Category: Professional Development

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Who Deserves Your Acknowledgement?

An acknowledgement medal on a black background

Acknowledgement is a coaching skill used to give recognition to the client. It points out the inner traits or characteristics that the client demonstrated in order to accomplish an action. Acknowledgement is important because it can articulate attributes of the client that they may not be aware of. When you acknowledge you empower the client.

Here are some tips to make your acknowledgment powerful:

1. Take your opinion out: Don’t endorse – keep the focus on the client, not on you: Example – “You took big risk.” versus “I support that you took a big risk.”

2. Be specific: Example – “You were determined and persevered in meeting the deadline.” versus “Good job meeting the deadline.”

3. Be judicious: Acknowledgement is special – too much and it loses its powerful impact

4. Look for attributes where the client shines in the situation and point them out, such as:

  • Determination
  • Perseverance
  • Courage
  • Focus
  • Creative
  • Positive
  • Organized
  • Confident
  • Flexible
  • Gracious
  • Vibrant
  • Motivating
  • Insightful
  • Bold
  • Resolve
  • Responsible

5. Be genuine: Clients will know when the acknowledgement is honest and truthful.

Who deserves your acknowledgement today?

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.

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Certainly Not Business As Usual

Two men standing near a golf club whilst having a conversation

To quote Monty Python: And now, for something completely different…

In a sense, they could be talking about social enterprise. For many folks, this represents a whole new way of looking at the world, requiring new skills and new perspectives.

Experienced nonprofit people are facing the marketplace of competition and risk taking in ways they never imagined would be part of their careers. Funders become fickle, price-sensitive customers, constituents become potential customers, and partners flip their shingles and become unexpected competitors. Meanwhile the forprofit people who are committed to social change are seeking ways to manage and measure social impact as they face the unyielding need to become profitable or disappear. And some of their investors ask them not what the public can do for them, but what they can do for the public.

Sometimes it seem like you have to put on those strange 3-D glasses to see what’s really going on here.

What’s really going on here is a climactic shift in how we do the business of doing good. Government money is drying up, and at the state level, will largely disappear soon. The old boundaries between the sectors are eroding away, leaving only those species (or organizations or causes or entrepreneurs) that can adapt to these new conditions. As for the others, well, evolution is not too kind to those who don’t adapt. They end up in museums.

Here are some suggestions on how to evolve. Learn the business of business, even if your business is to save the world. Learn the lingo, take the tours, wade through the water. Take some business classes, consider getting an MBA. Find a mentor who gets business but also gets social change. Find and work for the most entrepreneurial organization in your field of interest.

Above all, recognize that earning requires learning, and one part of that learning is realizing that for social enterprise, it’s anything but business as usual.

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When Consultants Should Facilitate, Coach or Train

A consultation coaching an employee

There are strong feelings that consulting, facilitating, coaching and training are very different roles. I believe that a good consultant should be able to use any of the roles for different purposes. Here are some guidelines for what roles to use and when.

When You Might Resort to Facilitating

Collaborative organizational consulting is about working, as much as possible, in partnership with your clients to accomplish powerful, long-lasting change in your client’s organization. That usually requires a highly facilitative role in your consulting. Facilitating is helping a group of people to decide what results they want to achieve together, how they want to achieve them and then helping the group to achieve them. Styles range from directive to indirectly suggestive. The conditions that often exist in an organizational project and require the consultant to fill the facilitator role include:

  1. When the project needs ongoing trust, commitment and participation of clients.
    Ongoing contributions usually do not come from clients during trainings or when receiving advice from experts. Instead, the buy-in of members comes from knowing that their beliefs and opinions are being solicited and valued. This can be especially important when a diverse group will be involved or impacted by the project. The essence of facilitation is to bring out those beliefs and opinions and to help members decide what they want to do and how they want to do it.
  2. When working to address complex problems or major goals with clients.
    The most accurate understanding of priorities in an organization often comes from considering the perspectives of as many members as possible. The most relevant, realistic and flexible strategies to address those priorities are developed and implemented from the active participation of members. Facilitation is the most powerful role from which to cultivate that participation.

When You Might Resort to Coaching

You might choose to fill the coaching role when the following conditions exist.

  1. An individual in the project seems stalled or troubled.
    Coaching can be a powerful means to guide and support an individual to clarify current challenges or priorities, identify suitable strategies to address the challenges and then to actually implement the strategies.
  2. To maximize an individual’s learning from experience.
    Individuals learn differently. Coaching can be a powerful means to guide and support individuals to reflect on their experiences and then use that learning to improve effectiveness in life and work.

