Tushar Vakil

Tag: One-on-One Leadership Coaching

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Leadership

Positive intelligence coaching – how it can transform your life

Positive intelligence coaching – what is it? Free positive intelligence assessment (test). What is the positive intelligence coaching program? What is the positive intelligence app? Read more to find out.

Positive Intelligence

The best way to explain positive intelligence and positive intelligence coaching are through some examples.

Do you sometimes face challenges in your personal or professional life? These challenges can be small – like driving in traffic congestion, dealing with an upset spouse or boss, a conflict with a colleague, calming down an irate customer, or completing a demanding project on time. Or the challenges can be huge – like losing a key customer for good, serious illness, losing a job, or divorce.

Life is full of challenges. Many of them are relatively smaller inconveniences and annoyances, while other challenges are bigger and test our mettle and resilience. How do you deal with these challenges?

Do you get upset while facing these challenges? Do you feel negative emotions like frustration, disappointment, anger, jealousy, worry, anxiety, guilt, or blame? Or do you tackle life’s challenges with poise and feel positive emotions like curiosity, creativity, excitement, joy, and peace of mind?

Wouldn’t it be extremely helpful to be able to shift our perspective to positive emotions instead of negative emotions when handling life’s challenges? That is exactly what developing positive intelligence helps you do.

Positive intelligence definition

Positive intelligence is our capacity to respond to life’s challenges with a positive rather than a negative mindset. The results are that we feel positive emotions rather than negative emotions and improve our performance and happiness in response to life’s challenges.

The concept is easy to understand but we all know that our thoughts and emotions are often on autopilot. Here is an example to illustrate the point.

Let’s say that you have an important presentation to make to the board of directors next week. When your mind tells you to prepare for this important presentation, it is acting as your friend. However, when your mind wakes you up in the middle of the night – worrying about the presentation, it is not helping you. Your mind races in an endless loop (again and again), thinking about the consequences of failing, creating worst-case scenarios – what if I screw up? I will lose my job. I will lose my house. And on and on. Your mind only creates unnecessary anxiety and suffering and doesn’t help make the situation any better. Now, your mind is acting as your worst enemy.

Our minds are our best friends AND our minds are also our worst enemies!

Research on positive intelligence

The positive intelligence concept is pioneered by Shirzad Chamine, lecturer at Stanford University, C-suite adviser, a coach to hundreds of CEOs, and a bestselling author. His book – “Positive Intelligence: Why Only 20% of Teams and Individuals Achieve Their True Potential and how You Can Achieve Yours.” is both a NY Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller and has been translated into over 20 languages. Hyperlink to Amazon website

In the book, Shirzad Chamine reveals (through the concept of positive intelligence) how to achieve one’s true potential for both professional success and personal fulfillment.

It is based on research on

  • Hundreds of CEOs and their executive teams
  • Stanford students
  • World-class athletes
  • 500,000 participants from 50 countries

Foundations of positive intelligence are built on the synthesis of four breakthrough areas

Positive Intelligence breakthrough areas

  • Neuroscience
  • Positive psychology
  • Cognitive behavioral therapy
  • Performance science

The impact of positive intelligence

Improving positive intelligence has a tremendous impact on performance and happiness in both personal and professional lives. The details of the research are outlined in Shirzad Chamine’s book – but here is a brief synopsis

An analysis of more than two hundred different scientific studies, which collectively tested more than 275,000 people, concluded that higher levels of positive intelligence lead to higher salaries and greater success AT work, marriage, health, sociability, friendship, and creativity.

  • Salespeople with higher PQ sell 37 percent more than their lower-PQ counterparts
  • Higher-PQ workers take fewer sick days and are less likely to become burned out or quit
  • Doctors who have shifted to a higher PQ make accurate diagnoses 19 percent faster
  • Students who have shifted to a higher PQ perform significantly better on math tests
  • Higher-PQ CEOs are more likely to lead happy teams who report their work climate to be conducive to high performance
  • Project teams with higher-PQ managers perform 31 percent better on average when other factors are held equal
  • A comparison of sixty teams showed that a team’s PQ was the greatest predictor of its achievement
  • In the U.S. Navy, the squadrons led by higher-PQ commanders received far more annual prizes for efficiency and preparedness. Squadrons led by low-PQ commanders ranked lowest in performance.
  • Higher PQ results in enhanced immune system functioning, lower levels of stress-related hormones, lower blood pressure, less pain, fewer colds, better sleep, and a smaller likelihood of having hypertension, diabetes, or strokes
  • Catholic nuns whose personal journals in their early twenties showed higher PQ lived nearly ten years longer than the other nuns in their group. Higher PQ can literally help you live longer

Positive Intelligence coaching program – reviews

Positive intelligence has helped literally thousands of individuals and hundreds of companies to reduce stress, improve performance and enhance satisfaction and happiness.

