How overwhelmed do you feel in the morning when you open up your email and are instantly buried alive by everything in your inbox?
Watch this video for helpful tips
Here is the text version of this video too. Feel free to print it out to assist in creating a new practice with how you approach email every day. Let me know if this new practice is impacting the way you manage your day at pete@peakcoach.com.
I was asked twice this week in my CEO Coaching - "Do CEOs and other senior leaders need to really practice certain skills to be successful?"
My response is - Does Tiger Woods practice? Does Michael Phelps practice? What about top musicians and ballerinas? Do they practice? Of course they do! They practice to get to the top and once there, they have to continue to practice to remain on top. Any type of practice will not get you the results you want to achieve on the court, in the boardroom, or in the theater. You need a practice plan that includes deliberate practice in order to fulfill your potential.
Here is a video for more on this topic.
I would love to hear what you have committed to practicing and your plan. Email me at pete@peakcoach.com.
Success comes from deliberate practice and stretching as a Coaching Leader. Try Coach Pete's Daily Huddle and watch what happens with your team!
Watch this video by Coach Pete to learn more about The Daily Huddle
Email me at pete@peakcoach.com and let him know if you have tried the daily huddle and the impact it has had on your team.
Executive and Coaching Highlight Reel: Sit in on a recent real coaching session to get a sense of how CEO Coaching can not only improve business results, but the CEOs personal satisfaction.
Phoenix, Arizona - October 1, 2009
(My CEO coaching client is being held accountable to bringing a tangible business result to validate the Coaching.)
Coach: How's the coaching going with Jeff? (client's long term under performer)
Client: His attitude, engagement, and results have noticeably improved!
Coach: Why do you think that has happened?
Client: I think now he feels like he and I are working together to solve his problems and raise his performance. Before it seemed like I was "harping on him" and he was "full of excuses" why he wasn't doing better. Now we are having a coaching session once a week reviewing last week's results and strategizing and committing to new techniques to improve. At first he was a bit reluctant and not open to the Coaching. Each week he has become more comfortable with the coaching conversation and the process.
Coach: Congratulations!! What should you do next?
Client: Not sure.
Coach: How can you get even more of this?
Client: Point out that I notice a better attitude and the impact it's having on results?
Coach: Exactly! So are you going to have that conversation with him? (new commitment)
Client: Yes.
Coach: By when?
Client: At our meeting on Monday.
Coach: Please send me an email after your meeting on Monday and let me know how it went.
View from Coach Pete:
When my CEOs learn how to be Coaching Leaders they create a stronger, more collaborative relationship with their staff. Ultimately it is built upon repetition and practice (consistent coaching by the leader) and builds trust and personal accountability.
What do winemaking and business have in common?
While celebrating our 20th anniversary, Karen and I visited the Napa Valley wineries. A friend of mine, Tony Wasowicz, is the Chief Winemaker at Michel-Schlumberger Wines (http://www.michelschlumberger.com/). Tony gave us a tour and explained all of the latest thinking on organic farming. I asked naively, "so I imagine that you give the grapes a good supply of water?" He said, "no, in fact we found that when we gave them a plentiful supply of water they became plump and fat, and not very flavorful. Tony explained that they found that if they kept the grapes on the edge of starvation it creates the most fruitful and delicious grape which in turn makes the best wine.
That hit me right between the eyes! Isn't it the same in life and business? If you look at human nature, when things are plentiful and easy, we tend to become lethargic, bloated, and not as fulfilled or sharp. It's the same thing in Coaching. As a leader it is your job to keep people in a state of disequilibrium. We need to actually keep them on the edge of competitiveness and challenging themselves to create the greatest performance, focus, and execution. Now, not to by cynical, but the folks who are not leaders are kind of sitting back hoping they can be plump, fat and not working that hard.
As a Coaching Leader, it is your job to make sure that you keep them stretched and growing. Growth and change require a certain amount of discomfort, just like the grapes. As a Coach, don't let your people become raisins ro bloated grapes, challenge them just enough. In winemaking discomfort leads to great tasting wine - In Business Coaching discomfort leads to great business results and personal satisfaction. In my work as a CEO Coach, I find that most CEOs are constantly trying to create the right amount of disequilibrium with their staff. Keep stretching them! Try the Coach Approach and you and your team will get the most our of each other.