When You Might Resort to the Expert Advice Role

You might choose to fill the expert role when the following conditions exist.

  1. The project needs general knowledge that would likely be the same in any context.
    There are certain types of general knowledge that would likely be the same, especially:

a) General frameworks from which to develop and/or operate systems, for example, performance management systems, financial systems or marketing systems.

b) Guidelines for conducting general practices, for example, planning, evaluation, organizational change, addressing ethical dilemmas, use of capacity building approaches or developing learning plans.

2. The project needs knowledge that is highly specialized and proceduralized. For example, installing computers, conducting market research, conforming to laws and regulations, designing and providing certain program services, financial processes and procedures, or use of specific tools for problem solving and decision making.

When You Might Resort to Training

Training is activities to help a learner or learners to develop or enhance knowledge, skills and attitudes to improve performance on current or future task or job. You might choose to fill the trainer role when the following conditions exist.

  1. Expert knowledge needs to be conveyed in a concise and timely manner.
    There may be times in your project where members need to learn certain expert-based knowledge and need to do so in a highly focused and efficient manner. The knowledge might be any form of expert-based knowledge as listed in the above topic.
  2. Knowledge needs to be conveyed to a group of people.
    Training is often most useful when a group of people need to learn expert-based knowledge. This can be quite common in projects, for example, when training project members about the nature of organizational change, the project’s change plans or methods of data collection.

What do you think?

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For more resources, see the Library topics Consulting and Organizational Development.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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Management and Leadership (Differences?)

A manager sitting at his desk

What is Management?

First of all, after this blog entry, my plan is to avoid drawing a strong distinction, unless absolutely necessary, between leadership and management. The word management means many different things to people. For example, it is sometimes conceptualized as a discipline, as is medicine or engineering. It is also commonly viewed as a set of specific, or not so specific, behaviors. And for many, management is the same thing as the role of manager, which is seen as a certain job level or classification. In referring to it as a discipline, Joan Magretta states that management is the “accumulating body of thought and practice that makes organizations work”. While this is a wonderfully succinct way of describing a vast body of knowledge, I will not be talking about management as a discipline. Although I highly recommend Joan’s book “What Management Is” (2002) for a delightfully easy-to-read overview of the discipline. I will be talking about management as a type of leadership also as a level of leadership (i.e. the manager).

What Happened to Management?

In the era of Dilbert, management and mangers have had a pretty tough time in terms of their credibility and status within western culture. The term “manager” really suffered at the hands of Jack Welch in his early years as CEO at General Electric. This is ironic since Welch was actually a huge proponent and practitioner of what, at that time in the early ‘80s, were core management principles and best practices. But Jack was out to shake GE up and felt that the term “manager” carried too many negative associations within the company. He replaced it with the term ““leader” and help start an era in which this anointed leaders held a special status. Funny enough, although he replaced the word manager with leader, he actually strove to develop at GE the use by leaders of proven management principles. Of course Jack and the good folks at GE were also at the forefront in developing management practices now widely used across industries and generally accepted as best-in-class. But there were many other influences in the loss of luster for those involved in management, such as when the ultimate management guru, Peter Drucker, decided to start using the term “executive” in place of “manager.

Management and Leadership Differences

It is clear to me that people in “managerial” roles are, in fact, in positions of leadership. From an organizational perspective, all managers are leaders, and all leaders, to some extent, are involved in or responsible for certain practices that should be considered management. But, although having stated that management is a type of leadership, there are some important distinctions that I use in my work as a consultant involved with leadership assessment, development, and coaching. The distinctions I make are related primarily to levels of leadership, and the skills, qualities, and knowledge that commonly correspond with success at different levels. This is an important, arguably necessary distinction when and organization is involved in succession planning and developing its leadership “pipeline”. For example, organizations need different abilities and qualities from team members that are individual contributors, in comparison to managers, in comparison to managers of managers, and so on up the functional ladder. My point is, from a practical standpoint it is almost impossible to develop a coherent and effective approach to talent management without delineated levels of leadership — or at least roles.

Why Management?

I think that organizations should acknowledge that managers are, in fact, leaders and critical to the success and sustainability of the business. It has been clearly demonstrated that managers — those that oversee the work of those that do the work — have enormous influence on the goals and bottom-line of an organization. This is because of their central role in ensuring that line staff, for lack of a better term, is engaged and productive at work. There is strong evidence that employees that have a strong sense of connection with their boss, feel appreciated, cared for, and understand how their work fits into the larger vision, are more satisfied and productive. This is more often than not the job of the manager.

