San Francisco Bay Area Executive Coaching

Executive Coaching Secrets to Being More Creative – Negativity Is the Enemy of Creativity

Are you working in an organization which values releasing the creativity of leaders at all levels? Are the leaders in your organization optimistic and encouraging regarding people contributing fresh ideas?

One of the most powerful questions one can ask oneself in the present moment is “Can I suspend judgment and allow new ideas to flow and flourish?” You need to have faith in your own creativity and encourage the fresh ideas of others at work to successfully achieve desired results.

Are you open to creative thinking or overly critical of new ideas? How effective are you at encouraging creativity? Are you passionate about creating a climate of innovation at work fueled by meaning, purpose, and a creative spirit?

Negative self-judgment is compounded when new ideas in the workplace are systematically criticized. There is often a belief in the workplace that having a sharp critical eye is preferred by managers and leaders. Such a negative bias can kill creativity.

Michael Ray is a Stanford professor who teaches creative entrepreneurs through his class “Personal Creativity in Business”.  According to Ray, there are five qualities of creativity:

1.  intuition
2.  will
3.  joy
4.  strength
5.  compassion

Those qualities are drawn out of people by four tools:

1.  faith in your own creativity
2.  absence of judgment
3.  precise observation
4.  penetrating questions

“Everything in the world already exists; whatever seems new is only something old rearranged.”                 ― Max de Pree

The paradox of success is that when things are going well there’s no need to change. Innovation needs to begin before a need is felt. Customer or client complaints when viewed objectively and not defensively can point to areas where change is needed.

Cognitive psychologists have shown that the biggest hurdle to solving problems often isn’t ignorance - it’s access to the right information at the right time. Information sharing within big organizations is not easy due to geographic distances, political squabbles, internal competition and bad incentive systems that hinder the spread of ideas.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a more innovative and creative leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and creativity, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.

Executive Coaching Secrets to Creativity - Meaning is the Key to Engaging Creativity

Are you working in an organization that values creativity and innovation? Are the leaders in your organization open to everyone discovering meaning in their work?

One of the most powerful questions one can ask oneself in the present moment is “What is my core identity and how can I align who I am with being fully engaged in meaningful work?” You need to know who you are to successfully achieve desired results.

Do you know your core identity? How effective are you at encouraging creativity? Are you passionate about the work you do fueled by meaning, purpose, and a creative spirit?

Meaning Is the Key to Engaging Creativity

Whenever someone has a burst of creativity, it is because they’ve spent time thinking over some problem or situation that has meaning for them. They have become immersed and totally engaged. If we want people to be innovative, we must discover what is important to them, and we must engage them in meaningful issues.

Michael Ray is a Stanford professor who has led some of Silicon Valley’s most creative entrepreneurs through his class “Personal Creativity in Business” for the past 21 years. Underlying his teaching on creativity is a search for two fundamental questions:

1.  Who is my self?
2.  What is my work?

Ray says you can’t know what or how you want to create until you know who you are and what you hope to do with your life. He believes that creativity exists within everyone. When people can’t tap into their creativity it’s because of an internal “voice of judgment” which is often heavily influenced by society, employers and parents.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a more innovative and creative leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and creativity, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.

Executive Coaching Secrets to Become More Innovative - How to Enhance Creativity in the Workplace

Are you working in an organization that values innovation and creativity? Are the leaders in your organization open to possibility?

One of the most powerful questions one can ask oneself in the present moment is “What new ideas can we put into action right now?” You need to continually change to be successful.

How effective are you at encouraging creativity?

Enhancing  Creativity in the Workplace

People will be most creative when they feel motivated by their work, in and of itself. When people are engaged because of their own natural interest and satisfaction in their work, they will be challenged to be creative through their own intrinsic motivation. External pressures or rewards are never as effective as internal motivation. In order to tap into that resource, people must be matched to jobs that tap into underlying values that motivate and excite them.

In addition to intrinsic motivation, two other components are necessary within an individual for creative resourcefulness, according to Theresa Amabile (Harvard Business Review, 1998).

1.  Expertise: a person must have the necessary technical, procedural and intellectual knowledge.
2.  Creative-thinking skills: a person must be able to use their thinking in flexible and imaginative ways.

Trying to develop someone’s expertise and creative-thinking skills can be time-consuming. It is far easier to enhance and tap into someone’s internal motivation.

Amabile writes about six managerial practices that enhance creativity. These categories emerged from more than two decades of research that focused on the links between environment and creativity.

