San Francisco Bay Area Executive Coaching

Executive Coaching Secrets for More Reflection and Less Busyness – The Purposeful Manager

Are you unrelentingly busy but not acting on purpose?

I was facilitating an emotional intelligence workshop yesterday. One of the executives was fairly stressed and was waking up in the middle of the night reflecting about work. I suggested that he might be less anxious, and more productive  purposeful if he learned to take time during the day to breathe deeply and reflect and be present in the moment.

Are you frenetically busy or energetic and highly focused and productive?

The costs of unproductive busyness take a toll on both managers and their companies. Managers who identify strongly with their jobs tend to become frustrated or hurt when confronted with setbacks, criticism or mediocre performance. Continual unreflective activity has a direct effect on an organization’s profits and managerial morale, as it’s ineffective and ultimately unsatisfying.

For example, frenzied managers often act in extremely shortsighted ways. Under extreme time constraints and the need to do more with fewer resources, they become adept at finding short-term solutions. As a consequence, they seldom take time to reflect, and neglect long-term issues. Frenzied managers demonstrate a well-intentioned, but desperate, need to do something—anything—which makes them potentially destructive.

Chronic procrastinators are generally recovering frenzied managers. Once they have learned that frantic, desperate actions are unsatisfying, many lapse into procrastination, losing energy and focus. It becomes all too easy for them to put off action altogether.

The Purposeful Manager

What distinguishes managers who take purposeful action from those who do not? Why are some managers highly energetic and focused, while others procrastinate, disengage or invest energy in unfocused busyness?

Managers’ tasks are complex, requiring creativity and innovation. They often strive to meet multiple and conflicting goals, many times on long-term projects that require a sustained effort. Ambitious goals, high uncertainty and extreme opposition can seriously limit many managers’ ability to maintain focus.

When managers can make things happen under these conditions—and when they consistently exhibit purposeful action—they have learned to harness the power of their will.

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.

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.

Leadership for the Future - Risks and Opportunities in an Uncertain World

Are you focusing on future scenarios in your business?

Many of my executive coaching clients find focusing on the future with constant change
daunting. Their biggest challenge is adjusting their business strategy to align with ever-changing new data.
 
Are you looking at future business scenarios based on the five primary drivers of change?

Risks and Opportunities in an Uncertain World

According to Paul A. Laudicina, managing director of A. T. Kearney’s Business Policy Council, there is a way to look at future business environments and evaluate risks and opportunities that might evolve. Laudicina, in his new book World Out of Balance (McGraw Hill, 2005), argues that today’s earth-shattering events are fundamentally different from those of previous eras of history.

Technologies are collapsing distance and we now have unprecedented global interdependence. Only a disciplined strategy will embolden corporate management to engage the world and seize the many opportunities it presents.

Five Drivers of Change

Laudicina’s framework for looking at future business scenarios is based on his identification of five primary drivers of change:

1.   Globalization
2.   Demographics
3.   The new consumer
4.   Natural resources and the environment
5.   Regulation and activism

It used to be that large global companies such as Royal Dutch/Shell had sophisticated risk management and strategic planning departments to evaluate opportunities as well as vulnerabilities to social and political unrest, economic upheaval, and natural disasters overseas.

Corporate restructuring has taken the scissors to strategic planning departments. The rapid expansion of global opportunities has led many leaders to believe that careful planning isn’t necessary. “Just do it” becomes the global manifesto. As a result, most companies today lack the means to identify and manage external risks.

Most companies can and should expand, as the most promising opportunities are located outside home markets. In order to spot and act on new opportunities and avoid emerging threats, however, it is necessary to consider the five drivers that are most likely to shape the business environment in the future.

To do this, take each driver and plot three scenarios, ranging from most conservative environment to most liberal. Evaluate the consequences on your business if each of these scenarios should evolve over the next five years. Plan for the consequences and be ready.

What makes this era of globalization truly unique is how inexpensive and powerful technology has become. But if governments continue to fail to implement universal standards, corporations will find themselves in an increasingly complex quagmire of regional and national regulations. This will curtail their ability to expand markets abroad and limit the opportunities technologies offer to underserved populations.

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 inspiring and visionary team 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.

Leadership for the Future: Why Leaders Don’t Look Ahead

A number of my executive coaching clients don't like to look into the future. Perhaps it is because so much will change and change can be scary.

We work on changing their mindset to embrace change and the future as challenges and opportunity. Our conversations frequently revolve around learning from the past, living in the present and designing a desired future state full of possibility.