What is Management Work?

With regard to specific responsibilities, it is my belief that a significant difference between managers from more “senior leaders” (or senior managers for that matter), is in how managers get things done, the tools they use to things done, and the type of influence they have within an organization. Historically, the term management has referred to individuals engaged in the activities of planning, organizing, leading, and coordinating resources toward the attainment of specific goals. In recent years, and in many organizations, management has come to include a variety of other responsibilities in such areas as talent management, coaching, and change management, to name a few. The specific around the how, tools, and influence of management can be discussed at another time. For now, I would simply like to make a number of other distinctions between managers and the core responsibilities of other, more senior leaders. These core responsibilities are the a) direct involvement in the execution and implementation of business strategy, b) monitoring and measuring of performance and outcomes, and, perhaps most importantly, the c) selecting, developing, and leading (influencing) of the people that do the work

So What?

There is an almost overwhelming amount of available information and opinion on the topics of management, leadership, and management in comparison to leadership. I have provided some information and shared lots of professional and personal opinion. It would be great if others would jump in and engage in the dialogue. I have no-doubt that my co-host, Julia, will have her own interesting and unique response to the topic.

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Practice Makes…Better

A basketball team practicing to get better

 

[The following is an excerpt from my newly published Keeping the Wolves at Bay – Media Training.]

I would love to be able to tell you that with regards to media interview skills, ‘practice makes perfect,’ but that would be disingenuous, a fancy way of saying it would be a lie.

No amount of practice will make you a ‘perfect’ interview subject; similarly, one or two days of media training, alone, will not leave you with lasting skills in this area unless you practice them on your own.

Some job descriptions – e.g., politician, celebrity, Fortune 100 CEO – have a lot of real life interview practice built in. Those individuals and subordinate spokespersons are going to get plenty of opportunity to refine their skills via actual interviews. But most of the people I have trained aren’t in that kind of job; instead, they are designated spokespersons who may not have to handle a really hard media interview for years after their initial training. However, just like a police officer who may never have to shoot a suspect for years after going through the police academy, they still have to maintain their skills so that when they’re needed, they are intuitively available.

Methods of Practice

All methods of practice should:

  • Simulate a situation/scenario that, realistically, could occur to you/your organization.
  • Simulate one or more of the types of interviews described earlier in the Media Logistics section of this manual.
  • Include some method of recording and playing back performance for self- or peer-critique.

There are a wide variety of ways to simulate interviews realistically enough for spokespersons to practice and improve their skills. These include:

  1. Re-enact Media Training. Recreate the conditions under which you were media trained (e.g., tripod-mounted video camera of at least moderately high quality, someone to operate the camera, someone to play interviewer).
  2. Practice ‘Phoner’ Interviews. Let yourself be interviewed by telephone, which is the mostly likely scenario for most interviews, with video becoming increasingly likely when a crisis is particularly newsworthy.
  3. Staff Meeting Practices. Take 15-30 minutes at a staff meeting and put one or more spokespersons on the spot, with other staff members playing the role of media at a press conference.
  4. Webcam-Based Practice. You don’t have to have a media trainer return for a full training session to just get some ‘brush up’ practice periodically. Instead, hook up with him/her for an hour or two by webcam periodically. That’s not only useful for routine practice, but also for spot practice right before you have to give an important interview.

I have trained countless executives who claimed to have been trained in the past – but who never practiced. Most of the time, their skills were little better than the novice trainee, and sometimes what they did remember was so out of context that they actually did worse than if they had remembered nothing at all about their past training.

No, media training practice doesn’t make perfect, but it sure as heck makes you a better spokesperson.

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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The Biggest Mistakes in Crisis Communications – Part 2

A blackboard showing an incorrect math calculation | 1 += 3

7. Don’t Listen to Your Stakeholders

Make sure that all your decisions are based on your best thinking alone. After all, how would your clients/customers, employees, referral sources, investors, industry leaders or other stakeholders’ feedback be at all useful to determining how to communicate with them?

8. Assume That Truth Will Triumph over All

You have the facts on your side, by golly, and you know the American public will eventually come around and realize that. Disregard the proven concept that perception is as damaging as reality — sometimes more so.

9. Address Only Issues and Ignore Feelings

* The green goo which spilled on our property is absolutely harmless to humans.

* Our development plans are all in accordance with appropriate regulations.

* The lawsuit is totally without merit.

So what if people are scared? Angry? You’re not a psychologist…right?

