Ask, Know, Do

Ask the Coach: Transformational Leadership

Q:  Is it a good idea to go outside the company for a new corporate leader?     

A:  Filling senior vacancies by looking outside for the best candidates can help to spark new ideas but grafting in new leaders has its risks.  The cost of failure is high.    Leadership transitions get riskier the higher up the organization they occur: two out of every five CEOs fail in the first 18 months (Harvard Business Review, January 2005).  Corporate bankruptcies reveal that some CEOs fail on such a scale as to bring down the company with them.  

Leaders in new positions often fail for a few common reasons: due to unclear or outsized expectations, a failure to build partnerships with key stakeholders, a failure to learn the company, industry or the job itself fast enough, a failure to determine the process for gaining commitments from direct reports and a failure to recognize and manage the impact of change on people.   

When newly recruited, the following types of executives experienced the highest failure rates within the first 18 months: senior-level executives (39%), sales executives (30%), marketing executives (25%), and operations executives (23%).

Here are the major reasons for failure in the new job: 

They fail to establish a cultural fit……………......................75%

They fail to build teamwork with staff and peers…...........…52%

They are unclear about what their bosses expect….............33%

They don't have the required internal political savvy…..........25%

There's no process to assimilate executives into the firm…...22%

Yet, if companies don't seek fresh blood periodically, they can become dangerously insular, warns David Ulrich, professor at the University of Michigan business school.  "At fast-growing or fast-changing businesses," he adds, "you may find that existing managers can't scale up or transform what they do."

Onboarding coaching of the newly recruited or promoted executive can turnaround this high rate of failure.  Onboarding coaching helps the executive more quickly adapt to the employer's culture, create rapport with his or her immediate team and find productive ways to achieve necessary goals. 

Today, executive movements are increasing as companies make adjustments to become more globally competitive.     

Focus on People

Leading a community, country or business transition through a cultural change is a tough assignment.  Getting the people side right can make all the difference.  Cultural transitions are times of heightened emotion where perceptions, feelings and hunches trump logic.

Everyone's decision making is emotional, not rational ... subconsciously under the control of their emotional brain (limbic system), not their analytical (neocortical) brain.

When people make decisions, their decisions are not just about rational data weighing of the pros and cons. Buying a car, choosing a mate, selecting a new home, following a career path, perceiving how the world works is all decided emotionally. Emotion is always operating below the surface and the executive doesn't recognize how important his or her feelings are at the time of the decision.  

Today, many executives are driven by the fear of not surviving the transitional period and this fear can adversely affect their decision-making abilities. The turnaround won’t be complete until the fear of failure is confronted in the minds of the executive survivors.  Helping managers to become emotionally stable, free from the fear of failure, when making important decisions is the job of the leader. 

Albert Einstein once said, "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles but no personality. It cannot lead; it can only serve."

Transformational leaders have a clear collective vision and manage to communicate it effectively to all employees. By acting as role models, they inspire employees to put the good of the organization above self-interest. They know and science has discovered emotionality's deeper purpose: the timeworn mechanisms of emotion allow two human beings to receive the contents of each other's minds. These leaders stimulate employees through the power of emotion to be more innovative by taking risks on-the-job.

Yet, after years of cost-cutting initiatives and growing job insecurity, most executives don't feel like putting themselves on the line.  Add to that individual performance incentives, where a one-year term determines a large bonus, and investing in risky long-term payoffs takes a back seat. Most managers postpone risky decisions for fear of failure -- to not make incremental mistakes that can lead to innovative success.

That's why it is difficult to make the shift from a play-it-safe corporate culture to an innovation-driven culture.

Ask the Coach: Keeping up with Client Demands

Q:  I’m an attorney who is having a difficult time keeping up with client demands.  Having this much business is a good thing.  Yet, I am spending too much time at the office and this is negatively affecting my personal life.  I also seem to be getting less efficient in processing the work my clients bring to me.  What can I do to improve my situation?  

A:  We live in a busy, complex and exciting world: where almost no one has enough time to act on personal choices.  In today’s 24/7 economy, we frequently feel rushed and impatient and can become easily distracted and forgetful from environmentally induced attention deficit disorder (A.D.D.).  Dr. Edward M. Hallowell was the first to name adult attention deficit disorder or adult A.D.D. back in 1995 and now he is taking on the rest of modern life in his new book, "CrazyBusy: Overstretched, Overbooked and About to Snap! Strategies for Coping in a World Gone A.D.D." (Ballantine Books, 2006). 