Why Leaders Don’t Look Ahead

Most leaders of organizations do not spend sufficient time considering the future. It may be in part because the answers are not easy—no one can know for sure what the future will bring. Globalization and rapidly changing technologies are only part of the uncertain future. One must also consider fluctuations in world politics, natural resources, and industry regulations.

Many leaders don’t want to look into the future because to do so is unsettling. They must admit that what they know today may be irrelevant and obsolete for the future. The knowledge and experience that brought them this far in their careers may not be sufficient.

When this happens, according to Hamel and Prahalad  in their book Competing for the Future, “…the urgent drives out the important; the future goes largely unexplored; and the capacity to act, rather than the capacity to think and imagine, becomes the sole measure of leadership.”

Looking at the Wrong Things

This leads to focusing attention on internal issues of restructuring and reengineering to shore up present day business rather than creating the future. But neither will ensure continued success if a company fails to regenerate its core strategies.

According to Hamel and Prahalad, “Any company that succeeds at restructuring and reengineering, but fails to create the markets of the future, will find itself on a treadmill, trying to keep one step ahead of the steadily declining margins and profits of yesterday’s business.”

In 1989 there was a survey of U.S. managers who believed that quality would be a fundamental source of competitive advantage in the year 2000. On the other hand, barely half of Japanese managers predicted quality to be a source of advantage in the year 2000. The Japanese managers rated first as a source of competitive advantage in the year 2000 the capacity to create fundamentally new products and businesses. This doesn’t mean that the Japanese turn their backs on quality, only that it is no longer a competitive differentiator.

Too many companies are focusing on creating advantage through quality, time-to-market, and customer responsiveness. These are prerequisites for survival, not competitive advantages for the future.

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 a more inspiring leader who embraces the future. 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 A Changing Future – Is Your Senior Leadership Ready for the Future?

I was recently coaching the president of a mid-size accounting firm. He was frustrated that his senior leadership team was unable to come up with any fresh ideas for the future that would be aligned with the strategic initiative of improving retention, timeliness and focusing on strengths. The firm leaders could only focus on current goals and objectives, and not what might lie ahead one or two years into the future.

Is Your Senior Leadership Ready for the Future?

“Discovering the future…is a far less amazing skill than inventing it. The thing discovered already exists; you simply see it before most others do. Often it is a new piece of technology that makes it possible for something to happen on a large scale. So, find a direction things are moving in and spell out the ultimate logic or conclusion. If you are right, there will be early examples of the thing already around. You are not creating the trend, you are simply spotting it before others.” – Stan Davis, Lessons from the Future, 2001

Is your organization looking forward, or is it focused on the problems of the present and immediate short-term competition? What occupies your senior management team? Are they issues of the present, or are you getting ready for a changing future?

How will your organization create new rules of competition in the future? Is it imagining new ways of doing business, building new capabilities, and setting new standards of customer satisfaction? Is it alert to possible risks from unconventional rivals, new business models, changing demographics, and global uncertainties?

It is no longer a question of being able to operate lean and mean. Trimming jobs and cutting costs, while important tasks, will not put you and your company into a front running position for industry leadership of the future.

Here are three questions to ask senior management to evaluate readiness for the future:

1.  What percentage of your time do you spend on external, rather than internal, issues? Do you understand the implications of new technology that is affecting your industry? Or are you debating corporate overhead allocations?

2.  When you are spending time looking outward, do you consider how the world could be different in five or ten years? Or are you more concerned with landing the next big contract or responding to competitors’ pricing?

3.  How much of your time is devoted to looking outward and forward? Are you consulting with colleagues to create a shared vision of the future based on risk evaluations as opposed to a personal and idiosyncratic view?

These questions were posed by Gary Hamel and C. K. Prahalad in their book Competing for the Future over ten years ago. The book merits re-reading as it is even more relevant today.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the BarOn EQ-i and CPI 260 can help you become a  more inspiring and visionary 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.

Leadership in the Future - Who’s in Charge? Nobody!

I have attended countless workshops on leadership. Years ago the "experts" would for the most part be talking about leadership at the top.

In my executive coaching programs with executives today, a great deal of the conversations revolve around the need for leaders to be inspiring and flexible. Leaders need to be developed at all levels of the organization.

What competencies do you see being necessary for leadership in your organization in the future?

Leadership in the Future

Writing about leadership in the future, Harlan Cleveland goes so far as to say that leadership will be so shared that there will be Nobody in Charge (John Wiley & Sons, 2002). He reasons that now, and even more so in the future:

1.  Systems are so complex that no one can truly be in charge of anything significant.
2.  The more people are involved in a decision, the better the chance it will be implemented.
3.  Looser organizational forms are superior to controlled forms.
4.  Planning must be fluid and subject to change.
5.  Information must be shared rather than hoarded.