Here are just some of the testimonials and comments from senior executives

“This has been the most impactful training I ever experienced. You develop powerful mental muscles to deal with challenges with much less stress and greater clarity, creativity, and resilience. Every sales professional would benefit greatly from this.”

Adam McGraw, Sales VP & GM, American Express

All my life I thought my high achievements were impossible without feeling constant stress. I’ve now learned to achieve even more with a calm and clear mind. I’m now enjoying every day, not just the final accomplishments. At the end of the quarter, I don’t feel the need for a long vacation anymore:

Sharon Pinedo, Head of Sales (Workplace), Facebook

Experienced leaders know that most change initiatives fizzle because of our mental Saboteurs. Shirzad gives us the tools to conquer these Saboteurs and create positive change that lasts. This is a must-read for any individual or team serious about unleashing peak performance.

Dean Morton, former COO, of Hewlett-Packard (HP)

The impact of positive intelligence is often game-changing for a team and life-changing for individuals. When a coach raises a team’s PQ, it can quickly shift every player from good to extraordinary. Positive Intelligence is a must-have for anyone who leads or coaches a team.

Jed York, President, and CEO, San Francisco 49ers

Positive Intelligence – How can it help?

Look at the following scenarios.  At one point in time or another, we have wondered about them.  We may have experienced ourselves or seen others experience one or more of these situations in our personal and professional lives.

  • Why can’t I keep my new year’s resolutions?
  • Why can’t I implement what I learned in the last self-improvement or leadership book I read?
  • Why do I have these glimpses of feeling really grounded and fulfilled, but it doesn’t last?
  • Why do a lot of people achieve success, but don’t experience the joy and happiness they deserve?
  • Why are so many employees disengaged and ready to leave?
  • Why do most training programs don’t result in behavior change at work?
  • Why do so many individuals and teams perform well below their potential?
  • Why do most self-improvement initiatives fizzle out?
  • Why is lasting behavior change and improvement so difficult?

The answer lies in positive intelligence!  It is because we have low levels of positive intelligence.

FREE Positive intelligence assessment (test)

As discussed earlier, our minds are constantly running various thoughts – some positive and some negative.  It is estimated that we go through 60,000 thoughts per 24-hour period and a majority of our thoughts are negative.  Positive intelligence then is the percentage of time your mind is serving you vs. sabotaging you.  Positive intelligence measures the relative strength of these two modes of our minds.  High positive intelligence means that your mind is acting as your friend more often than it is acting as your enemy.  Low positive intelligence is the opposite.  Hence positive intelligence can also be viewed as the amount of control you have over your mind and how well it acts as your friend instead of sabotaging your efforts.

Your mind is your best friend. But it can also be your worst enemy.

Which one will it be?

Inside our minds, there is a constant battle going on between the good guys and the bad guys.  We all have characters inside our heads that sabotage our efforts toward success and happiness.  Positive intelligence assessment sheds light on these saboteurs to help you see what is holding you back and how to overcome their negative influence.

Positive intelligence can both be measured through assessment and improved through a positive intelligence coaching program.  The program consists of daily practice through the positive intelligence app and positive intelligence coaching to boost your positive intelligence.

Take your FREE/COMPLIMENTARY positive intelligence test or assessment and find out which bad guys and negative thought patterns (we call them saboteurs) are inside your head and holding you back.

Click the link to take the FREE SABOTEUR ASSESSMENT

We often are aware of the inner critic and the voice in our head that puts us down and generates stress and negative emotions.  They are just one of the many saboteurs that live inside our heads.  They sabotage our potential for both happiness and performance.   What are the saboteurs that are holding you back?  A short 5-minute saboteur assessment is the best way to uncover your own saboteurs.

Take your FREE/COMPLIMENTARY positive intelligence test or saboteur assessment and discover what is holding you back from the success and happiness you deserve!

