The Issue
Have you ever run or attended leadership development programs in your organization that everyone raved about during and at the conclusion of the session and then promptly went back to work and forgot about? Two months later it was almost impossible to find any demonstration of the behaviors that seemed so intuitively right and effective during the workshop. The workshop may have been about the use of power and influence. It may have been about communication or dealing with conflict. It may even have been about 360-degree feedback and how to focus on improvement in leadership at the individual level in terms of day-to-day behaviors. Isn’t it curious that while everyone who attends development sessions like these agrees and commits to change, it seldom happens?
We believe that the issue is fairly simple. We are all human, and when we return to work there is almost always a pile of stuff waiting for us. The simplest way to deal with this large amount of work that has built up is to do it the old way, the way that is most comfortable. The lessons we have “learned” in our development session are new and uncomfortable to implement, so we don’t. We also typically don’t get a lot of support from our managers for implementing the new behaviors. What we usually get from them are requests for updates on the work that didn’t get done while we were away. Before long we forget about new behaviors completely, and it is as if we never learned anything new at all.
A Solution
There is one solution to this dilemma that is particularly effective in working with leaders and leadership issues. The solution is to provide the leader with a built in reminder system for the “lessons learned” in the form of a coach. The role of this coach is not to teach the leader anything new, although that may happen from time to time. The true role of the coach is to ask questions and maintain focus. The coach and the leader schedule regular times to meet, either face to face or over the telephone and they have coaching conversations that follow a regular pattern. The coach focuses the leader on the objectives that they want to develop and at the same time role models the type of supportive behavior that we want all leaders to demonstrate with their own people.
A Coaching Model
There are lots of ideas on the market about how to do coaching and what model to use. A coaching model that we have been particularly successful with is called the GROW model. The GROW model comes from the work of John Whitmore in his book called “Coaching for Performance”. The GROW acronym stands for goals, reality, options, and will. In simple terms the coach asks the leader to focus on a limited number of goals. These are really important areas that the leader needs to address. Improved business performance is always at the heart of these goals. The goals may be direct business goals or personal development goals that will lead to improved business results. The next step in the process is to assess current reality relative to these goals. This sets up a positive tension between reality as it exists today and the goals that the leader has chosen to pursue. From there the conversation becomes an analysis of development options. Working with the coach, the leader brainstorms all the ways that they could approach accomplishing these goals. The final part of the discussion with the coach deals with commitment by the leader to do some very specific things before their next conversation. This commitment is the glue that holds this process together. Interestingly enough our experience has been that most leaders tend to follow through on these commitments and actually make significant progress toward accomplishing their goals.
Why Does This Work?
It is an interesting question. We believe that the answer lies in the act of committing to action and the knowledge that there is a follow up. That follow up is the next call or meeting with the coach. Once a leader has decided to devote the time and energy to this coaching process, they tend to follow through and this makes all the difference in the world in terms of results. An added benefit of this process is that we have found most leaders pick up rather quickly on this idea and become much better coaches with their teams.
Summary
For those
of you who have read the 3 previous white papers know
that this is the final piece of the puzzle of performance that we at Leadership
Perspectives believe can boost the results of any organization, public or
private. It begins with the clarity of a
sound strategy that everyone in the organization understands and is connected
to. The next step is the selection of a
leadership model that applies to people at every level of the organization and
a process to develop that kind of leadership at the individual and
organizational level. The final element
to cement and support the changes in leadership behavior that are necessary is
the coaching process described above.
This process is designed to focus, reinforce, and integrate all of the
leadership activities taking place in the organization. For
more information or help in implementing any of these business
performance-boosting processes, contact Dr. Jim Stryker at Leadership
Perspectives, Inc. by email at Jstryker@LPI1.com
or voicemail at 703-629-8977.