10. Make Only Written Statements

Face it, it’s a lot easier to communicate via written statements only. No fear of looking or sounding foolish. Less chance of being misquoted. Sure, it’s impersonal and some people think it means you’re hiding and afraid, but you know they’re wrong and that’s what’s important.

11. Use “Best Guess” Methods of Assessing Damage

“Oh my God, we’re the front page (negative) story, we’re ruined!” Congratulations — you may have just made a mountain out of a molehill….OK, maybe you only made a small building out of a molehill. See item 7, above, for the best source of information on the real impact of a crisis.

12. Do the Same Thing Over and Over Again Expecting Different Results

The last time you had negative news coverage you just ignored media calls, perhaps at the advice of legal counsel or simply because you felt that no matter what you said, the media would get it wrong. The result was a lot of concern amongst all of your audiences, internal and external, and the aftermath took quite a while to fade away.

So, the next time you have a crisis, you’re going to do the same thing, right? Because “stuff happens” and you can’t improve the situation by attempting to improve communications… can you?

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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Offering Your Gifts in Service

Two-work-colleagues-having-a-work-conversation

I usually start my workshops by asking people why they are interested in the topic of spirituality and work, and have them say what kind of work they do. One woman said she was a bus driver as well as a Reiki Master. When I asked her about that unusual combination she said it was a perfect fit for her. She could drive around the town sending Reiki (healing energy) to people in her community and get paid to do it! I loved this example of someone understanding her gifts and purpose and finding ways to offer her gifts to others in service.

Here’s another examples of how someone shared her gifts and passion in service. I met a woman some years ago who had worked as a waitress at Cracker Barrel. She told me the story of one night that was really busy and the wait staff was flying all over the floor trying to keep up. Everyone was harassed and orders were arriving late. It was turning into a miserable night. She noticed how stressed out everyone was feeling and how chaotic it was getting and decided to do something about it. After taking a few deep breaths, she started saying to herself “I’m a Light, I’m a Light, I’m a Light”. She said that to herself several dozen times to help bring herself back to a place of balance and composure.

After she started feeling more grounded and peaceful she then focused her energy on her co-workers and the customers. She again repeated “I’m a Light” only this time she envisioned that she was sending that Light out to everyone in the room. Her night went so much smoother after that. As some point, still in the middle of the busy rush, one of her customers commented how peaceful she looked and that she seemed to have a sort of glow around her. He asked what she was doing. They struck up a short conversation about related topics and she realized the man understood what she was doing.

After things died down, she went back to talk to him. He asked her why she was working as a waitress. He challenged her to use her gifts in some other way to do other kinds of healing work. From that conversation she started thinking about how she could come to work every day and work from that place of peace and balance. She eventually got trained in energy healing work and moved to the town next to mine to start her business. You never know what you will discover when you stay true to your gifts, purpose and passion.

Please share a story from your life when you’ve stayed in touch with your purpose and was able to offer your gifts for others. Was there a transformative moment when you realized you could use your gifts to serve a larger purpose or were truly living your life purpose in your work?

When we use our gifts in alignment with our passion and purpose, that offering is done as spiritual service.

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For more resources, see our Library topic Spirituality in the Workplace.

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The Biggest Mistakes in Crisis Communications – Part 1

All organizations are vulnerable to crises. You can’t serve any population without being subjected to situations involving lawsuits, accusations of impropriety, sudden changes in ownership or management, and other volatile situations on which your stakeholders — and the media that serves them — often focus.

The cheapest way to turn experience into future profits is to learn from others’ mistakes. With that in mind, I hope that the following examples of inappropriate crisis communications policies, culled from real-life situations, will provide a tongue-in-cheek guide about what NOT to do when your organization is faced with a crisis.

To ensure that your crisis will flourish and grow, you should:

1. Play Ostrich

Hope that no one learns about it. Cater to whoever is advising you to say nothing, do nothing. Assume you’ll have time to react when and if necessary, with little or no preparation time. And while you’re playing ostrich, with your head buried firmly in the sand, don’t think about the part that’s still hanging out.

2. Only Start Work on a Potential Crisis Situation after It’s Public

This is closely related to item 1, of course. Even if you have decided you won’t play ostrich, you can still foster your developing crisis by deciding not to do any advance preparation. Before the situation becomes public, you still have some proactive options available. You could, for example, thrash out and even test some planned key messages, but that would probably mean that you will communicate promptly and credibly when the crisis breaks publicly, and you don’t want to do that, do you? So, in order to allow your crisis to gain a strong foothold in the public’s mind, make sure you address all issues from a defensive posture — something much easier to do when you don’t plan ahead. Shoot from the hip, and give off the cuff, unrehearsed remarks.