1.  Challenge: Matching the right person with the right job in order to play into their expertise and creative thinking skills. Making a good match requires the manager to have access to important information about employees and their preferences. This may mean using information available through assessments such as DISC, PIAV, Meyers-Briggs or other instruments that indicate values and preferences. This also requires good listening and observing. People express what interests them and excites them all the time. Are you listening?

2.  Freedom: Intrinsic motivation and ownership is enhanced when people are free to approach their work the way they choose. Managers tend to mismanage freedom by changing goals frequently or failing to define them clearly. Worse, they grant freedom in name only, declaring employees to be “empowered” and then they delineate the process to be followed and give penalties for divergence.

3.  Resources: Time and money can either support or kill creativity. Some time pressures can heighten creativity. Organizations routinely kill creativity with fake deadlines or impossibly tight ones. This creates distrust, or burnout. Creativity takes time. Incubation periods have to be scheduled in.

Project resources that are too limited can push people to use their creativity to finding additional resources, rather than actually developing new products or services.

4.  Work-Group Features: Managers must create teams with a diversity of perspectives and backgrounds. When people come together with diverse intellectual foundations and approaches to work, ideas often combine in exciting and useful ways.

Managers often make the mistake of putting similar people together. This may seem desirable because the people see eye to eye and get along, thus making decisions quicker. Their very homogeneity, however, does little to enhance expertise and creative thinking.

5.  Supervisory Encouragement: Managers neglect to praise creative successes and unsuccessful efforts and thereby inadvertently contribute to stifle creativity. To sustain passion, people need to feel their work matters and is important. A certain tolerance is required for mistakes and failures so that they can be used creatively.

Managers often look for reasons not to use a new idea. Research shows that an interesting psychological dynamic underlies this phenomenon. People believe that their bosses will perceive them as smarter if they demonstrate critical, analytical thinking.

This creates a bias that has severe consequences for the creative process. Such a culture of evaluation leads people to focus on external rewards and punishments instead of on being creative. It creates a climate of fear that undermines intrinsic motivation.

6.  Organizational Support: Creativity is truly enhanced when the entire organization supports it. Leaders can support creativity by ensuring that information sharing and collaboration is the norm. Political problems and gossip take people’s attention away from work. That sense of mutual purpose and excitement that is so central to tapping into the power of intrinsic motivation must be encouraged and supported. It can be killed by cliques and political factions.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a more innovative and creative leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and self - management, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.

Executive Coaching Secrets to Become More Innovative- Creating a Culture of Innovation

Are you working in an organization that values innovation and creativity? Are the leaders in your organization open to possibility?

One of the most powerful questions one can ask oneself in the present moment is “What new ideas can we put into action right now?” You need to continually change to be successful.

How effective are you at encouraging creativity?

An enterprise that does not innovate will not survive long. Management that does not learn to innovate and foster creativity will not last long. Businesses and organizations have to be designed for change as the norm. They must create change rather than react to it.

Innovation is the means by which the entrepreneur creates new wealth-producing resources. It also enables existing resources to have enhanced potential for creating wealth. Innovation is an effort to create purposeful, focused change in an enterprise’s economic or social potential.

Some innovations come in a flash of genius, but most result from a conscious and purposeful search for opportunities. Above all, innovation is work rather than genius. It requires knowledge, ingenuity and focus. Without diligence, persistence and commitment, all the talent, ingenuity and knowledge are to no avail.

In order to innovate, there must be a fertile atmosphere of creativity. Unleashing creativity requires more than brainstorming sessions. It is more than problem solving. People have ideas all the time. The real question is, “Which ideas are you going to use?”

Few workplaces actually encourage creativity. Management inadvertently stifles it with procedures and the status quo necessary for stability and performance. Individuals stifle it internally through their own voice of judgment.

Negativity, judgment and fear are the enemies of creativity. To the extent these exist in the work environment, there can be little creativity. In business, it isn’t enough for an idea to be original; it must also be applicable to creating greater economic growth. It must improve a product or service in some way.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a more innovative and creative leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and self - management, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.

Executive Coaching Secrets for High Performance - What Makes Your Company Successful?

Are you clear on what contributes to your company’s high performance? Do you need to clarify exactly what are the drivers of performance in your business?

One of the most powerful questions you can ask as a leader is “What is the best decision I can make to achieve intended results?” You need to be clear on what will work for your enterprise not simply applying lessons from other companies.

What makes your company, law or accountancy firm successful?