Dad -- make sure and have the hard conversation to set leadership mutual expectations before letting your son in the family business.
As a Family Business Coach I encounter this situation very often. Dad genuinely wants his son to come into the business but has real concerns about the son's ability to perform at a high level. Dad is torn between his desire to have the son join the business and his concern about performance. So what does he do? If he plays the tough guy and brings up performance issues too soon the son's going to hit the road and go do something else. And if he doesn't bring up the issue he's going to potentially set himself and his son up for a large amount of frustration and personal disappointment.
The number one thing you need to do is to create clear and objective performance standards for everyone in your organization, especially family members! I know, I've had my own kids work in my business and have felt this same dilemma. But at the end of the day I'm not doing them or me any favors by changing my standards. In fact I give them a great opportunity to learn how to be a highly productive and successful employee and additionally give myself an opportunity to be a great leader.
This is an ongoing process. As your children's roles evolve in the business you need to continually be checking and fine-tuning performance standards. Don't be afraid to have Family Business Coach with a more objective eye help you in this process. You can also practice thinking of this person even though it's your own child as a non-family employee. What kind of job description do you have for that person? How would you evaluate their performance?
The bottom line is you need to practice high levels of communication before they enter the business. As a Family Business Coach, I often find myself facilitating those kinds of conversations. We allow the fathers to voice their concerns and the children to ask questions and clearly understand the expectations.
Two of the most common challenges I see are the father thinking the children should do exactly as they did, and the children not being able to hold themselves up to family standards as an overreaction to dad's expectations. Dad, you need to give them clear expectations as if they were a non-family member employee. Next generation children, you need to perform at or above non family employee standards.
I have a piece of paper written up in my office that my grandfather wrote in 1952 to my father who was working in the family business. From Dick Walsh "reiterate must stick to business more than ordinary employees?" I hold that piece of paper as a treasured item of our family business. When I was in the family business it kind of made me angry to look at the piece of paper, but in truth, it's a great philosophy. As a family member you have an integral part in setting the tone and expectation of the business. Stretch yourself, give it your all, and set the pace for high levels of personal commitment and personal results.
Anything short of that is going to be a problem!
In my research for my upcoming book, End the Leadership Madness - The "Coach Approach" to Extraordinary Business Results,I am studying many of the greatest coaches from a variety of fields of endeavor (sports, performing arts, etc). One of them is Lou Holtz, the famous Notre Dame Football Coach. I thought he did a wonderful job of answering the "why coaching?" question.
He writes "Coaching gives one a chance to be successful as well as significant. The difference between those two is that when you die, your success comes to an end. When you are significant, you continue to help others be successful long after you are gone. Significance lasts many lifetimes. That is why people teach, people lead, and why people coach. As I leave the field of play, I enjoy the feeling of being a winning coach. But more important, I hope that I have been a person of significance in the lives of these young men".
In my work as a CEO Coach and Family Business CoachI have found that Coaching creates a stronger and deeper connection to people and their willingness to work hard and stretch for extraordinary levels of business results. But as Coach Holtz says, even more important is that I believe the impact you have as a coaching leader runs deeper and wider into how people live their lives, and in turn impact others.
Our PACE Coaching System was designed as a result of CEOs asking for a simple and effective way to coach their staff. It is an integral part of all of our business coaching engagements. Whether or not you use PACE, learn how to coach, and become significant!
As a CEO Coach, this morning I heard a familiar story play out. The CEO was talking about the need for higher level of performance out of one of his team members and confessed " in order to get it done right I decided to do it myself. It's faster and easier!"
Let's face it most CEOs, business owners and family business founders got where they are because they have a great personal commitment to producing high levels of results. The problem is it's not scalable unless they learn how to coach and develop others to take on that same level of personal commitment and drive for results.
As his CEO Coach we discussed how he could go back and coach his employee to produce a higher level of results. As most CEOs do, he indicated his concern for the amount of time and effort it takes to coach versus just doing it himself. But what you have to remember is you're really trying to build a culture of high performance and to make your organization scalable. You will not create a high level sustainable organization on your own individual performance!
