way to ensure that leadership improvement takes place. That leader takes ownership and responsibility for her behavior and results. Executive education and training programs help in creating awareness for change – however behavior change requires customized solutions and consistent follow-up and accountability, which executive coaching provides by its design.
Marshall Goldsmith executive coaching is one of the best leadership development programs available in India and worldwide through a network of more than 3500 coaches who provide the same consistent executive coaching process that has been used by many of the Fortune 500 companies for their leadership development coaching programs.
We offer Marshall Goldsmith coaching in India, the middle east, and southeast Asia. It is the best coaching program in India because it is exactly the same executive coaching process used by Marshall Goldsmith to coach CEOs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide and we guarantee measurable leadership growth or you don’t pay at all.
Here are some of the features of Marshall Goldsmith executive coaching program
Guaranteed, measurable leadership growth as assessed – not by us – but by the leader’s own stakeholders
Unlike leadership training or executive education programs, the entire team will be involved while doing their day to day work
The leader becomes the coach and it has a cascading effect on the team increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture
It is a system for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams – although it is leadership coaching for the individual leader, the benefit of team coaching is realized through the involvement of the entire team
In a study of 11,000 leaders on 4 continents – 95% of the leaders using this leadership coaching process improved!
This is the exact same executive coaching process that has been used by 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to grow their leaders through CEO coaching and leadership coaching at C-suite levels
We are so confident of the process that we work on a no growth no pay basis (don’t try that with other vendors, lol!)
Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today
Does practice make you better? Does leadership practice make you a better leader? Well, mostly not! For example, doctors 20 years into their career are no better in their skills than doctors who are only 5 years into their careers.
When you are a novice, you get better with practice. But only till you reach a satisfactory level of performance. After that point, more practice doesn’t make you any better, whether it is clinical practice, leadership practice or anything else. Unless you use the deliberate practice!
Deliberate leadership practice makes you a better leader! Deliberate practice makes you perfect in anything you want to get better at.
Does leadership practice make you better?
We all know the adage – practice makes you perfect. Does it really? If you have been a doctor for 20 years, you have 20 years of practice under your belt.
Would you not be better than doctors who only have been practicing for 5 years? Obviously the more the practice, the better you are supposed to get.
A study concluded that doctors 20 years into their career are no better in their skills than doctors who are only 5 years into their careers.
What could be the reason for this? When you are a novice, you get better with practice. But only till you reach a satisfactory level of performance. After that point, more practice doesn’t make you any better, whether it is clinical practice, leadership practice or anything else.
Unless you use the deliberate practice! Deliberate leadership practice makes you a better leader! Deliberate practice makes you better at anything. Read on to find out more about deliberate practice.
A study by Anders Ericsson
Eminent researcher and psychologist Anders conducted some research on the effect of practice on performance. He recruited Steve Faloona, an undergraduate student from Carnegie Mellon University to conduct an experiment on deliberate practice.
For a period of one hour, Steve had to listen to a string of random digits and try to recall and repeat the digits only from his memory. He started with recalling 6 digits. When he was successful in recalling 6 digits for a few repetitions, he would then get 7 digit strings to recall.
In case he had difficulty recalling 7 digits for a few repetitions, he would go back to recalling only 6 digits. Thus Steve was always pushing his limits and working at the end of his comfort zone.
We estimate the short term or working memory to hold just 7 bits of information and Steve could soon recall 7 digit numbers with ease. Then he sort of hit a wall and had difficulty recalling 8 digit strings of numbers.
It would frustrate him, but he kept coming back week after week and practicing for an hour. Then, one day, he had a breakthrough – he went from being able to recall 7 digits to recalling 8, 9, 10 and even 11 digit numbers by the end of that single one-hour session!
This pattern of hitting a wall, getting frustrated, still continuing the practice, and then suddenly getting a breakthrough happened routinely as he kept working on trying to recall more and more digits from his working memory.
He got stuck at being able to recall 22 digits, then suddenly hit a breakthrough. The same thing happened at 34 digits and so on. By the end of his 200th session, Steve was able to recall numbers that were 82 digits long! That is 75 more digits and seven times longer strings of numbers than the perceived limitations of human memory estimated at 7 bits of information!