Do you really know what contributes to your company’s high performance — or are you making assumptions based on faulty logic?

It turns out that most of the data regarding why one company succeeds and another fails is rife with errors in thinking and researcher bias.

For all of the business bestsellers that proclaim to share the secret formula of successful companies and heroic CEOs, the drivers of performance in business are as elusive as ever — especially at a time when global competition and technology are evolving at unprecedented rates.

But this doesn’t stop consultants and business school professors from writing “authoritative” books that claim to have the formula for driving company success. If you haven’t already guessed, high performance cannot be attained by simply applying the best practices of General Electric, Toyota, Starbucks or Google to your own enterprise. Nor can you hire rock-star CEOs to guarantee high performance in your organization.

I’m sorry to report it’s not that easy, but I have a hunch you already know that. What you may not be aware of are the common biases and flawed thinking that affect the way individuals make decisions under uncertainty. When it comes to evaluating company performance, it’s easy to fall into a variety of universal traps.

For the last 20 years, managers have bought into popular business books such as In Search of Excellence, Built to Last and Good to Great.

Writing in The Halo Effect…and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers (Free Press, 2007), Phil Rosenzweig claims many books that focus on company success are based on flimsy research and delusional thinking:

“For all their claims of scientific research, for all their lengthy descriptions of apparently solid and careful research, they operate mainly at the level of storytelling. They offer tales of inspiration that we find comforting and satisfying, but they’re based on shaky thinking.”

We must peel away the layers of jumbled thinking to thoroughly investigate the elements that lead to high performance. Recognizing these lapses in logic is the only way to pull back the curtains to see what’s really going on.

With full awareness, we can identify the elements that truly drive company performance, provided we recognize the fundamental uncertainties at the heart of all businesses. Delusions can be replaced with more discerning ways to understand performance based on a respect for probabilities.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a high performance leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and self - management, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of  a high performance company or law firm.

Strategic Talent Management Secrets – Creating a Top Talent Focused Organization

Our business world today is increasingly competitive and global. Attracting and keeping talented people is the key to being a successful company, law or accountancy firm. Organizations are increasingly challenged to recruit top talent and improve the company culture and environment. 

People want meaning and purpose in their work. Assuring a great fit between an employee and his/her employer is critical for both to be happy. The right fit increases the probability of full engagement. But how should leaders design organizations to ensure that talent is the highest priority?

I just finished reading a seminal book by Ed Lawler Talent…Making People Your Competitive Advantage. Ed Lawler is director of the Center for Effective Organizations at the University of Southern California (USC). Talent offers a remarkable blueprint that clearly maps out an understandable approach to organizing and leading an organization focused on talent. The book is practical incorporating case examples that make some of the learning and lessons come alive. The book pays special attention to:

•    Leadership
•    Performance Evaluation
•    Managing Change
•    Reinventing Human Resources
•    Corporate Boards
•    Strategic Talent Management

I found especially fascinating the outlining of the Star Model which identifies the features that help create a human - capital – centric organization. Human capital focused organizations need to be known as places that value and grow inspiring leaders. The Star Model begins with strategy. Strategy defines which products, services, and markets an organization will focus on and how it will compete Determining the right competencies and capabilities is core to strategy execution.

At the center of the Star Model is “identity.” Identity is differentiated from culture. Culture is defined as the internal values and norms of an organization that defines how things are done and what is important. In contrast, identity is described as the fundamental personality of the organization with respect to how it treats people, what it values, what the right way to do things are, and what are acceptable and unacceptable behaviors.

Talent is a great resource for leaders who want to determine which strategic talent management approach best fits their business. The choices are a full engagement approach that has long-term employee relationships as a goal or a global-competitor approach where there is a constant need for new talent and technological capability.

Are you a leader with a mindset “obsessed with talent”. Reading and implementing some of the key strategies described in Talent may just be your ticket to success.

Executive Coaching for Change Resistant Leaders – Why Leaders give Up

High-performing leaders want to get better. Research supports one-on-one coaching to be the most successful method for developing leaders.

Executive coaching offers a tremendous opportunity to leverage leadership talent and resources and help leaders change. Coaching can help leaders overcome the obstacles to change.

Are you working with a coach and developing your maximum leadership capability?

Why Leaders Give Up

When it comes to change, some leaders lose motivation and fail to “stick with the program.” Regardless of a coach’s competence, failure to achieve goals may occur for several reasons:

1. Ownership: The more leaders feel the process is being imposed upon them or that they are just casually “trying it out,” the less likely the coaching process will work. If leaders are simply “playing games,” with no clear commitment, their bosses must be willing to discontinue the coaching process—for the good of both the company and the coaching profession.

