Kairospl

July 28, 2010

This is Part 1 of an article well written by Brian Emerson and Anne Loehr. You will definitely benefit from this article.

A good manager must master the use of a number of different tools and know when each is appropriate and when it is not. Coaching is just one of these skills. We don’t want to give the impression that if a manager spends all of his time coaching, life will be dandy. Nothing could be further from the truth. An effective manager needs to know how and when to use the tool of coaching and when to pick another, more appropriate tool. There is an old adage that says, “When the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

We are the first to admit that coaching is not the only, or necessarily the best, management tool. However, when used appropriately in the right situation, coaching is a sure fire way of developing and managing the people who report to you.

What Is the Tool of Coaching?

As we said, coaching is not the end-all-and-be-all of management tools. Employees need coaching when they are experiencing problems with the Attitude (motivation, confidence, energy, focus, determination) component of the Success Equation. Good indicators of a coaching situation are things like:

• when a person is experiencing trouble completing a job that he should already know how to do (i.e., there is no Aptitude issue), 
• when a person has gotten himself completely wrapped around the axle about a certain situation, or
• when a person needs help dealing with the frustration he experiences because they do not have the resources needed to complete the task at hand.

As humans, when we are in these situations, it is natural to need help getting ourselves out of the weeds. We need someone or something to help get us to a place where we can see things clearly and make solid decisions from a position of effectiveness and empowerment instead of a place where we are completely hung up and not seeing straight. That’s where coaching comes in. Managers should use coaching as a tool when an employee has the skills and ability to do the specific task, but for some reason they are struggling with the confidence, focus, motivation, drive, or bandwidth to deal with the situation in a manner that is as effective as possible.

Much to the dismay of many managers, Attitude issues usually far outweigh Aptitude issues. Try this experiment:

• Think about your employees and the colleagues around you.
• Take a minute and make a list of the types of things that they spend the majority of their time struggling with.
• Examine the list.
• How many things on the list have to do with Aptitude—not having the skills and abilities to do the tactical aspect of their jobs?
• How many have to do with motivation, frustration, energy, focus, confidence, interpersonal issues, that is, the intangible things that have nothing to do with the actual skill of completing the job at hand (the “Attitude” part of the Success Equation)?

Usually, the majority of items on such a list involve Attitude—the keystone in the Success Equation that affects the Level of Success in exponential ways. If managers want their employees to be effective, they need to be able to help them deal with all of the things that are in the Attitude grouping from the exercise above. Coaching is about providing the support and guidance necessary to do just that.

Again, our definition of a coach is someone who helps another person reach higher levels of effectiveness by creating a dialogue that leads to awareness and action. Sounds good, huh? But what does it really mean and how does that help develop employees in the situations identified above? Let’s break it down. 

• Dialogue. A dialogue is a conversation in which both parties are seeking understanding. They are not trying to prove, teach, or motivate each other to do something. Coaching is a conversation in which the coach attempts to understand, and, thereby, helps the coachee to understand, what and how it is that the coachee is blocking his own success. A coach “creates” this dialogue by using skills such as listening, asking, and others outlined in chapter 3, and by focusing on helping the other person.
• Helpful. There has to be a genuine concern for the coachee on the part of the coach. To be effective, a manager has to really want to see the employee succeed, and he must hold the belief that his own success is connected to the success of the employee. A certain level of trust must exist and the coach cannot be in a situation whereby he is trying to “fix it.” This is tough. For the most part, managers are where they are in life because they are good at fixing things. They are so used to fixing problems, that they often don’t put themselves in the role of helping other people fix it for themselves.
• Awareness. The reason that a coach or manager does not try to “fix it” when he is coaching is because people learn more when they figure things out for themselves, especially when they are learning about how their Attitude is hindering their level of success. People learn more when they can be involved in their own teaching, and they are much more likely to take action on that teaching and apply it again in other situations if they have discovered it for themselves.
• Action. At the end of a coaching dialogue, there is action of some sort. The coachee will do something differently, shift the direction of a goal, or try a new approach to his situation. Without action, the dialogue is just a nice conversation between an employee and a concerned manager, not coaching.
• Higher Level of Effectiveness. The goal of the entire coaching process is to lead to higher levels of effectiveness. This is important to keep in mind, because coaching is not a quick-hit tool. It takes time, has a laid-back pace, and usually requires a manager to stop what he is doing and focus completely on the employee and the coaching situation. The good news to all of this is that when done correctly and in the right situation, coaching works to make the job of the manager easier because it develops employees who are learning and looking for new and better ways of doing their jobs and meeting company objectives in a timelier manner.

