Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog

Do you care enough to perform well?

Recognizing unsatisfactory elements of performance is difficult and uncomfortable. When you try your hardest to perform better, you place enormous strain on your mental abilities.

Obviously, if the activities that require practice were easy and fun, everyone would do them.  But in reality, most people won’t practice or persist long enough to improve. This is good news if you’re willing to do what most people won’t. It’s the reason you’re more likely to keep your job and thrive in this recession.

What About Passion?

Those who care the most will rise to the top.  Exceptional performance depends on what we decide to do with our lives and the passion that drives us.

One of the most purchased articles from the Harvard Business Review is a 1968 piece on motivation that explains our three main drives:

1.    Achievement

2.    Power

3.    A sense of community and desire to help others

No matter your driving force, you have to care deeply enough to work hard to become exceptional.

Nothing can make you endure the pain and sacrifice of deliberate practice for decades unless you’re carried by an intrinsic compulsion to do so.

Even if you hold onto the notion that you’ll always survive because of your innate talent, you must still prepare, practice and persist.  The scientific research is in, and it’s conclusive.  Hard work—not talent—contributes to high performance.

Paying attention to your intentions requires frequent coaching to stay focused: www.CoachedtoSuccess.com

Talent or Hard Work?

Many high-performing executives will tell you they don’t rely on their innate talents as much as their hard-earned skills. 

CEOs like A.G. Lafley of P&G and GE’s Jeffery Immelt have said that being forced to manage through crises early in their careers enhanced their abilities in ways that were critical to becoming CEOs.

Certain practices can make our experiences especially productive:

·         Coaching helps.

·         Receiving feedback allows us to fine-tune our skills.

·         Working in a safe learning environment is essential.

Workplaces encourage practice and development, and mistakes should be viewed as learning opportunities. You also need to clearly define and develop a plan for achieving the abilities you wish to hone, including a measurable time frame.

10,000 Hours or 10 Years

Malcolm Gladwell makes the case for 10,000 hours of practice to attain expertise in his book Outliers (Little, Brown & Co., 2008).  Almost all child prodigies in music, sports, chess and the arts seem to put in 10,000 hours before they attain expertise and produce significant results.

 Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers: The Story of Success

 

Continue reading "Talent or Hard Work?" »

The optimal strategy is reducing what other people know about what you know.

Poker, which illustrates the importance of an optimal strategy, is a game of imperfect information since so much is concealed.  Solving the game of poker would not overcome the disadvantage of being unable to know why your opponent is acting as he or she is.  Such strategy concepts derive from an abstruse field of applied mathematics called game theory, which was formulated, in the nineteen-forties, to address difficult economic problems.

Losers at poker tend to think that they didn't get the cards, and not that they were beaten by someone who played better than they did.  They return to the table and wait for big hands and lose more.  Accomplished players strive to diminish the effects of luck.  From the pattern of their opponents' bets and behaviors, they work like detectives to determine their cards.  They play opportune hands deceptively, and feckless ones, too, and shed unpromising ones before the cards cause them too much harm.

The upside of this financial crisis and recession is that they offer all of us the opportunity to stretch our skills in our current jobs—and I mean everyone.

Change Hurts

Unfortunately, when we try something new and it doesn’t come naturally, we conclude we have no talent for it.  We abandon pursuit, never giving ourselves the chance to practice and make progress.  Scientific evidence, however, is beginning to show that our definition of talent is wrong. 

In fact, “talent” may not mean anything at all.

The concept of talent is especially troublesome in business.  We label people and then assign expectations, some unrealistic.  When people are fast-tracked or deemed executive material, we assume they have special gifts.  Worse, we fail to adequately emphasize the importance of continuous training and coaching.

Good to Great

Some business giants actually gave little early indication that they would become great.

Jack Welch, named by Fortune as the 20th century’s manager of the century, showed no particular passion for business, even into his mid-20s.  Steve Ballmer and Jeffrey Immelt were average employees at Procter & Gamble in the 1970s, with little evidence they would go on to become CEOs of Microsoft and GE before age 50.

Everyone’s talking about ways to find opportunity amid economic chaos.  Yet there’s something right under our noses that’s being overlooked: Times of crisis present unprecedented opportunities to stretch and develop real leadership capabilities.

What’s needed, specifically?

Hire more executive coaches, step up sessions, and implement more training and development programs.

In tough times, you cannot rely on talent and luck.  Even when you have a talented team at the top, people need help in stretching their capabilities to meet the economy’s overwhelming demands.

Your leaders can’t go it alone.  You can’t, either.

What's the transformational outcome?

The outcome of the executive coaching, training and development and team building is you gain market share while your competitors reduce the people costs and lose customers.  Your competitive advantage improves by leveraging the talent that reflects your company's core competencies.  Your business survives and prospers while other firms are consolidating and closing.