As much as you don't want to hear it, you need to learn how to coach and motivate others. Great coaches know how to tap into people's intrinsic motivators and bring out high levels of performance and personal responsibility. Yes, it is probably going to take you a little bit longer in the short run, but in the long run you'll have an organization that is sustainable without you.
This week keep an eye on yourself and watch out for the "I can do it myself quicker" attitude and begin coaching others to take on personal responsibility for high levels of results. Enjoy the journey.
Don't get me wrong. I love loyalty and loyal team members! In fact, breeding loyalty is a sign of a great coaching leader. For some coaching leaders loyalty can cause a gradual blindness kind of like glaucoma. This is one of the most debilitating problems I see in my CEO, Team and Family Business Coaching.
As a Coach you are constantly evaluating talent and looking for ways to tap into motivation to get the most out of your team members. In my business coaching, many times I see loyalty with employees who are probably no longer the right fit for the position. This loyalty is as a result of a long standing relationship and tenure with the company. Think about it. When you started out you were small group and two or three of your most loyal lieutenants have stayed with you over the years and eventually you've promoted them into key roles within your organization. Unfortunately, at some point, the job or the complexity of the position may have outgrown their talent. Now you're stuck in this dilemma. Here's a person who's been a very hard working and dedicated member of your team, yet no longer effective in their role.
What you do as a Coach? This is where the art of coaching comes into play. You need to use your emotional intelligence to try to ask the right questions and truly understand what this person may be thinking and feeling. My experience is that most people know when they are in over their head and they aren't happy with the situation either. As a coaching leader you need to create a dialogue that allows this type of honest confession to occur. In most cases what's needed is a way for this person to transition to a role that better meets their capabilities and still maintain their dignity. Remember coaching is a process over time. Transitioning to a new role or out of the organization can only occur with dignity after many coaching sessions in which there are well grounded assessments about the gap in performance.
Not taking action often causes significant individual and organizational stress. Keep focused on the vision of creating a Peak Performance Coaching Culture and keep your objective coaching eye, so that you, your team and your loyal team member will be better off!
Most of the CEOs and Executives I'm coaching from Bangor, Maine to Phoenix, Arizona (and all points in between) are wrestling with the same struggle: how to connect with and motivate today's workforce! Most are frustrated and perplexed with this dilemma. Even in this difficult economic cycle many are still experiencing what appears to be low levels of urgency, personal commitment and responsibility. Why is that? Are they poor leaders?
I think it's the end of leadership. Leadership, as we've known it, for sure! The days of blindly following the command and control leader are gone! It must have been nice (and easy) to be a leader back then! You could mandate that 100 widgets get produced per day, per worker, with no overtime, whether they like it or not.
The truth is, that today's workers are skeptical about blind loyalty. Do you blame them? Look at what happened with Enron and other corporate meltdowns that resulted in loyal long-term employees losing everything that they had invested (both time and emotional energy) in the business.
Combine that with the 9/11 event, and people are more focused on enjoying the moment and looking out for themselves. That doesn't mean you can't find and attract hard-working, committed employees. It just means you've got to be much more creative and adaptive as a leader. You need to have a high level of emotional intelligence.
So we start with a skeptical workforce and add the fact that we all operate in increasingly competitive and complex markets. The need for high levels of personal commitment and focus is greater than ever. High level performance is critical for long-term survival.
I believe there is one form of leadership that is most appropriate today for producing high levels of performance and business results. I'm calling it a "coaching leader". This new form of leader knows how to connect with, inspire, and hold accountable the new kind of workforce. The coach, in collaboration with the team, creates a vision and a culture that breeds an atmosphere of personal commitment, high performance and a focus on both business results and personal reward.
Don't misunderstand me. The coaching leader still has some of the elements of the older forms of leadership. At times he or she has to act like a manager and make sure certain things get done. Sometimes they act more like a mentor and help people learn a new technique. But the coaching leader has high emotional intelligence, great personal discipline and integrity and consistently builds loyal and committed followers.
What kind of leader are you? Are you trying to be the old command-and-control leader? Or are you one of the many CEOs I'm coaching that is a bit confused and frustrated with today's workforce?
Have you considered becoming a "coaching leader"?