The positive intelligence coaching program

The positive intelligence assessment is the first step – diagnosing things that hold you back. It is your own personalized mental health report. The next step is positive intelligence coaching.  Positive intelligence coaching is like hiring a personal trainer for your mental fitness.

The positive intelligence program is six week program supported by the positive intelligence app for daily practice and muscle building.  It is like a mental fitness boot camp to give you a head start. You also get live weekly sessions with the positive intelligence coach.

If you have already taken the positive intelligence saboteur assessment and are ready to move to the Six week PQ coaching program

References:

Book – Positive Intelligence by Shirzad Chamine

Categories
Leadership

How can leaders inspire extreme ownership and transform organizational culture?

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

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.

organizational culture transformation

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!

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

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

Click the button below

SCHEDULE NOW!

Or call/WhatsApp on

For India :  +91-6352681614

For USA   :  +1-772-801-6109

References

Book – Extreme ownership

Deliberate practice article by James Clear – https://jamesclear.com/deliberate-practice-theory

 

 

Categories
Leadership

Leadership practice make you a better leader? Right? Wrong! Deliberate practice does!

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.”

  1. Well-defined goal and motivation to achieve it
  2. Intense focus and repeated practice
  3. 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.
  4. Working at the end of the comfort zone – stretch or growth zone, and not hitting the panic zone

Read: How to become a better leader? What does it take? or How leaders become leaders – Why what you know about leadership development may be wrong!

The Four components of deliberate practice

1. A well-defined short term goal

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.

Read: Top elements of leadership development

This executive coaching uses the four components of deliberate practice along with a leadership coach.

  1. Focus on one or two specific areas of improvement instead of talking about general principles and theories of leadership
  2. Intense focus on improving just these two areas – focus delivers results.
  3. Using stakeholders to get immediate feedback and reinforcement – there can be little improvement without measurement and feedback.
  4. 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

Click the button below

SCHEDULE NOW!

Or call/WhatsApp on

For India :  +91-6352681614

For USA   :  +1-772-801-6109

 

Categories
Leadership

Lessons for leaders: Henry Ford FAILURE story & bad leadership

Lessons for leaders: Henry Ford FAILURE story & bad leadership

Many of us have heard about the legendary leader Henry Ford assembly line and the Model T car’s success story.  The success story has a lot of lessons for leaders.  What to do to be a successful leader – persistence, hard work, and thinking outside the box.

But there is also a relatively unknown and darker story of Henry Ford’s bad leadership and equally spectacular failure!  And therein lie critical lessons for leaders.  These lessons for leaders are about what not to do as a leader. 

Leadership success often leads to ignoring feedback and some poor leadership behaviors, ultimately leading to failure. A good 360-degree feedback tool combined with leadership coaching is the most effective way to ensure that leaders become aware of his/her bottlenecks, take ownership of their behaviors and their impact, and work to improve their behavior. 

The Model T, the Henry Ford assembly line success story, and lessons for leaders

Until the 20th century, the first automobiles were hand made, clunky, and expensive.  Only the rich could afford to own one. October 1, 1908, was a noteworthy date in the automobile industry’s history. When the first Model T, the car, rolled off the assembly line and revolutionized transportation forever.  The assembly line became synonymous with Henry Ford and his ingenuity.  The Model T was the first affordable car for the mass market, and it kept selling and selling. It took seven years for Ford to sell its millionth Model T. Just a year and a half later, it sold its two-millionth. By 1920, four million model T’s were sold!

Over the next quarter of a century, it made Ford Motor the most successful automobile company globally.  It also made Henry Ford America’s second billionaire after John D. Rockefeller.

That is the success story of the legendary Henry Ford, his innovation vision, and his leadership.  Many of us have heard about this success story of Henry Ford, the assembly line, and the Model T., The lessons for leaders from Henry Ford’s success story, are persistence, tenacity, and hard work.

Henry Ford Model T

Image courtesy – Henry Ford museum

The flip side of success and the lessons for leaders

But there is also a relatively unknown and darker story of Henry Ford’s bad leadership and equally spectacular failure that took the company to the brink of bankruptcy!  There are lessons for leaders in his failure story as well.  These lessons for leaders lessons in poor leadership and are not what NOT to do as a leader!

During the 1920s, subtle but sure trends emerged that were dangerous to the Model T’s dominance.  However, Henry Ford was in denial.  Henry Ford stuck to the assembly line and mass production concept.  Ford famously declared, “History is more or less bunk.” But history was about to happen to him.