I always tell my career coaching clients and job coaching tip blog readers:

Caution: Don't network too soon. If your goals are vague, the contacts you make can't help you much and your contacts may even be put off by your lack of direction.

But once you've tapped out your personal and business networks and have run out of recruiters to contact, where do you go to get help finding a job these days?

For a growing group of job hunters, total strangers have become the answer.  "Adversity often brings out a generosity and compassion," says Tim Irwin, an organizational psychologist in Atlanta. 

Career experts agree that the majority of the best jobs are found on the basis of networking or a relationship.  "The power of a referral is tremendous," says Mr. Irwin, author of "Run With the Bulls Without Getting Trampled."  "When I lend my name to a person's resume, they benefit from the influence that I have with that individual.  Their resume is going to get different attention.  That's just a reality."

Of course, those seeking help should do their own due diligence.  A referral from someone who isn't in good standing in the field or who has a less than stellar reputation can harm your job search.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2009

For a Year's Subscription to weekly Job Search/Career Transition Tips, click here:

For 21 Career Transition Tips, click here.

To Find Jobs, click here.

For Career Assessments, click here.

For a free Interview Success Guide, click here.

Conceding that Procter & Gamble Company's own corporate culture had been far too introverted, Chief Executive A.G. Lafley argues in the May issue of Harvard Business Review why a chief executive must remain focused on factors outside the company.

The CEO is the only one qualified for determining which customers, businesses and results are most important, setting realistic short and long term growth goals and keeping company standards relevant to the outside world.

Most people misunderstand the role of the corporate chief, Mr. Lafley says.  "Conventional wisdom suggests that the CEO is primarily a coach and a utility infielder, dropping in to solve problems where they crop up," he writes, referencing his close confidant, the deceased management guru Peter Drucker.  "In fact, however, the CEO has a very specific job that only he or she can do: Link the external world with the internal organization."

Source: The Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2009 

That giant sucking sound is U.S. jobs going down the drain: 651,000 positions disappeared in February said the Labor Dept. on March 6.  The unemployment rate jumped to 8.1% and forecasters say we ain't seen nothin' yet.

On March 10, Bloomberg reported that economists in its monthly survey expect U.S. joblessness to reach 9.4% by yearend.  The World Bank predicted on March 8 that "the global economy is likely to shrink this year for the first time since World War II."

As of January, IBM began empowering employees to reach across its global empire with the click of a button for advice on everything from preparing for a promotion to learning how to innovate.

The changes reflect the company's effort to become a truly global enterprise that relies on cross-border information--sharing and collaboration.  "It became obvious that we had to make mentoring a tool for transferring knowledge globally," says Sheila Forte-Trammell, an IBM human resources consultant who helped launch the initiative.

Any IBM employee can now sign up to give or receive advice by filling out a profile in a Web-based directory called BluePages.  Think of it as Match.com for mentoring.  In less than two months, 3,000 people have joined.

Emerging women leaders outside IBM are also using the Internet to develop global mentoring relationships at www.WomanLeadership.com

Source: BUSINESSWEEK, March 23, 2009

Related articles

Women's Leadership in Canada

A Leadership Paradigm Shift

National Mentoring Month: Mentors, Sponsors, and Why You Should Have Both

Many employers struggle with providing performance feedback to correct workplace issues.  Learn about what's new in employee productivity at the HR Carnival being hosted this week at the Productivity Blog.

The Optimal Strategy

The optimal strategy is reducing what other people know about what you know.

Poker, which illustrates the importance of an optimal strategy, is a game of imperfect information since so much is concealed.  Solving the game of poker would not overcome the disadvantage of being unable to know why your opponent is acting as he or she is.  Such strategy concepts derive from an abstruse field of applied mathematics called game theory, which was formulated, in the nineteen-forties, to address difficult economic problems.

Losers at poker tend to think that they didn't get the cards, and not that they were beaten by someone who played better than they did.  They return to the table and wait for big hands and lose more.  Accomplished players strive to diminish the effects of luck.  From the pattern of their opponents' bets and behaviors, they work like detectives to determine their cards.  They play opportune hands deceptively, and feckless ones, too, and shed unpromising ones before the cards cause them too much harm.

It takes more than talent...

The upside of this financial crisis and recession is that they offer all of us the opportunity to stretch our skills in our current jobs—and I mean everyone.

Change Hurts

Unfortunately, when we try something new and it doesn’t come naturally, we conclude we have no talent for it.  We abandon pursuit, never giving ourselves the chance to practice and make progress.  Scientific evidence, however, is beginning to show that our definition of talent is wrong. 

In fact, “talent” may not mean anything at all.

The concept of talent is especially troublesome in business.  We label people and then assign expectations, some unrealistic.  When people are fast-tracked or deemed executive material, we assume they have special gifts.  Worse, we fail to adequately emphasize the importance of continuous training and coaching.