So, coaching is helping another person reach higher levels of effectiveness by creating a dialogue that leads to awareness and action. Said differently, coaching is a two-way conversation in which a manager asks questions and provides support in a way that enables an employee to understand how they can make changes to be more effective for themselves, their manager, and their organization.

July 18, 2010

Below is an article from Steve Martin from Influence At Work, UK which I would like to share with:

This month I want to persuade you to buy a car. It’s a compact sedan with a small trunk, good gas economy although the performance is nothing to write home about. Not a great start I hear you cry. And it gets worse. I am going to charge you several thousand dollars more for this car than other highly efficient and better equipped cars on the market.

The car I want to persuade you to buy is the Toyota Prius, arguably one of the most successful cars of recent times. Many have put its success down to people being incentivised to purchase one by way of the extra tax credits available to them. However after tax incentives were removed in 2006 rather than falling off a cliff, Prius sales actually rose by over 68%.

So what is persuading purchasers to be so keen to go green and can we apply the same lessons to our influence attempts?

In a recent study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vladas Griskevicius from the University of Minnesota along with Joshua Taylor and Bram Van den Bergh from the University of New Mexico and the Rotterdam School of Management claim that making environmentally conscientious purchase decisions can be seen as altruistic and as a result publically enhance people’s status. As a result people can be persuaded to pay more money for a product that is green, not necessarily because it is any better than a comparable non-green product, but just because it is green.

To test their ideas a series of studies were set up where participants were asked to consider the purchase of three everyday items; a car, a dishwasher and a common household cleaner, each of which was available for purchase as either an environmentally conscientious green option or as a non-green option. In effect there were 6 products in total – 3 green and 3 non-green.

Each of the product types were equally priced, however it was clear that the features of the non-green products were considerably more luxurious than the more environmentally friendly ones. To give an example, the dishwashers had the same price ($1,100) but the luxurious non-green option featured a revolutionary drying system and came in a choice of finishes whereas the ‘green’ dishwasher used a water recycling system and was made with recycled parts.

Before they were asked to consider which of the products they would most likely choose, half the study participants were primed to think about ‘feelings of status’ by reading a story describing how they had landed a great new job and how very impressed they were by all the trappings of the office’s high-status features like the upscale lobby and the designer furniture. The other half read a control story that didn’t elicit any feelings of status.

When it came to choosing between the green and non-green options, getting people to consider their status had a significant influence over their choices. In the case of the car, 54% of participants who were primed to think about status chose the more environmentally conscientious green option compared to just 37% in the control condition. Similar results were recorded for the dishwasher and the household cleaner products. But why?

The study authors suggest that there are two potential influences at play here. The first is ‘costly signaling theory’ which is the idea that people often show off by drawing attention to excess energy and other resources they possess -  much like a peacock showing off to attract a mate. The second is ‘competitive altruism’ which is the idea that public displays of selflessness can build desirable reputations – think Bill Gates for example. To test these ideas a couple of further studies were conducted.

The first of these found that people in the ‘status’ group were less likely to choose green option products when no one knew about their purchases – for example if they made a purchase online.

A follow up study found that people in the status group preferred green option products less if they cost less to purchase. Thinking about their status and position persuaded people to make a less than optimal economic decision by choosing a more expensive but green option. It was like they were saying “look at me, I am a friend of the environment and I can afford to be a friend of the environment”. 