Technology and activity overload tend to be the consequences of living where everybody is trying to do more in less time.  Yet, we must be able to maintain our focus and restore our energy as we bend, stretch and bounce around at work and in our personal life.  We know that if we don't prioritize our life activities, we’ll find ourselves spread so thin that we won't have time for those people and things that are important to us.  

From what you have said, I can envision piles of papers stacked high on your desk and you hustling about trying to find where that client file is.  For many professionals, these events are a daily occurrence. But they don't have to be.  Experts say the act of getting organized is easy to put off because of seemingly more important tasks that require immediate attention.   

In the April 21, 2006 issue of the Michigan Lawyers Weekly, Alita Marlowe, of Marlowe & Associates business and efficiency consultants in Southfield, MI, tells us the most common reason executives put off getting organized is it wasn't taught in school. "Procrastination and clutter is actually delayed decision making," she maintained. "Time management skills are also usually underdeveloped."  Marlowe adds the biggest mistake professionals make is putting blame on a single person in the firm for the disorganization that "actually is the result of a faulty or nonexistent organizational system."  

Marlowe recommended the first change that should be made is reducing distractions. "Each interruption costs 20 minutes of refocusing time plus the time of the original distraction."   To drive home the point of just how costly inefficiency can be, Marlowe gave the example of a professional who bills $220 an hour.  According to her calculations, if that person encounters six distractions per day at 30 minutes per distraction, there is $660 of lost productivity in one day, $3,300 in one week and $13,200 of lost productivity in one month. "Poor time management and disorganization costs at least $13,000 per month and causes lots of stress," she contended.  

Stress, if allowed to build up over time, can lead to burnout in a work environment that doesn’t engage and energize you.  Burnout is a familiar term these days: it's the physical or emotional exhaustion that results from long-term stress or frustration. Chronic fatigue is a major symptom of burnout: one feels physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted.  Behaviorally, the burnout worker becomes cynical, indifferent and increasingly ineffective in the job. 

According to Herbert J. Freudenberger, the New York psychologist who coined the term in 1972, burnout describes a specific condition.  It is an emotional state characterized by an overwhelming and enduring feeling of exhaustion or aggravation. Burnout is a condition that develops gradually as the person's creativity and effectiveness erode into fatigue, skepticism and an inability to function productively.  And when you are suffering from burnout, this can become contagious by having a profound affect on your coworkers and clients.  

The bottom line is: Get some professional help to organize your workplace and reduce the hours spent there by becoming more productive.  Use that reclaimed time to energize your personal life and create the work/life balance that allows a sense of well being to emerge.

Ask the Coach: How to Increase Your Company's Sales

Q:  My business revenue was down from prior years.  What can I do to increase my company’s sales this year?  

A:  If you could do just one thing to help your prospective customers and your business, what would that be?   

The answer to this question can only come from you.  However, let me add a few thoughts to help you think deeply about your answer. 

Consider giving more of what you have away.  One of the most potent laws of influence is the law of reciprocity.  The law is that people want to repay, in kind, what another person has given to them.  Reciprocity flows from the law of love  that is “the gift of giving” without the “hope of reward or pay,” or serving others.  

The law of reciprocity is not what can best be described as "transactional reciprocity."  Wayne Baker, a University of Michigan professor and author of the book ‘Achieving Success Through Social Capital’ (Jossey-Bass), says that, "Many people conceive of their business dealings as spot market exchanges--value given for value received, period.  Nothing more, nothing less.  This tit-for-tat mode of operation can produce results, but it doesn't invoke the power of reciprocity and so fails to yield extraordinary success." 

Baker explains, "The lesson is that we cannot pursue the power of reciprocity.  When we try to invoke reciprocity directly, we lose sight of the reason for it: helping others.   Paradoxically, it is in helping others without expecting reciprocity in return that we invoke the power of reciprocity.  The path to reciprocity is indirect: reciprocity ensues from the social capital built by making contributions to others. And so those who help you may not be those you help.  The help you receive may come from distant corners of your network."

Here are some ways to give more away in your business operations.  If you are in a product business, you might consider giving out samples or providing test rides/demonstrations of what you sell to allow the person to get a feel for the product’s value.  If you are in the services business, consider providing a free sampling of your work or share a valuable insight (based upon your area of expertise) that helps the prospective client get to where they want to be.  Even if the person who receives your gift never buys from you, she may repay your kindness by referring other people to you who want what you are selling.   