2. Time: Goal setters have a natural tendency to underestimate the time needed to reach targets. Busy, impatient leaders can be even more time-sensitive than the general population. Ordinarily, our behavior changes long before our coworkers perceive any change.

3. Difficulty: Goal setters’ optimism applies to difficulty, as well as time. Not only does everything take longer than we think; it also requires hard work! Long-term change in leadership effectiveness takes real effort. For example, it can be challenging for busy, opinionated leaders to have the discipline to stop and listen patiently while others say things they may not want to hear.

4. Distractions: Leaders have a tendency to underestimate the distractions and competing goals that will invariably surface in any given year. By planning for distractions in advance, leaders can set realistic expectations for change and, consequently, will be less likely to renounce the change process.

5. Rewards: Leaders tend to become disappointed when achievement of one goal doesn’t immediately translate into achievement of other goals. If leaders think skills improvement will quickly lead to short-term profits, promotions or recognition, they may become disappointed and give up when these things fail to materialize instantaneously.

6. Maintenance: Once a leader has put forth the effort required to achieve a goal, it can be tough to maintain behaviors that incorporate the new changes. Leaders must recognize that professional development is an ongoing process, with a lifelong commitment. Leadership involves relationships—and relationships and  people change. Maintaining positive relationships requires long-term effort.

Coaching can be daunting for some leaders, as they must be willing to be vulnerable and open. It is exhilarating for those who embrace it and commit to change. Unlike management science, academic theory or consulting, coaching is an exciting interpersonal journey. Coaches and their clients form strong bonds built on trust, openness, confidence and achievement.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a more collaborative and change resilient leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.

Executive Coaching for Inspiring Leaders – Eight Steps in the Behavioral Coaching Process

Enlightened leaders want to get better. Research supports one-on-one coaching to be the most successful method for developing high performing leaders.

Executive coaching clients chooses behaviorally-defined goals that will help them grow professionally, and help the company, law firm or accountancy firm meet their strategic objectives.

How do you convince leaders to change? How can you optimize their talents and potential?

Executive coaching offers a tremendous opportunity to leverage leadership talent and resources, both of which can steer an organization towards success by involving key stakeholders.

Are you working with a coach and developing your full leadership capability?
Eight Steps in the Behavioral Coaching Process

Marshall Goldsmith has been called America’s foremost executive coach by several leading magazines and newspapers (Fast Company, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Harvard Business Review). His model for behavioral coaching outlines a reliable process to help leaders achieve positive, measurable changes in themselves, their staff and their teams. The model includes eight basic steps.

Research indicates that if leaders fail to complete these basic steps, they probably will not improve. Conversely, if they successfully accomplish these steps, growth is assured.

1.  Allow leaders to be involved in determining desired behaviors. Leaders cannot be expected to change their behavior if they lack a clear understanding of the company’s goals.

2.  Let leaders assist in identifying key stakeholders. There are two major reasons why leaders deny the validity of feedback: wrong items or wrong raters. When leaders and their managers agree in advance on desired behaviors and key stakeholders, they buy into the coaching process.

3.  Collect feedback. The coach can accomplish this by interviewing key stakeholders and using 360-degree rating systems.

4.  Determine key behaviors for change. Select only one or two key behaviors that will have the most positive impact on effective leadership.

5.  Have the leader respond to key stakeholders. The leader being coached should talk with each key stakeholder to collect additional “feedforward” suggestions on how to improve in the targeted areas. The leader should keep the conversation positive, simple and focused. When mistakes have been made in the past, it is generally a good idea to apologize and ask for help in changing the future. Leaders are advised to listen to stakeholder suggestions without  judging them.

6.  Review what has been learned, and help the leader develop an action plan. After listening to suggestions, the leader must return with a plan describing what he or she wants to accomplish. The coach then provides encouragement that helps the leader live up to each commitment.

7.  Develop an ongoing follow-up process. Follow-up should be very efficient and focused on the future, incorporating questions like, “Based upon my behavior last month, what ideas do you have for me for next month?” Within six months, conduct a two- to six-item mini-survey with key stakeholders, asking whether the leader has become more or less effective in each targeted area for improvement.

