Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog

Men and Women Create Better Together

Data from a review of initial public offerings during the high-flying '90s is clear:

Companies where women made up a significant proportion of the executive team achieved both higher stock prices and greater earnings.

When women made up at least 20% of the executive team, share prices were 28% higher and earnings were 281% higher than at all-male companies.  Synergy of the sexes pays off.

Have a coeducationally creative day!

How old are you, really?

Just about every major disease of aging, from Alzheimer's to cancer, has been linked to low-level inflammation.  So, you may be taking anti-inflammatory drugs, like an adult low-strength aspirin, every day.

From caloric restriction studies to genes that may extend lifespan, researchers are looking for ways to extend healthy lives.  But don't expect miracles.  If the effects of caloric restriction are any indication, anti-aging drugs won't boost human life expectancy much past 100 anyway, says Richard A. Miller, a University of Michigan researcher.  Still, that's a lot better than the current 74.4 and 79.8 life expectancies for U.S. men and women, respectively.  And those extra years may well be very good ones.

To take a free test to determine how your chronological age compares with your calculated actual age, go to: www.RealAge.com

To extend your life, change your behavior. 

Here's how an average guy in his 40s can buy six more years of life:

Get stress under optimal control  =  Gain 1.5 years
Drop blood pressure to 115 over 76 = Gain 1.3 years
Walk/exercise 90 minutes a day, 7 days/week = 1 year
Give up a pack-a-day smoking habit for 5 years = 11 mos.
Take the right vitamins; avoid the wrong ones = 10 mos.
Floss and brush daily = 5 mos.
Have good sex 14 times a month = 3 mos.
Have one or two drinks a day = 2 mos.

--Source: FORTUNE magazine, April 19, 2004

Do you hate networking?

If you hate networking, stop networking and begin to share knowledge.  By sharing your knowledge with others, you earn trust and build your reputation.

The manner in which you connect with others matters.  Learn how to share knowledge so that you add value to your organization and your recognized worth within it.

How you connect to a community of personal and business networks will determine if you obtain needed resources when you need them.  By making the 'invisible structure' of personal and business relationships visible, you will work more effectively by increasing your bandwidth.

Smart networking allows you to be able to amplify your capabilities far beyond what you are capable of individually.  The business case: 72% of executives landed their positions by knowing somebody. 

Information is energy but useless unless it flows around and combines with other information in the minds of those you work and play with.  So be sure to make knowledge-sharing collaboration part of your everyday tool kit.

To learn more on making networking work for you, click here. 

Have a great knowledge-sharing day!

Doing what's right and ethical

Face-saving lies seem to be an everyday occurance in business. 

In today's environment of changing technology, evolving complexity and high stress, many employees are using dishonesty as a coping tool at work:

36% call in sick when they are well

35% keep quiet when they see co-worker misconduct

19% see co-workers lie to customers, vendors or the public

12% see co-workers steal from customers or the company

Rank-and-file employees are less likely than managers to report misconduct they observe: 44% say they resist doing so, compared with 28% of managers.

Sources: Ethics Resource Center and Kronos Inc.

Knowing what is right is absolutely critical to personal and business ethics.  Yet, ethics only happen when good beliefs lead to good behaviors.  Without the action part, all you have are good intentions.

Here is an ethical action test for 'rightness' before implementation:

1.  Is it legal?
2.  Does it comply with my/our rules and guidelines?
3.  Is it in sync with my personal and our organizational values?
4.  Will I be comfortable and guilt-free if I do it?
5.  Does it match my commitments and promised guarantees?
6.  Would I do it to my family or friends?
7.  Would I be perfectly okay with someone doing it to me?
8.  Would the most ethical person I know do it?

Click here for more on business ethics and here for information on stress and burnout.

Baby Boomer Retirement

Baby Boomers are becoming aware that they are experiencing a different type of retirement than the previous generation.

Most Baby Boomers (the cohort of Americans born between 1946 and 1964) believe that they will still be working during their retirement years. The oldest, born in 1946, will reach 62 in 2008 as they begin retirement age over the next 20 years.

A greater percentage of those over 55 are working today than a year ago.  In part, because older workers are prized for their corporate experience, personal relationships and stability. 

The elderly are also beating out unskilled youths for many of the lower-wage service jobs.  The 55-and-over workforce has topped 21 million.  Eight in ten of Baby Boomers say they plan to work at least part-time--and others envision starting their own business or working full-time at a new job or career--according to an AARP Segmentation Analysis: Baby Boomers Envision Their Retirement.

This "phased retirement" of Baby Boomers will shape the American workplace and compensate for a severe talent gap due to a shrinking supply of new workforce entrants.  Phased retirement allows Baby Boomers to devote more free time to community service/volunteer activities and their grandparent role by living near at least one of their children.

There has been a dramatic change, since the mid-1980s, in the labor force participation of older workers.  In 2000, about 69 percent of men ages 53 to 61 were working according to a University of Michigan Institute for Social Research Health and Retirement Study that surveys more than 22,000 Americans over the age of 50 every two years.  "Job demands are a factor in early retirement," says David Weir, associate director of the study, "and these kinds of changes in job characteristics bode well for keeping older Americans working longer. The physical demands of their jobs may not push people out as much as in the recent past."

In the 65-to-69 age group, about one-third of men and almost one-fourth of women were working in 2004. The percentage of men in that age group still working rose to 33 percent in 2004 from 27 percent in 1994; the percentage of women in that age group working rose to 23 percent from 18 percent.  According to AARP, almost one in three workers will be 50 or older within five years.

For more information on Baby Boomer retirement, go to:
http://home.att.net/~coachthee/Archives/babyboomerstoday.html 

John G. Agno
Certified Executive & Business Coach

What is success?