Following the depression of the 1920s, the wealth of Americans grew at a rapid rate.  By 1920, more than half the population lived in cities instead of living near a farm or in a rural community for the first time.  Working-class Americans enjoyed more leisure than ever before, and some companies implemented the two-week vacation policy.  Hollywood was turning out motion pictures that engrossed audiences. Sporting events also captured the nation’s imagination, especially Babe Ruth’s sixty home runs in 1927.  Popular culture, style, and fashion were coming to the United States.

The winds of change in the automobile industry – a lesson for leaders to stay ahead of change

This cultural and social transformation also affected the automobile industry.  Automobiles, originally just a means of transportation, became a status symbol for the upwardly mobile Americans.  Most of what we own is not on display. No one knows your salary or your financial assets, and we consider it impolite in our culture to ask. Only people invited to your home know what it looks like and can guess what it cost to furnish it.  Your automobile, by contrast, is on display wherever you drive.  It is visible, mobile, and communicates your status everywhere you drive it!

A leader in denial who refuses to change – a classic example of poor leadership behaviors and the lesson for leaders

Henry Ford refused to believe that an automobile was anything more than an appliance. His favorite slogan about the Model T was “It takes you there, and it brings you back.”  The factory that was producing the Model T was the same as it had been for years. The way he was producing it—the moving assembly line, interchangeable parts, extreme specialization of labor—was by 1925 the same as it had been for years. His pricing strategy also remained the same.  Model T came in only a single color – Black. Henry Ford wrote in 1922 that “any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants – as long as it is black.”

The desires and expectations of consumers were changing in the 1920s.  Ford’s sales in 1925 were flat compared to 1924, although the car market grew rapidly. Ford’s market share declined from 54 to 45 percent, a sign of danger.  Ford chose to ignore it.  But the legendary leader Henry Ford was in denial of the reality.  He was ignoring feedback and avoiding facing reality.  It often happens with many successful leaders; Ford cushioned himself from reality by surrounding himself with “yes men” who told him only what he wanted to hear and not what he needed to hear!

Read: Poor Leadership Behaviors & its Collateral Damage

General Motors beat Ford by listening to feedback and being responsive – an important lesson for leaders.

General Motors, on the other hand, had the answer to the needs of the changing market. Instead of following the Henry Ford assembly line concept and producing the same model in a single color, they customized.  Not only did GM differentiate its cars through colors but also through a policy designed to exploit the automobile as a status symbol.  The cars in GM’s line were Chevrolet, Pontiac, Oldsmobile, Buick, and Cadillac. Fortune magazine in the 1930s characterized the options of GM models as: “Chevrolet for the hoi polloi, … Pontiac . . . for the poor but proud, Oldsmobile for the comfortable but discreet, Buick for the striving, Cadillac for the rich.”

Unlike Ford, GM also introduced an annual model change for all its cars. With the annual model change, driving last year’s model became a comment on your status in the world.  General Motors adapted to the feedback and the changing tastes of the consumers.  It poised GM to thrive for the next few decades!

henry ford

Delivering the bad news to a leader who won’t listen

The sales department told Henry Ford that Model T sales were slipping.  Unless they substantially changed the car, it would soon stop selling.  The Henry Ford assembly line that brought them success was now an Achilles heel.  Ford said the car was fine—the problem was an incompetent sales department.  This is a typical poor leadership behavior of ignoring feedback and blaming others.

Imagine that you are a Ford executive. The truth is obvious for all to see. How do you clearly communicate to the boss, a genius, and a successful leader, that change is needed?

feedback

Poor leadership behavior – Punishing the messenger.

The man who finally decided to “bell the cat” was Ernest Kanzler.  He was a senior executive at Ford and also the brother-in-law of Ford’s only child, Edsel. He wrote a seven-page memorandum and delivered it to Ford on January 26, 1926.  Kanzler spoke the unpleasant truth. His reward was the same as for many people who do so. He was fired.  The fantasy that you can render the message untrue if you get rid of the messenger is a powerful one.

Punishing the messenger is one of the often fatal poor leadership behaviors of successful leaders.  By the mid-1920s, Ford was living in a world of his own. There was irrefutable evidence that his strategy was failing.  Ford nevertheless told The New York Times late in 1926, “The Ford car will continue to be made in the same way. . . . I am not governed by anybody’s figures but by my own information and observation.”  Ford was suffering from classic “ego traps” that successful leaders often fall prey to.