I have found that people seldom call me when they want some knowledge I possess.  But if they see me at a meeting or networking event, they will ask their question.  By giving them the answer they seek, I have put the law of reciprocity into play.  That is why it is important for service providers to attend networking events that their prospective customers normally attend. 

If you hate networking, stop thinking about it as networking and just go there to share knowledge.  By sharing knowledge with others, you earn trust, build your reputation and give or obtain resources.  Information is energy but useless unless it flows around and combines with other knowledge in the minds of those you work and play with.  So be sure knowledge sharing collaboration is a potent weapon of influence in your everyday activities. 

Here are two self-coaching tips to exercise the law of reciprocity in your conversations: 

1. Remind yourself that reciprocity is not about what you need but what the other person needs and how you can give that to them.
2. Frequently ask this question of others, “How can I be of help?” 

Learn to speak from the heart by showing appreciation of the people you serve.  Encourage others you work with to care by allowing them to observe your acts of caring.  All businesses are ultimately people serving people and our life’s work should come from the heart.  Long after your products or services have been delivered, the feelings and knowledge shared during the business relationship remain. 

 John Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership (ebook at $2.99)
 John G. Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership: Self Coaching Secrets (Paperback Edition at $28.99)

Ask the Coach: Providing Performance Feedback

Q:  My question is how to deal with, from a management perspective, the issue of tardiness and absenteeism?  I have to admit that this issue continues to be emotionally draining for me affecting both my attitude and that of those around me.  

A:  Many employers struggle with providing performance feedback to correct workplace issues, like tardiness and absenteeism. 

What’s performance feedback all about?  The word “performance” makes it seem as if we are on stage.  Success at work is our applause, the managers and leaders of our organization are the directors and producers, and our successful performance run is obviously the bottom line.  Very few actors walk away with a Tony or an Oscar for mediocre performances.  That is also true in the work world.  Survival as an organization rests on the quality of our work.  Without stopping to playback our performance, we might find that our run will be much shorter than we anticipated.  

As leaders, we need to get people on a positive course by helping them face and then manage weaknesses.  How this is done is through the feedback process: honestly, respectfully, openly, thoughtfully and with a sense of purpose. 

For example, as a team leader or manager you can begin to work on the tardiness and absenteeism situation by writing out your answers to the following two questions: 

1. How can you say that you are concerned about this weakness in a respectful and helpful way? (Be specific.  "You aren't contributing to the team's effort" is a difficult statement for someone to hear.  Reformat the weakness.  "I am concerned when you don't get to the office on time" refocuses the concern as a problem.)
2. How can you offer this person encouragement to change the way he or she has done things in the past?

Employees want to succeed in their work.  Most accept that goal-directed feedback is an effective means of guiding their work activities to be in concert with team and organizational goals.  By having a performance feedback conversation with the tardy employee (where you coach while doing more listening than talking), you can insist that he arrive on time, focus on his work and ask what he will do to make this happen.  The impact on the tardy employee will make him responsible for his actions and sets clear expectations.  The consequence is he has the opportunity to design a solution to the issue. 

This situation is an opportunity for you, as the team leader, to build your leadership skills and style.  Leadership development is not an event.  It is a process of participating in respectful conversations where the leader recognizes his or her own feelings and those of others in building safe and trusting relationships.  Leadership is an interactive conversation that pulls people toward becoming comfortable with the language of personal responsibility and commitment. 

Here are five guiding principles for respectful conversations:

1. When peers connect change happens. Effective coaching can happen on the dance floor of conversation.

2. It's okay to begin a conversation by confronting the other person with questions that seem awkward but set the stage for a respectful exchange. Why waste time on small talk?  Just ask to-the-point information-seeking questions, like: "What are you here for?  How do you want to spend our time together?"

3. Conversations are not meant to be structured.  Be open to conversations that
you are unprepared for and focused on the interests of the other person (not your purpose).

4. Don't get pulled into solving problems that may not matter to the other person.
Allow time for the person to get to what's really important.  Provide spaces where they can express their doubts and fears by being a thoughtful listener--without
taking on the responsibility to fix or debate the issue.  After all, you have invited
the person to talk about what matters to her or him, not you, so allow time for
the articulation of those thoughts and feelings.

5. Personal transformation happens when the right questions get asked--not by
providing answers.  When you focus on the solution, you are trying to sell the person something.  When you allow people to answer their own questions, they discover what they were not aware of---and what is needed to move forward.