Cleveland suggests four extraordinary traits of the leader of the future:

1.  Physical energy: Being able to work long hours and do a lot of homework. Today’s leader cannot afford to be insulated from new, challenging or different ideas.
2.  Consensus management: Decision makers must consult or even bargain with the people who will carry out their orders. In reality, many interest groups are involved in any given real-work issue, and often the decisions need to be negotiated. Being able to lead distinct groups toward a consensus is a critical leadership skill.
3.  Exhilaration of choice: A large array of choices will exhilarate, not depress an effective executive, who should be able to accept complex social management with relish.
4.  Joy of motion: Good executives steer more than they drive. The momentum is already there and the executive’s job is to guide it with a sensitive touch.

The leader of the future will need an integrative mind. Leaders must be comfortable working under high levels of uncertainty and near-chaos. He or she must be able to accept a leadership role without hierarchical authority. This leader will be able to take various elements of a changing world and blend them together to make sense for others. By offering this vision, the leader will be able to get people working together on a common objective. That is what being a leader is about. (Cleveland, Harlan, Nobody in Charge, John Wiley & Sons, 2002).

What do you see as the most important priority/qualities for effective leadership in the future?

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the BarOn EQi and CPI 260 can help you become a more inspiring and visionary 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 Future Leadership: Five Competencies for Leaders in the Future

In Global Leadership: the Next Generation (Goldsmith, M., Greenberg, C. L., Robertson, A. & Hu-Chan, M.; FT Prentice Hall, 2003), more than 200 executives were selected for their high potential for future leadership from 120 international companies. The results reveal five key competencies for leaders in the future:

1. Thinking globally: Leaders will need to understand the economic, cultural, legal and political environments in which they do business. New skills and knowledge for marketing, sales and international production will be required. A global perspective is a high priority.

2. Appreciating cultural diversity: This competency requires more flexibility and openness than ever before. Cultural tension is a natural by-product of the global business environment and leaders will have to be adept at managing it. The ability to lead disparate groups of knowledge workers to a consensus will be crucial.

3. Developing technological savvy: Information and communications systems are the backbone of the global enterprise. While CEO’s may not be technological experts they must make decisions about which advances to adopt and how to allocate technological investments wisely.

4. Building partnerships and alliances: As a result of all the reengineering, restructuring and downsizing, many activities are being outsourced. This requires an increased ability to negotiate complex alliances and manage network relationships. Joint leadership will be a key.

5. Sharing leadership: Sharing leadership responsibilities will be required to navigate global partnerships. Executive team leaders, keeping in mind a common vision and purpose, will collaborate to make effective decisions and strive for integration, not control.

It is important to remember that leadership is an emergent quality that is produced by the acts of many people in complex systems. The corporate culture must recognize and accept the need for leaders to get help. Leaders cannot walk on water or leap tall buildings, no matter how strong they appear to be. Executive coaches are necessary for the continuing development of leadership strengths, and will be even more so in the future.

Working with a seasoned executive coach trained in emotional intelligence and incorporating leadership assessments such as the BarOn EQi and CPI 260 can help you become a a more inspiring and visionary 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.

Good Boss vs Bad Boss - Changing Bad Habits of Leaders

A great deal of my executive coaching work with leaders focuses on leveraging strengths. I truly believe that this is the best approach to leadership development.

However, I receive a number of coaching referrals from Human Resources because a company leader needs to stop doing a specific behavior. The executive might be arrogant, disorganized, angry, controlling or any one of an number of behaviors that is disruptive in the workplace. The executive's bad habits can have a deleterious effect on the morale of employees. Employees can become disengaged causing a retention problem for the company.

Are you aware of any bad leadership habits you might need to change?

How to Develop Happy Companies - The Organizational Brain

Most of the senior leadership at one of the companies where I consult always seem overly pessimistic. I am the executive coach of the president who thankfully is much more optimistic.

The company president and I through appreciative inquiry and focusing on strengths have been working on shifting the focus to appreciating what is right in the organization. It's been a lot of hard work, but through recognizing the good things in people and the company the culture and attitudes of people are becoming much more positive. They are finding it easier to attract top talent who want to work for an organization where leaders at all levels are enthusiastic and forward thinking.

Are your leaders happy and creating a happy company where people are fully engaged and love to work?

Creating Happy Companies in Tough Times – Staying Resilient in Hard Times

Many of us in the United States feel that we are in a recession. Gas and food prices are going up and up.

A number of my executive coaching clients are feeling pressure to do more with fewer resources. Everyone seems overloaded with how to handle all of the information and struggling to stay organized.

How resilient are you in hard times?