Read: The leadership ego traps that derail a leader’s career

The Achilles heel of successful leaders – Denial of reality

“What will Ford do next?”—the answer came as quite a shock to almost everyone. Ford decided to shut down the Model T plant at River Rouge completely. The plant remained shut down for nearly a year to retool it to make a new Model A. This left General Motor’s Chevrolet with no competition for an entire year!  Sensing the opportunity, Mr. Chrysler also entered the automobile market with his Plymouth model. Ford remained steadfast in his denial of what the automobile market had become.  After killing off the Model T, he created the Model A.  Although Model A was a technically improved product, there would be no “car for every purse and purpose” and no annual model change.

No one could have predicted the catastrophic fall of Henry Ford and the Ford Motor Company.

This marked the end of the market leadership of the Ford Motor Company. Occasionally over the next decade, it would beat GM in sales. However, except for three years (1929, 1930, and 1935), Ford trailed GM in the automobile’s market share by a wide margin for eight decades to come!  Henry Ford never changed. Successful leaders often become superstitious – they hold on to doing the same things that originally made them successful.  Not changing is a recipe for disaster. In 1945, by the end of World War II, his company was at the edge of bankruptcy.  Henry Ford II, Henry Ford’s grandson, eventually saved Ford when he took the company over later.

Bad habits of good leaders (Poor leadership behaviors) – lessons for leaders

Henry Ford exhibited many of the 20 bad habits that hold back further success – that Dr. Marshall Goldsmith lists in his bestselling book – What Got You Here Won’t Get You There”.

  • Not listening: Successful leaders often disregard others’ ideas and are unwilling to listen to others. It is not only disrespectful to the team members but also harmful as it was with Henry Ford.
  • Telling the world how smart we are: Successful leaders suffer from this tendency to show off. The need to show people we’re smarter than they think we are.  It is unnecessary and annoying to others.
  • Making destructive comments: The needless sarcasm and cutting remarks that we think make us witty. Ford was known for such sarcastic comments and practical jokes that may be funny to him but insulted others.
  • Making excuses: The need to reposition our annoying behavior as a permanent fixture, so people excuse us for it.
  • Clinging to the past: The need to deflect blame away from ourselves and onto events and people from our past, a subset of blaming everyone else.
  • Punishing the messenger: The misguided need to attack the innocent who are usually only trying to help us.  Henry Ford did it to Ernest Kanzler, who was just a messenger of the bad news.

It is not just the arrogant leaders who fall prey to these bad leadership habits.  The most humble leaders often fall prey to many of these bad habits when they constantly get positive reinforcement.  When a leader hardly ever gets real, truthful, and unfiltered feedback that may help them stay grounded, it is easy to fall prey to one or more of these bad habits.

How can leaders stay grounded and avoid the bad habits that derail their careers?

A good 360-degree feedback tool combined with leadership coaching is the most effective way to ensure that leaders become aware of his/her bottlenecks, take ownership of their behaviors and their impact, and work to improve their behavior. 

One of the most effective tools for leaders to stay grounded is to get regular and anonymous 360-degree feedback from all the team members with whom the leader interacts regularly.  This allows the leader to see himself as others see him.  Any difference in perception between how the leader sees himself and how others see the leader is an area where the leader may be blindsided and addressed through leadership coaching. The 360-degree feedback should be administered to ALL leaders at least once a year.  It is one of the best tools to identify strengths and improvement areas for leadership development.

Global Leadership Assessment (GLA360) for your leadership team

The Global Leadership Assessment (GLA360) is a 360-degree feedback tool based on extensive research and designed and tested by Dr. Marshall Goldsmith.  He has been awarded and recognized worldwide and is considered the #1 Leadership Thinker and the Executive Coach to Fortune 500 CEOs.   The research included the CEOs of Fortune 100 companies, global thought leaders and their inputs, and international business executives of multinationals on six continents.

A statistician creates most assessments.  In contrast, the GLA 360 is created based on inputs by the leaders and for the leaders.  A real-life leader, in all likeliness, will know a lot more about leadership than an academician or a statistician.  You are assessed on competencies that have made real leaders in multinationals successful.  You are compared with actual leaders, which gives a more accurate assessment helpful in the real world.