8.  Review results and start again. If the leader has taken the process seriously, stakeholders invariably report improvement. Build on this success by repeating the process for the next 12 to 18 months. This type of follow-up will assure continued progress on initial goals and uncover additional areas for improvement.

This coaching model has a proven track record with leaders from some of the world’s foremost organizations. When leaders practice these guidelines and work with competent executive coaches, they focus their behavior on what works best for them, their team and the company.

The coach must keep the focus on the specific behaviors selected with the leader, facilitate information collection from key stakeholders and act as a catalyst for “feedforward,” emphasizing positive, measurable progress as noticed by team members and stakeholders.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a more collaborative and enlightened leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.

Executive Coaching to Help Leaders Change: Leveraging Leadership Talent and Resources

Leveraging Leadership Talent and Resources

I provide executive coaching to leaders who want to get better. Research supports one-on-one coaching to be the most successful method for developing high performing leaders.

I typically meet with a leader for two hours in-person every other week. The client chooses behaviorally-defined goals that will help them grow professionally, and help the company, law firm or accountancy firm meet their strategic objectives.

Are you working with a coach and developing as a leader?

How do you convince leaders to change? How can you optimize their talents and potential? Which best practices in executive coaching programs produce lasting results that drive business performance?

Executive coaching offers a tremendous opportunity to leverage leadership talent and resources, both of which can steer an organization toward sustainable success.

A New Paradigm

Coaching is no longer reserved for problem leaders. It is more frequently sought by top performers whose organizations value their management and growth potential. Today’s CEOs recognize the importance of enabling leaders to achieve critical business objectives in the shortest possible time, so they are hiring coaches to accelerate development.

Hewitt Associates has conducted some interesting research that documents the positive, long-term relationship between investment in leadership development and continuing financial success (Hewitt Associates’ 2003 Top Companies for Leaders study). Its research demonstrates that companies that invest in emerging leaders tend to enjoy greater long-term profits.

Forty-seven percent of companies rated for strong leadership regularly assign coaches to their executives. They know coaching provides a powerful way to boost performance and strengthen leadership. Regular use of executive coaches separates top companies from the mediocre ones.

The coaching profession is expanding rapidly, with coaches from diverse backgrounds who champion varied methodologies. This growth has sparked debate over several issues, including:

• What are best practices?
• Who is the actual client: the leader being coached or the organization footing the bill?
• How should impact and return on investment be measured?
• Where do you draw the line between personal and business issues?
• How can confidentiality be preserved when stakeholders and team members are part of the mix?

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a more collaborative and enlightened leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.

Executive Coaching Secrets for Developing Willpower: Purposeful Leaders Produce Results

My most productive executive coaching clients mobilize their willpower to focus on achieving results.  They have tremendous energy and a passion to succeed.

Are you committed to producing results or are you caught up in excessive business? Leadership effectiveness is more about getting things done through others than focusing on hours spent at work.

What is your mindset about being a purposeful leader who executes and is results driven?

Purposeful Leaders Produce Results

Willpower is the force behind energy and focus, enabling managers to execute disciplined action. Even when uninspired by the work and tempted by other opportunities, purposeful managers maintain energy and focus through willpower. They are committed to achieving results and, no matter what, will not give up.

Purposeful managers exhibit an insatiable need to produce results—a key finding among successful executives interviewed by former Stanford University Business School Lecturer Jim Collins, MBA, for his book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t (HarperBusiness, 2001). Managers with willpower overcome barriers, deal with setbacks and persevere to the end.

For willpower to flourish, managers must commit to three action steps:

1.    Develop a clear mental picture of their intention.

2.    Make a conscious choice to commit to—and pursue—this intention.

3.    Develop strategies for protecting this intention against distractions, boredom or frustration.

Without willpower, top leaders simply cannot direct or encourage others, nor provide meaning to their employees’ work. Unfortunately, most leaders actually wind up destroying their managers’ willpower by encouraging superficial acquiescence to tasks, but not real commitment to specific goals.

Leaders who activate their own willpower can effectively engage others’ willpower. They may need to commit to more difficult routes of persuasion, rather than getting quick buy-ins. They must encourage their employees to consider conflicts, doubts and ambivalence, while openly discussing difficulties and costs—not just painting a rosy picture of necessary tasks.

Willful leadership is neither easy nor intuitive. Ultimately, it is less risky than merely motivating managers and assuming their compliance.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the Bar-On EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a more purposeful and productive leader. You can become a leader who models emotional intelligence and social intelligence, and who inspires people to become happily engaged with the strategy and vision of the company.