Good to Great

Some business giants actually gave little early indication that they would become great.

Jack Welch, named by Fortune as the 20th century’s manager of the century, showed no particular passion for business, even into his mid-20s.  Steve Ballmer and Jeffrey Immelt were average employees at Procter & Gamble in the 1970s, with little evidence they would go on to become CEOs of Microsoft and GE before age 50.

Opportunity Amid Economic Chaos

Everyone’s talking about ways to find opportunity amid economic chaos.  Yet there’s something right under our noses that’s being overlooked: Times of crisis present unprecedented opportunities to stretch and develop real leadership capabilities.

What’s needed, specifically?

Hire more executive coaches, step up sessions, and implement more training and development programs.

In tough times, you cannot rely on talent and luck.  Even when you have a talented team at the top, people need help in stretching their capabilities to meet the economy’s overwhelming demands.

Your leaders can’t go it alone.  You can’t, either.

What's the transformational outcome?

The outcome of the executive coaching, training and development and team building is you gain market share while your competitors reduce the people costs and lose customers.  Your competitive advantage improves by leveraging the talent that reflects your company's core competencies.  Your business survives and prospers while other firms are consolidating and closing.

Lending a hand to Job Seekers

I always tell my career coaching clients and job coaching tip blog readers:

Caution: Don't network too soon. If your goals are vague, the contacts you make can't help you much and your contacts may even be put off by your lack of direction.

But once you've tapped out your personal and business networks and have run out of recruiters to contact, where do you go to get help finding a job these days?

For a growing group of job hunters, total strangers have become the answer.  "Adversity often brings out a generosity and compassion," says Tim Irwin, an organizational psychologist in Atlanta. 

Career experts agree that the majority of the best jobs are found on the basis of networking or a relationship.  "The power of a referral is tremendous," says Mr. Irwin, author of "Run With the Bulls Without Getting Trampled."  "When I lend my name to a person's resume, they benefit from the influence that I have with that individual.  Their resume is going to get different attention.  That's just a reality."

Of course, those seeking help should do their own due diligence.  A referral from someone who isn't in good standing in the field or who has a less than stellar reputation can harm your job search.

Source: The Wall Street Journal, March 24, 2009

For a Year's Subscription to weekly Job Search/Career Transition Tips, click here:

For 21 Career Transition Tips, click here.

To Find Jobs, click here.

For Career Assessments, click here.

For a free Interview Success Guide, click here.

Extroverted Leadership

Conceding that Procter & Gamble Company's own corporate culture had been far too introverted, Chief Executive A.G. Lafley argues in the May issue of Harvard Business Review why a chief executive must remain focused on factors outside the company.

The CEO is the only one qualified for determining which customers, businesses and results are most important, setting realistic short and long term growth goals and keeping company standards relevant to the outside world.

Most people misunderstand the role of the corporate chief, Mr. Lafley says.  "Conventional wisdom suggests that the CEO is primarily a coach and a utility infielder, dropping in to solve problems where they crop up," he writes, referencing his close confidant, the deceased management guru Peter Drucker.  "In fact, however, the CEO has a very specific job that only he or she can do: Link the external world with the internal organization."

Source: The Wall Street Journal, March 23, 2009 

U.S. Job Losses; Began in 60s, will Peak in 10s

That giant sucking sound is U.S. jobs going down the drain: 651,000 positions disappeared in February said the Labor Dept. on March 6.  The unemployment rate jumped to 8.1% and forecasters say we ain't seen nothin' yet.

On March 10, Bloomberg reported that economists in its monthly survey expect U.S. joblessness to reach 9.4% by yearend.  The World Bank predicted on March 8 that "the global economy is likely to shrink this year for the first time since World War II."

Woman Leadership Empowerment Through Mentoring

As of January, IBM began empowering employees to reach across its global empire with the click of a button for advice on everything from preparing for a promotion to learning how to innovate.

The changes reflect the company's effort to become a truly global enterprise that relies on cross-border information--sharing and collaboration.  "It became obvious that we had to make mentoring a tool for transferring knowledge globally," says Sheila Forte-Trammell, an IBM human resources consultant who helped launch the initiative.

Any IBM employee can now sign up to give or receive advice by filling out a profile in a Web-based directory called BluePages.  Think of it as Match.com for mentoring.  In less than two months, 3,000 people have joined.

Emerging women leaders outside IBM are also using the Internet to develop global mentoring relationships at www.WomanLeadership.com

Source: BUSINESSWEEK, March 23, 2009

Related articles

Women's Leadership in Canada

A Leadership Paradigm Shift

National Mentoring Month: Mentors, Sponsors, and Why You Should Have Both

Productivity Blog HR Carnival

Many employers struggle with providing performance feedback to correct workplace issues.  Learn about what's new in employee productivity at the HR Carnival being hosted this week at the Productivity Blog.