3. Let Your Reputation Speak for You

Two words: Arthur Andersen.

4. Treat the Media Like the Enemy

By all means, tell a reporter that you think he/she has done such a bad job of reporting on you that you’ll never talk to him/her again. Or badmouth him/her in a public forum. Send nasty emails. Then sit back and have a good time while:

* The reporter gets angry and directs that energy into REALLY going after your organization.

* The reporter laughs at what he/she sees as validation that you’re really up to no good in some way.

5. Get Stuck in Reaction Mode Versus Getting Proactive

A negative story suddenly breaks about your organization, quoting various sources. You respond with a statement. There’s a follow-up story. You make another statement. Suddenly you have a public debate, a lose/lose situation. Good work! Instead of looking look at methods which could turn the situation into one where you initiate activity that precipitates news coverage, putting you in the driver’s seat and letting others react to what you say, you continue to look as if you’re the guilty party defending yourself.

6. Use Language Your Audience Doesn’t Understand

Jargon and arcane acronyms are but two of the ways you can be sure to confuse your audiences, a surefire way to make most crises worse. Let’s check out a few of these taken- from-real-situations gems::

* I’m proud that my business is ISO 9000 certified.

* The rate went up 10 basis points.

* We’re considering development of a SNFF or a CCRC.

* We ask that you submit exculpatory evidence to the grand jury.

* The material has less than 0.65 ppm benzene as measured by the TCLP.

To the average member of the public, and to most of the media who serve them other than specialists in a particular subject, the general reaction to such statements is “HUH?”

(to be continued)

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For more resources, see the Free Management Library topic: Crisis Management
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As a Consultant, What’s Your Blindside?

A businesswoman having a meeting with a consultant

Watch the following situation occur in conversations among consultants.

Many consultants place extreme value on people’s feelings, beliefs and perceptions. That’s their natural “lens” on organizations. Many of them are from fields of psychology, human resources and coaching. In my experience, they often conclude their clients have problems primarily with, for example, interpersonal conflicts, emotional intelligence and authenticity. It seems this group has grown substantially. Maybe because of the many consultant trainings that focus almost exclusively on the “human” side of things, with very little, if any, attention to the “business” topics. Also, because we’re all human — maybe many of us believe we’re already experts at consulting in this area, too.

In contrast, are the consultants who highly value strategies, structures, plans and policies. That’s their natural lens. Many of them have extensive experience in management. They might conclude that their clients have problems primarily with, for example, strategic planning, organizational design and workflow. (Unfortunately, this is the “business” side of things that seems so lifeless and icky to the other type of consultants.)

Very seasoned consultants have learned to look at organizations through both lens. One of the most useful resources to explain these perspectives is the book, Reframing Organizations by Bolman and Deal. The authors explain how there can be very different perspectives among researchers, writers, educators, consultants and members of organizations.

I highly encourage consultants, especially those who have complete disregard of either lens, to read the book. We consultants – and especially our clients – will be much better off.

Understand Your Preferred “Lens” Through Which You View Organizations

All About Consulting – Types, Skills and Approaches

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For more resources, see the Library topics Consulting and Organizational Development.

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Carter McNamara, MBA, PhD – Authenticity Consulting, LLC – 800-971-2250
Read my weekly blogs: Boards, Consulting and OD, Nonprofits and Strategic Planning.

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How Powerful are Your Questions?

A fundamental skill in the coach’s toolbox is the ability to ask powerful questions. Powerful questions evoke clarity, introspection, lend to enhanced creativity and help provide solutions. Questions are powerful when they have an impact on the client which causes them to think.

These provocative queries spark “epiphanies” or “ah-ha” moments within the client which can radically shift their course of action or point of view.

Learning to ask powerful questions will help you augment your personal and business communication. The most effective powerful questions begin with “What” or “How”, are short and to the point. When questioning, be genuinely curious about the person you are speaking to.

Here are some powerful questions that can help you be more effective in many situations.

  • What do you want?
  • What will that give you?
  • What is important about that?
  • What is holding you back?
  • What if you do nothing?
  • What is this costing you?
  • How much control do you have in this situation?
  • What do you need to say “no” to?
  • How can you make this easy?
  • What options do you have?
  • What will you do? By when?
  • What support do you need to assure success?
  • How will you know you have been successful?
  • What are you learning from this?

What more do you have to add about Powerful Questions?

For more resources, see the Library topic Personal and Professional Coaching.