Ask the Coach: New Year Resolutions

Q:  I always make one or two New Year resolutions but have had little success in following through on them.  What can I do this year to achieve my goals?  

A:  Every year, we gain a clearer understanding that without positive change, decline is inevitable.  The challenge is to recognize that what we are now doing can be reinvented by paying attention to our intentions. Yet, it is very hard to bring about significant change without changes in behavior. 

Here are five reasons why it is so difficult to achieve our New Year resolutions:

1.  Powerful countervailing forces appear when we attempt to engineer positive change. We discover our competing commitments pull us in opposite directions causing us to spend a great deal of energy attempting to satisfy each: "I'm going to lose 20lbs but I really love to eat and drink." or “I am going to start a business of my own but I really like the security of the paycheck I get from my job today.”

2.  Our overbooked lives and strong immunity to change try to keep us from relearning deeply ingrained habits. Today, 64% of people in the US say there is not enough time in the day to get things done. A poor night's sleep and tight work deadlines adversely affect our work performance.  We turn on the TV to pass the time rather than moving forward to accomplish our good intentions. 

3.  Most people don't respect their strong immunity to change and, therefore, don't develop the support systems necessary to overcome this powerful and dynamic equilibrium to stay the same.  However, there is untapped energy to be found if we can become less embedded in this immune system that protects us from change.

4.  We don't give our brain enough time and energy to relearn deeply ingrained habits by developing and following a goal-achieving plan through personal determination, practice, repetition and the support of others.

5.  Some feel they need a change but have a difficult time articulating/envisioning what that change looks like and how to plan to make it real.  Developing the ability to respond to unpredictable change is very hard.  Most are afraid to develop approaches to move from the more comfortable status quo.  Learning to take risks by starting with small projects (where the impact of failure is not excessive) is a good approach to overcome this lack of initiative.  

Self-directed learning helps you to discover an ideal vision of yourself to feel motivated in developing the abilities necessary to get you where you want to be.  That is, you see the person you want to be---living with the capability necessary to create and sustain the new you. This personal makeover becomes the source of the energy required to work at the difficult and often frustrating process of change.

Now that you know where you want to be, the next step is to look in the mirror to discover where you really are today---how habits are making you act, how others view you and what comprises your deep assumptions and beliefs.  Some of this reflection will represent gaps between where you are and where you want to be. 

The realization of the gap prepares you for developing an agenda or plan of action needed for the detailed guidance on what new rituals to try each day to make the new habit sticky while you build your strengths and move closer to your ideal self. 

We need more than self-help books to move forward. 

Others help us see things we are missing, affirm whatever progress we have made, test our perceptions and let us know how we are doing. They provide the context for our practice of the new rituals. Although the model is called self-directed learning, without others involvement, lasting change can't occur. 

Taking the personal initiative to generate innovative ideas and solutions to problems can require support in the form of a personal coach or a support group who guide us in handling important issues in our lives.

When we talk to others, in a safe environment, about the impending change, we reach clarity on what we must do to keep moving forward.  Building our capability to accept and effectively handle change can release energy spent in worry and transform it into focused action.

Ask the Coach: Developing a Winning Attitude

Q:  With the football season going strong and the basketball season just around the corner, I was thinking about how I could transfer the “winning attitude” that sports teams have to my company team.  Any suggestions?  

A:   We have mentioned that leaders improve their company by instilling confidence in each employee’s ability to meet and overcome workplace challenges.  Experience has taught us that confidence precedes competence.  A person in the office or a player in a game must first believe he or she can succeed by developing a winning attitude reinforced by skill-building practice.  

As each person’s talents are built into strengths and then merged with others in the team, a positive energy emerges.  This energy force builds and reinforces each individual’s confidence to create a critical mass which is often referred to as “momentum” or “being in the zone.”  It is the coach's job to keep the momentum going; so as not to lose the positive energy flow.     

Here is a checklist of ten questions to help you evaluate how well your firm is building a winning attitude and the practiced ability to succeed: 

1. As the coach of your team, how much have you spent in the past year on personal development to improve your management and leadership skills?
2. List what time and money was spent per employee over the last year in training and development activities to build on workplace talents.
3. Does each manager have a good relationship with each direct report and know what that person needs to move to the next level in the firm?
4. Does each employee have a clear understanding of what they can to do to increase their value to the company?
5. In the last six months, has someone in the company talked to each employee about their progress in building skills and knowledge?
6. During the past year, how many employees believe they had an opportunity at work to learn and grow?
7. How many employees would say that their opinions at work count?
8. How many employees know the vision or purpose of the company?  Of those who know, how many consider their job important in accomplishing this vision or purpose?
9. How many employees would say that they have a best friend at work?
10. Who would the employee go to with a suggestion, complaint or concern at work?