Our assumptions and beliefs drive our behavior.  What we believe we can achieve, we achieve.  Yet, when we believe we are not good enough to achieve something, we don't.  What you think, happens to you.

Only you know what's important in achieving your vision of success.  However, we all seek shared outcomes to provide a foundation for where we want to be.  Here is one person's definition of success:

"Have you ever watched, listened, and felt someone tuning a guitar or other string instrument?  That is what it is like to have the good fortune of connecting with John Agno.  He is a living tuning fork and you're that string instrument.  Today, I have greater self awareness, am more in step with my calling, and better able to appreciate the journey, including the valleys, than ever before.  Thanks, John for helping me get attuned with my LifeSignature."

You can drastically increase your chances of succeeding in business and life when you learn from a coach or mentor--someone who once stood in your place and overcame all obstacles to earn success and happiness.  Coaching and mentoring provide the personal training that helps you focus your natural abilities in the right direction. Coached to Success insights allow your inner potential to erupt out toward success.

Are you living in the Now?

Most people make the present moment into a means to an end, the end being a future moment that will arrive a minute from now, or an hour from now, or whenever 'I make it.' 

Our striving toward the future, our inner compulsion to deny the present moment, manifests itself as a continuous sense of unease and latent dissatisfaction with what is.  This seems to be the 'normal' state of our civilization.

We never experience the future or the past. 

We experience only the present moment.  Whatever you do, think, or feel can happen only in the present moment, the Now.  If you live in a way that you continuously deny the present moment, it means that you deny life itself, because life is inseparable from the Now; it can only unfold Now.

The past is a memory of a former Now; the future is a mental projection of an expected Now.  Strictly speaking, nothing ever happened in the past; it happened in the Now.  Nor will anything happen in the future; it will happen in the Now.   It sounds almost simplistic or meaningless, and yet there is a deep truth in it: that life and Now are one.

---Eckhart Tolle, author of the book 'The Power of Now' (New World Library, 1999)

Working at home?

There's a clear trend toward integrating work and home life as home businesses ramp up to full-time operation and corporate managers are required to remotely work with employees in different countries and time zones.

The number of people telecommuting full-time shot up 41% from 2003 to 12.4 million in 2004 according to Dieringer Research Group, a Milwaukee, WI market research and consulting company.  The reasons driving the working out of the home/telecommuting trend are diverse:

Faster broadband Internet connections between home and office.

People are more comfortable in working remotely using instant messaging and voice mail. 

Many now work out of home offices integrated with their home life.  Working from home has the advantage of eliminating commutes and staying close to family.   In real estate terms, the presence of a “den/study” can add between 5 and 10% to the selling price of the house.

The shift toward blending work and home is more of a psychological thing than it is making the home office space blend with the rest of the house.   Working from home full-time requires family dynamic adjustments of who does what, where, when and how.   On a 24/7 basis, everyone must recognize the need to improve their own people skills and family communication in an environment where new furniture makes work look more like home. 

Test your communication skills at: www.SelfAssessmentCenter.com

Basketball and Business

Basketball is an intricate, high-speed game filled with split-second, spontaneous decisions.  But that spontaneity is possible only when everyone first engages in hours of highly repetitive and structured practice and agrees to play a carefully defined role on the court. 

Great basketball coaches, military commanders and business leaders know that practice of the rules of engagement coupled with split-second decisions in execution by their team can make the difference between winning and losing. 

Malcolm Gladwell, in his bestseller, "blink" (Little Brown), tells us that great leaders know that if you can create the right framework (by everyone knowing the rules and practicing them), when it comes time to perform, your players will engage in fluid, effortless, spur-of-the-moment dialogue and action.  The leader provides the overall guidance and intent to the team, coaches them in mastering tools and general techniques through practice and then allows them to use their own initiative and be innovative as they move forward.

Placing a lot of trust in your subordinates has an overwhelming advantage:

Allowing people to operate without having to explain themselves within the rules of engagement, focuses their energy and opens the possibility for extraordinary leaps of insight and instinct in decision-making.   When the team is "in the flow," split-second decisions are unconscious flashes of insight that drive extraordinary performance on the basketball court, battlefield or shopfloor.

It is the leader's job to keep the momentum going; so as not to lose the flow.  Insight is not a lightbulb that goes off inside our heads.  It is a flickering candle that can easily be snuffed out by external means.  Know that these kinds of fluid, intuitive, nonverbal experiences are vulnerable...and...your players can drop out of the "zone" or "flow" when you, as the leader, start to become reflective about this rapid cognition process.

For more information on the importance of our "adaptive unconscious," click here.

John G. Agno

Certified Executive & Business Coach

The Power of Shared Knowledge

The power of knowledge works when each person takes responsibility for what s/he knows, who s/he knows and what they know. 

Leaders understand that there is an 'invisible structure' of the personal and business networks within their organization, that define the true roles, influence and interdependencies.

To illustrate the importance of knowledge to a community, think back in time to remember the pain that was felt when a key person left the organization without sharing his understanding of how to get things done.  The lesson is: unshared knowledge loses value.   On the other hand, think about an individual who shares his knowledge, earning trust and a solid reputation, which increases his value in the organization.

Success is not an individual matter--it depends upon our relationships with others.  Connection and coordination with others matter.  The manner in which you are connected matters.  Increasing one's social capital is all about sharing knowledge and adding value to the organization.  Sharing knowledge in one-on-one or group discussions (through stories, analogies and metaphors) is the pathway to agreement about what something means and increased insight.

Make collaboration part of your everyday activities beginning today.