The GLA 360  measures the following 15 competencies that matter to real leaders on 6 continents.  It shows leaders the areas they need to develop to succeed in a competitive business environment.

360-degree feedback

 

gla 360 asessment

Helping successful leaders become more successful – lessons for leaders

Making leaders aware of their strengths and improvement areas through 360-degree feedback is only the first step.  The next step is to help the leader leverage their strengths and improve weaknesses through 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.

World’s number 1 Executive Coaching program designed by World’ number 1 leadership thinker

Read: Everything you ever wanted to know about executive coaching

world's number 1 executive coaching

We offer our New Age Leadership – NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

References

Book – Denial: Why Business Leaders Fail to Look Facts in the Face and What to do about it – by Richard S. Tedlow

Book – What Got You Here Won’t Get You There – by Marshall Goldsmith

Categories
Leadership

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

The statistics on the effectiveness of leadership training and executive education programs are both shocking and depressing!  Despite a plethora of executive education and leadership training programs and many consultants offering them, most executive education and leadership development programs waste time and money! Why does leadership training fail?  Because there is a fundamental problem with them!  Read on to find out what this problem is and how to fix it.

A fundamental problem with leadership programs

Executive education and leadership development programs have a fundamental problem. What is it? They often assume that leadership knowing equals leadership doing!

Unfortunately, knowing is not the same as doing!  Neither in life nor in leadership. We know many things, but we only consistently do a minuscule of the things we know!

Let me give you an example that I often use in my training sessions to drive home this point.  “How many of you have attempted to lose a few pounds?”

Often many people raise their hands when I ask this question.  During adulthood, most of us have put on a few extra pounds that we want to shed.

Knowing is NOT the same as doing!

Then I ask – “Do you have any suggestions for me to lose a few pounds around my waist?”  And I get a lot of suggestions like – eat more fruits, more raw vegetables, cut down on sugar, exercise more, eat mindfully, join a gym, take the stairs instead of the elevator, walk 10,000 steps daily, and on and on.

Most of them are usually excellent and useful suggestions. I then say – “Thank you for the lovely and useful suggestions!”.  My next question is – “How many of you consistently implement one or more of these suggestions regularly?”

Very few people raise their hands in answer to this question!  Knowing how to lose weight is not the same as doing it consistently enough to get the desired outcome.

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

Awareness is NOT the same as Action!

There is high awareness amongst Americans about weight loss.  Diet books are popular and are often on the list of best-selling books.

Americans are buying more and more diet books than ever, and yet there are more obese people in America today than ever!  People simply do not lose weight by reading a diet book!

More diet books are sold than ever, yet more Americans are obese than ever!

Leadership is no different.  The fundamentally flawed assumption in leadership training and executive education programs is that attending a course for a few days and knowing about some leadership skills and tools will translate into job leadership behavior change.  Unfortunately, leadership development doesn’t happen this way.
“Leadership awareness may happen in a training program – leadership development occurs when a leader is at her work, interacting with her team! “ – Tushar Vakil.

Approach leadership development like a fitness regime and fix why leadership training fails

We should approach leadership development like a fitness regime.  If we want to get fit, a one-week routine at the gym once or twice a year, just doesn’t work!

 

We should approach leadership development like a fitness regime.  If we want to get fit, a one-week routine at the gym once or twice a year, just doesn’t work!

We need to work out regularly, probably daily. The exercise routine should be customized based on our individual needs and not a standard curriculum of one size fits all.  Our diet regime should be designed similarly.   Despite the help and despite the good intentions, we will fail to go to the gym.

Failing, dusting ourselves off, and getting “back on the wagon” should be part of the fitness routine’s design and shouldn’t come as a surprise.  Why?

That is how human beings learn and form habits.  Losing weight and keeping it off is a process and not an event – and so is leadership development!  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%!

Read: The Swiss army knife of talent development is leadership coaching!

“Personal trainer” for your leadership development – to fix why leadership training fails

Using Marshall Goldsmith’s stakeholder-centered coaching process, our leadership coaching program 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.

The leadership coach will 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!

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.

Guaranteed and measurable leadership growth 

Would you like to develop leaders in your organization?  We use Marshall Goldsmith’s stakeholder centered coaching process to deliver measurable and guaranteed leadership growth.

NAL Triple Advantage Leadership Coaching

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Click the button below.

SCHEDULE NOW!

 

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Tushar Vakil

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