For your team, the best thing you can do is to demonstrate your leadership through one-on-one interpersonal relationships.  You do this by participating in respectful conversations where you recognize your own feelings and those of others in building safe and trusting relationships. 

Here are four guiding principles for one-on-one respectful conversations:

1.  It's OK to begin a conversation by confronting the other person with questions
that seem awkward but set the stage for a respectful exchange.  Why waste time
on small talk?  Just ask to-the-point information-seeking questions, like: "What are
you here for?  How do you want to spend our time together?"

2.  Conversations are not meant to be structured.  Be open to conversations that
you are unprepared for and focused on the interests of the other person (not your
purpose).

3.  Don't get pulled into solving problems that may not matter to the other person.
Allow time for the person to get to what's really important.  Provide spaces where
people can express their doubts and fears by being a thoughtful listener--without
taking on the responsibility to fix or debate the issue.  After all, you have invited
the person to talk about what matters to her or him, not you, so allow time for
the articulation of those thoughts and feelings.

4.  Personal transformation happens when the right questions get asked--not by
providing answers.  When you focus on the solution, you are trying to sell the person
something.  When you allow people to answer their own questions, they discover
what they were not aware of and what is needed to move forward.   

Confidence and energy are leading indicators of workplace performance.  Effective coaching can happen on the dance floor of conversation.  You build employee confidence and energy through coaching conversations that pull people toward becoming comfortable with personal responsibility and commitment.

 John Agno: Ask the Coach

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Ask the Coach: How to Engage Employees

Q:  My employees aren’t performing well.  Many seem to get easily frustrated, complain, waste time in trivial pursuits and become skeptical of other employees.  What can I do to get employees more engaged in the work that needs to be done?  

A:   You are describing a dysfunctional work environment that could be headed toward employee burnout.  Burnout is a familiar term these days: it's the physical or emotional exhaustion that results from long-term stress or frustration.  Chronic fatigue is a major symptom of burnout: one feels physically, emotionally and spiritually exhausted. Behaviorally, the burnout worker becomes cynical, indifferent and increasingly ineffective in the job.   

According to Herbert J. Freudenberger, the New York psychologist who coined the term in 1972, burnout describes a specific condition. It is an emotional state characterized by an overwhelming and enduring feeling of exhaustion or aggravation.  Burnout is a condition that develops gradually as the person's creativity and effectiveness erode into fatigue, skepticism and an inability to function productively. 

Traditionally, the worker is the one who gets the blame but research shows that the cause of burnout lies mainly in current economic trends, the use of technology and management philosophy within organizations.  As managers become de-energized and lose confidence
in themselves, these emotions are transferred to employees.  Employee engagement and long-term improvements in corporate performance can't be accomplished with a burned out, low energy and low confidence leadership team.

Leaders can turnaround a failing work environment by helping employees move from the language of "blame" to the language of "personal responsibility.”  The first step is to instill confidence in the employee’s ability to meet and overcome workplace challenges.  Experience tells us that confidence precedes competence.  A person must first believe they can succeed by developing a winning attitude reinforced by skill-building training.  

As each person’s unique signature talents are built into demonstrable strengths and then merged with other team members, a positive energy emerges.  This energy force builds and reinforces each individual’s confidence to create a critical mass within the team.  This critical mass is often referred to as “momentum” or “being in the zone.”   

Here is an illustration of how this process works on the basketball floor and is easily transferred to the shop floor:

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 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 shop floor.  

It is the leader's job to keep the momentum going; so as not to lose the flow.  Insight is not a light bulb 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/employees can drop out of the "zone" or "flow" when you, as the leader, start to become reflective about this rapid cognition process. 

Confidence and energy are leading indicators of workplace performance.  It is the leader’s job to build confidence and participate in interactive conversations that pull people toward becoming comfortable with the language of personal responsibility and commitment.

 Malcolm Gladwell: blink The power of thinking without thinking.

 John Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership: Self-Coaching Secrets

Ask the Coach: Doing what you do best.