The remarkable results of deliberate practice
Anders credits the four components of deliberate practice for this remarkable achievement by Steve and Dario. As a result of the deliberate practice using the 4 steps, Steve’s brain came up with creative ways of thinking and remembering the digits of the numbers. One such idea was to think of the numbers attached to the branch of a tree.
Another idea was to see the 4 digits of a long number as a single chunk. When he was recalling 22 digit numbers, he had learned to chunk 6 digit numbers together. Without deliberate practice involving these 4 steps, it is difficult for the brain to come up with new techniques and it is not possible to achieve such breakthroughs.
Anders repeated the same experiment with Dario, who was Steve’s friend. Dario learned much faster and was able to remember 20 digit numbers within just a few sessions. Why?
Because Steve had taught him how to use his mental representations and techniques! Dario also developed some of his own techniques. With the head start of Steve’s techniques and coming up with some of his own, Dario was able to recall 100 digit numbers!
Therein lies the second amazing idea for performance improvement. Get a coach! Anders Ericsson had found this to be the formula for breakthrough performance improvement.
What is Deliberate Practice?
According to author James Clear – “Deliberate practice refers to a special type of practice that is purposeful and systematic. While regular practice might include mindless repetitions, deliberate practice requires focused attention and is conducted with the specific goal of improving performance.”
Well-defined goal and motivation to achieve it
Intense focus and repeated practice
Immediate feedback – You cannot manage what you don’t measure – Peter Drucker. Feedback requires that we measure and compare each repetition with the previous one and work on getting just a little better.
Working at the end of the comfort zone – stretch or growth zone, and not hitting the panic zone
The goal for Steve was obvious. When he was able to successfully recall 12 digits, recalling 13 digits was immediately the next goal.
2. Practice sessions with an intense focus
He consistently practiced recalling the digits one hour per day.
3. Immediate feedback
Steve received immediate feedback whether he got the digits right or not.
4. Working at the edge of the comfort zone
When Steve extended his abilities to remember 10 digit numbers, he would move up to recalling 11 digits. On the other hand, if he failed to recall a 10 digit number for a few times, he would move down to recalling 9 digit numbers. The growth zone lies between the comfort zone and the panic zone. Steve was consistently working within his growth zone.
Our Marshall Goldsmith stakeholder centered coaching – MGSCC for short – uses these two concepts perfectly, deliberate leadership practice and services of an executive coach.
Deliberate leadership practice and having a coach!
That probably is the reason that Marshall Goldsmith stakeholder centered executive coaching has a success rate of 95% and is considered the best executive coaching program in India and around the world. Executive coaching is available through a network of more than 3500 coaches who provide the same consistent executive coaching process that has been used by many of the Fortune 500 companies for their leadership development coaching programs.
This executive coaching uses the four components of deliberate practice along with a leadership coach.
Focus on one or two specific areas of improvement instead of talking about general principles and theories of leadership
Intense focus on improving just these two areas – focus delivers results.
Using stakeholders to get immediate feedback and reinforcement – there can be little improvement without measurement and feedback.
Growth lies outside of the comfort zone! When leaders practice their new behaviors to get better, it is uncomfortable in the beginning. But with enough practice and feedback, these behaviors become second nature for the leader. They become part of the skill set of the leader.
We offer Marshall Goldsmith coaching in India, the middle east, and southeast Asia. It is the best coaching program in India because it is exactly the same executive coaching process used by Marshall Goldsmith to coach CEOs of Fortune 500 companies worldwide and we guarantee measurable leadership growth or you don’t pay at all.
Here are some of the features of Marshall Goldsmith executive coaching program
Guaranteed, measurable leadership growth as assessed – not by us – but by the leader’s own stakeholders
Unlike leadership training or executive education programs, the entire team will be involved while doing their day to day work
The leader becomes the coach and it has a cascading effect on the team increasing the team effectiveness and improving organizational culture
It is a system for continuous improvement for leaders themselves and their teams – although it is leadership coaching for the individual leader, the benefit of team coaching is realized through the involvement of the entire team
In a study of 11,000 leaders on 4 continents – 95% of the leaders using this leadership coaching process improved!
This is the exact same executive coaching process that has been used by 150 of the Fortune 500 companies to grow their leaders through CEO coaching and leadership coaching at C-suite levels
We are so confident of the process that we work on a no growth no pay basis (don’t try that with other vendors, lol!)
Schedule an exploratory 15-minute conversation with our leadership adviser today