Perhaps this is the reason why, contrary to the belief that Toyota Prius sales would plummet after the tax incentive was removed, they actually continued to rise. It might also explain why so many Hollywood stars were persuaded to ditch their Ferraris and drive to the film set in their new Prius instead.

For those of us who would like to persuade more clients and customers to choose the green option there is some potentially good news. You don’t necessarily have to compromise on price, providing you think of ethical ways to publicly recognise your customers as environmentally conscious individuals.

This research should also prove insightful to those in the public sector who have the challenge of influencing whole communities to behave in more environmentally conscientious ways. Ensuring that there are mechanisms in place to publicly elevate the status of those who are acting in desirable ways can be very effective – just as effective as providing financial incentives.

 And for those of you who are yet to be persuaded to buy that Prius from me. Forget about the extra money it will cost. Instead imagine how wonderful your neighbors will think you are when you drive it to the store at 5mph so that everyone can see it really is you.

And remember not to park it in the garage!  

Source:
Griskevicius, V., Tybur, J.M., Van den Bergh, B. (2010) Going green to be seen: Status, reputation and conspicuous conservation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology Vol. 98(3), 392-404

Watch out for the annoucement for the next Principles of Workshop in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

July 13, 2010

Coaching is just one tool that a manager must use to be successful. Used in the right situation at the right time, coaching can make the life of a manager immensely easier. Conversely, a manager will end up extremely frustrated if they try to coach employees who need something else from their manager, whose situations do not call for coaching, or who flat out don’t want to be coached. Learning how to recognize when and when not to coach is just as important as learning how to coach.

Coaching is a dialogue that leads to Awareness and Action. When an employee has the skills and ability to complete the task at hand, but for some reason is struggling with the confidence, focus, motivation, drive, or bandwidth to be at their best, coaching can help. Employees typically struggle because one of three things is in their way:

1. Skills and Abilities—They currently lack the skill or ability to complete the task at hand; this relates to Aptitude.

2. Themselves—They currently lack the motivation, focus, chutzpah, confidence, or commitment to complete the task at hand; this relates to Attitude

3. Outside Factors—They currently are being affected by things that are largely outside their control, such as not having the Available Resources, changing market conditions, ineffective vendors and partners (internal and external), or poor relationships with various stakeholders and colleagues.

If an employee needs to develop specific skills and abilities, coaching is not the answer. You don’t teach someone how to create a budget for the first time by asking him curious questions in an unattached manner! You teach someone a new skill by giving him the proper instructions for that particular task. If you tried to coach him, you would end up driving yourself crazy and your employee out the door. To that end, when determining whether coaching is the right tool to use in a certain situation, first ask yourself this question:

• Is this about Aptitude? Is there a lack of skills or ability getting in the way of the employee’s success?

 If the answer is “yes,” then your answer to whether or not this is a coaching situation is “no.”

 If, in fact, the answer to the first question is “no” or “not really,” next ask yourself: 

• Is this about Attitude—his confidence, commitment, enthusiasm, focus, chutzpah, frustration?

If the answer is “yes,” then you have a situation that is primed for coaching. You will want to create a dialogue that helps the employee become aware of what they are doing and then help them develop an alternative action that will lead to better results—in short, coach them.

If the answer to the second question is “no,” then most likely the answer to the next, and final, question is “yes.” 

• Is this is about an outside factor getting in the way of success (i.e., lack of Available Resources, changing market conditions, poor relations with another stakeholder(s), or lack of direction or support from me)?

If the answer to this question is “no,” you need to reevaluate the answers to all three questions because, chanc are, you’ve missed something along the way. If the answer is “yes,” you have two more questions to ask yourself: 

• Does the employee have the skills and abilities to effectively deal with the outside factors in order to be successful?
• Does the employee have difficulty dealing effectively with the outside factors despite having the skills?

The answers to these questions will lead you down the same path as before. If the employee needs skills, teach him, but be sure to do it while utilizing coaching skills such as concern and listening. If he needs help with his attitude, coach him, but be prepared to offer suggestions and teaching tips along the way—dealing with outside factors can be tricky and there may be some skills you can teach as you go.