Q:  I just returned from vacation where I had a chance to think about how I want to live my life differently.  I know that I want do something else in my career but I am not sure what.  Do you have any advice on what I can do about this discontent that I am feeling?  

A:   Every year, we gain a clearer understanding that without positive change, decline is inevitable.  Still it's easy to lose hope: barriers to change seem to be everywhere.  We work in organizations that aren't much fun. We fail to gain work/life balance that is so important to us but so difficult to sustain.  Looking ahead, the challenge is to recognize that what we are now tolerating can be reinvented.

Most people returning to work from a relaxing vacation, where they took stock of their life, question if they are on the right career path but don’t do anything about it.  "I'll be happy when...." is the way many people think they are living their lives.  A fortunate few decide not to languish in their present job and begin the process of engineering a mid-career correction.  Here is how these very few do it.

They recognize that happiness is not something that happens to you.  Happiness is inside you now.  You are motivated from within as you discovered while on vacation. You only have to allow happiness to continue to surface after the vacation in your work and personal lives.

The formula for happiness is to know yourself, discover what you do best and understand that you get what you tolerate.  In medicine, you look at how "well tolerated" a drug will be related to its side effects.  At work and at home, many people evaluate new opportunities related to what can be well tolerated.  Yet after life, most people don't want their tombstone to read, "She tolerated stuff for other people because they paid her."  Especially, when we realize that we can make more money and have more fun doing work that engages our passions.  Life is too short for doing work you don't enjoy.

That said, I don’t recommend that you immediately leave your job but do begin the career transition process to visualize where you want to be.  The first step is to change the way you think about yourself.  Since what we think, we become, it is important to convince ourselves that we can change, so we do change.  Believing comes first, then change, not the other way around.  This rethinking who we are helps us to begin to consciously separate ourselves from our current job and life. 

As you become clearer on where you want to be, you begin to modify your career path to be more in line with who you have become.  Clarity happens as you get to know more about who you are by engaging in self-learning exercises. You also speed up the career transformation process through taking some self-assessments to match your strengths, interests and personality with potential work choices. 

Everyone should know the important things in their life---your family, your partner, your health and well-being, your children---anything that is so important to you that if it were lost, you would be devastated.  

After you know what’s important to you, engage in selective reading and take a few personality and career self assessments to get to know you better.  Here are some self-assessments in books that you can buy at your local or online bookseller: 

 Tom Rath: StrengthsFinder 2.0

  Marcus Buckingham: StandOut: The Groundbreaking New Strengths Assessment from the Leader of the Strengths Revolution

 Kevin W. McCarthy: The On-Purpose Business: Doing More of What You Do Best More Profitably

The results of practicing the new discoveries and habits you learn over time are that they become part of your new real self. 

Often, with changes in your habits, come changes in your aspirations and dreams.  Going through the discovery of uncovering an ideal vision of yourself motivates you to develop new abilities to create and sustain the new habits. That is, you see the person you want to be---living with the new habit. This becomes the source of the energy required to work at the difficult and often frustrating process of change.

Ask the Coach: What is Selling?

Q:  I am a small business owner and want to increase my sales revenue.  What coaching tips might help me and my employees get better at selling? 

A:   Let’s begin with a question or two: What is selling?  Is it more than providing a well-defined product or service solution to an ill-defined problem?    

Robert Louis Stevenson said, “Everyone lives by selling something.”  Yet most people don’t understand the sales process and their part within it.  Business owners constantly worry about the selling function and how it affects their ability to manage the firm’s cash flow.   

As a business coach, I don’t sell “coaching” but do sell the results or benefits of engaging in a coaching relationship: improved business management, sales & marketing, planning, productivity/effectiveness and leadership.  I do sell the value of brainstorming with, being accountable to, being listened to, receiving encouragement from someone who brings an independent viewpoint to the conversation.  

Just like me, you have to come up with how you help your customers get better at what they do (or want to do) through satisfying customer wants and needs.  When you do, you will know what selling is for your business. 

Once you know what selling is, the next question is, “How many people does it take to make a sale?”  

This is not a trick question.  It takes both a buyer and a seller to make a sale.  That means the sales person can’t make a sale without finding a prospect that may buy what is for sale.  When the buyer is ready, willing and able to purchase what you sell, you want to be sure that your business is on the prospective customer’s short list of places to shop.  To do this you must first establish a market presence that is attractive to the prospective buyer.   

The next question is, “Why do sales people fail?” 

There are two main reasons why most sales people fail: 

1. They think they can get away with “winging it.” 

This expression comes from the theater; where it alludes to an actor studying his part in the wings (the areas to either side of the stage) because he has been suddenly called on to replace another.  First recorded in 1885, it eventually was extended to other kinds of improvisation based on unpreparedness. 

Being prepared for the customer interaction is important.  Knowing what action you want the prospect to take based upon this sales interaction allows the sales person to focus.  Having a strategy of what to ask, what to show and tell helps to move the prospect to taking the desired action.  Anticipating obstacles to the sale will allow you to plan how to go around or over potential “road-blocks” in accomplishing your sales objective. 

2. They don’t understand the impact of their personality on specific buying styles. 

This shows up in not really listening to the prospective customer and, instead, filling the sales interaction with sales talk.  They don’t answer questions well because they don’t listen for the assumptions/beliefs that’s behind the prospect’s words.  Their presentations are not in line with what the prospect wants to know.  Being out-of-touch with the prospective customer’s personality style insures that the inability to communicate will sour the sale. 

To improve your sales people’s ability to sell well, train and coach them on a proven sales methodology that allows them to prepare for every major sales interaction.  Provide them an understanding of their personality’s strengths and weaknesses and how they can “read” their prospect’s buying style.  Usually a sales person’s weakness, in the buyer’s perspective, is an over extension of a strength and can be toned down through self-management by the sales person. 

Knowing how to read people is dependent upon picking up on and interpreting hidden cues.  Studies show that the brain processes four primary codes of communication.  Two of these (speech and vocal codes) are processed auditorily, while the other two (facial expression and body language) are processed visually.  When assessing people, we must interpret all four codes of communication — observing how they move, how they comport themselves, how they sound, and what they say.

The body language code (the combination of movement, gestures, and mannerisms) communicates a lot about people — such as: are they lying or telling the truth, do they like you, and do they actually mean what they are saying.

For example, people who lean in towards you are showing that they are interested in you and what you have to say.  This is also the case if someone copies your body language (e.g. crossing legs in unison, clasping fingers, etc.).  People who feel powerful and confident usually take up more physical space while people that stand too far away are being arrogant, snobby, or simply showing that they don't like you.

As you and your sales people improve your ability to read people, you will know much more about those you deal with and make better decisions on how to approach them.

 John Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership (ebook $2.99)

 John G. Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership: Self Coaching Secrets (paperback $28.99)

Ask the Coach: Difficult time finding talented help

Q:  My business is struggling and I’m having a difficult time finding help. Locating real productive, energetic, creative and talented help has been very allusive.  Any suggestions on where to turn to sort things out?

A:  Many business owners fear their subordinates and clients will learn how inadequate they feel and are looking for help managing in a faster, cheaper, better global economy. Although hiding vulnerabilities is hardly new, this concern has been exacerbated by a new fear of either becoming obsolete or technology-driven toast in a world of business transformation.

"I've never seen business people have to fake it more," says B. Joseph White, past business school dean and interim president at the University of Michigan. 

A good place to begin the search for help is to take a closer look at what has worked in the past and what has not.  Once you have clear examples of good hires and bad hires, it would be important to look deeper to determine why one person worked out while the other did not.  This deeper search should also focus inwardly to determine what affect you, as the business owner/manager, had on both the positive employee experience and the negative one.  When we are open to becoming more self-aware, the core problem may solve us rather than we have to solve it. 

Developing commitment in a world of “free agents” is key to attracting talented people and realizing their potential.  Many free agents and small business owners spend little time and money on their own professional and personal development. Yet, they have great interest in seeking positive change to improve their business development, career and financial and physical health.  Within professional and business development, they are most interested in productivity & effectiveness, planning and sales/marketing.  Producing results, attaining goals, achieving success and enhancing quality of life are important. 

Reading business articles and self-help books is good.  But, in my experience, there is no cookbook that has a recipe for your business-issue-of-the-day.  And “going it alone” to struggle down one blind alley to the next is not a good use of your personal time and energy.   

In this mobile employment age, it’s rare to find a lifelong mentor available to support and guide you through your struggling business issues---but---work to get yourself an agenda-free surrogate mentor.  Someone who has been where you are now, who will listen to you and brainstorm with you, provide an independent viewpoint, encourage you and who you can be accountable to.

 John Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership

 John G. Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership: Self Coaching Secrets