Self Leadership Coaching Blog

Online University has voted this blog a Top Leadership Blog for 2010. Whilst this does not rank in the same league as an endorsement from Harvard Business Review I am pleased that our posts are contributing to leadership, management and coaching practice.

If this is your first time visiting Self Leadership Coaching blog then I suggest you use the search button and look for topics of interest to you. You will find many posts on; leadership, management, coaching, presentation skills, communication and influence.

We welcome your comments and will post them even if they disagree with the post, so feel free to start a discussion. Most of the information posted has come from my experience as a leadership consultant and executive coach, working in Australia, Singapore and across SE Asia and as a life-long learner I am always looking for new ideas and best practice.

Please enjoy – and Learn

in a previous post, How to Influence Your Boss, I explored how to influence upwards, but just as important is how to influence laterally.

When I teach a programs on influence or influence without authority, I ask participants to create a circle of influence like the diagram below.

I then ask them to put ticks or crosses, representing ability or inability to influence, against each circle.  Obviously some circles will need sub-circles to represent individual key people. This is a useful exercise to map out where you need to develop or strengthen your influence.

In a modern matix style organisation, your success will be determined not just by what you do, but by what you can influence others to do. The effective manager/leader learns to find out what is important to the people in their circle of influence and communicates to them in terms of what matters them rather than directly stating their own needs.

Another previous post, titled ‘Leadeship is Influence’ expands on finding needs and looks at what are people’s currencies. When you know what is valuable, a currency, to another person you can trade them what they want for what you want.

I have been coaching a senior manager who had a history of antagonising clients and colleagues alike by telling them what he thinks is the right thing to do. We had discussed this  and he had commited to stop “telling” and start finding out what’s important to the people in his circle. This week he reported a dramatic improvement in his relationship and that he was getting things done quicker. This result surprised him because he thought it would take longer to ask questions than to tell people what seem to him to be an obvious solution.

Have you drawn a circle of influence? Do you know the currencies of the people you work with? Are you exercising all the influence you could?

Feel free to let me know.

Do you know your strengths?
Do you operate from your strengths?

Research has shown that only about one-third of people are aware of their strengths and the management guru, Peter Drucker said that we can only lead from strengths.

A common approach in management and  leadership development has been to measure the gap between a person’s behaviour and the desired corporate competencies; whilst this approach is valid it can downplay the application of a person’s strengths.

My top strengths are; love of learning, humor, zest, perseverance, honest, open-mindedness and perspective. I know this because I have taken a test based on the research of Dr Martin Seligman and Dr Christopher Peterson.

Seligman and Peterson’s research has found six broad categories of the best of human behaviours (virtues) that are intrinsically valued across time and cultures. Seligman and Peterson suggest that these virtues may even be biologically linked in terms of survival of the species. Within each virtue category are strengths that we all demonstrate to a greater or lesser extent.
 The list is as follows:

There is a natural tendency to consider those strengths that you don’t score highly on as weaknesses but, unlike talents, strengths can be built up.

My lowest scoring strength is modesty ( for those of you who know me this is no surprise) and yet this does not mean I am not modest in some circumstances and with the awareness of this I can build it as a strength.

Positive Psychology researchers are now validating interventions to build strengths and the work is ongoing. This has major ramifications for the field of leadership development as we can know with certainty as to how to build up individuals and teams.

At Self Leadership International we have already started to build this research into our coaching and programs. A popular activity is a partner exercise in which each party listens to a success story told by the other and reflects back the strengths that they heard. The result of this exercise are profound in that colleagues who have known each other for some time get a deeper understanding of each other and managers learn to better delegate and build up their teams rather than jump to criticism.

Posted from Singapore 27/10/2010

In this episode of  my video series on presentation skills, we explore how your body language impacts your message.

There are four presentation styles that every speaker should and can easily master. Watch the video and read the descriptions below.

Director Style

This is the presentation body language that commands attention while maintaining dignity and rapport. It offers no immediate opportunity for resistance.You will use it to give clear mobilizing directions.

Instructions: Stand straight, square the shoulders, and maintain eye contact. During instruction, stay as still as possible. After the instruction, freeze for a couple of breaths while slowly scanning room. Use a strong voice. Use visual words and physiology.

Discovery Style

This is the presentation body language used when ‘on stage’ or teaching.You can use it to elicit curiosity, wonder, excitement and discovery. To explore what is possible to know or learn; to build closeness and partnership with the audience.

Intsructions: Stand light on feet, move laterally across stage, Use lots of gestures congruent with content, voices and expressions, and maintain an air of playfulness. Use “Let’s”, “Us”, “We” and phrases such as “Here’s an idea. What do you think or feel about it?” “This is true for me, how about for you?” Move in and out of the audience.

Leadership Style

This is the presentation body language style that inspires and calls people to action. You can use it to unify a group, and get them to move toward commitment and action.

Instructions: Stand straight, breathe fully, and maintain eye contact. Keep one foot in front of the other; slightly turn body to one side of the audience at a time. If in center of audience, slowly rotate and speak to different sections.

Authenticity

This is the presentation body language used for establishing openness and authenticity. You can use it to own up to a mistake or deliver bad news.

Instructions: Use a calm voice. Sit down, open your palms upwards be emotionally vulnerable.

Practice these styles in front of a mirror and incorporate them in your next presentation or contact us for presentation skills coaching

I have just experienced three transformational days at the first Asia Pacific Coaching Conference held in Singapore, and before I share my learning’s and take-aways I wanted to publicly acknowledge Foo See Luan and Nancy Hughes Verhoeven and their team of dedicated individuals for bringing together 300 coaches from across the region to talk, listen, learn and collaborate.

The theme of the conference was ‘Coaching for Sustainable Mulitcultural Communities’ and the attendees were certainly diverse; I met fellow coaches from Japan, Korea, Taiwan, China, Australia, India, Brazil, USA, Norway and of course Singapore. Continue Reading »

This weekend I watched a magician enthral an audience with his art. As he performed his sleight of hand and misdirection I wondered at the thousands of hours he must have invested to achieve mastery.

 Mastery involves focus, concentration, passion, intention, commitment, and discipline.  We can’t achieve mastery in everything in fact most people are unlikely to achieve mastery in anything as they dabble in this and hack about at that. Continue Reading »

If there is any hypnotic trance state that is the ultimate one for a Neuro-Semanticist, it is the genius state. But no, the use of the word genius does not mean it is a hypnotic state for increasing your I.Q., that’s not the purpose of this particular trance.  Instead this is the induction into a state of being all there. It is a state of absolute focus on one thing. Normally, when you experience it, you are in a powerful state of concentration and absorption.  And when you are there people may think that you have really tranced out or they may think that you really have fabulous powers of focus and will power.  The genius state is a state wherein you are in “flow” and even better, you can turn the flow state on and off at will. Continue Reading »

As a Leo/Ox I don’t believe much in hororscopes but with Chinese New Year celebrations in full swing I cannot ignore the current zeitgeist.

According to the Chinese Zodiac, the tiger is a symbol of power and authority and therefore leadership; unfortunately the style of leadership represented is poor on relationship.

Poor people leadership is something I encounter on a daily basis; just recently I was conducting a Coaching for Managers program and one senior manager told me his boss had refused to attend saying, “I don’t believe in that s#!t”

On the flip side I have been working with some great people, recently, who really believe in developing people-skills and are seeing the business results to confirm their belief.

If this is your first or fiftieth time reading this blog, I hope my posts, in some small way, make the Year of the Tiger profitable, productive and harmonious for you.

Gong Xi Fa Cai!

Coaching, circ. 1984

As part of my study of leadership and business, I recently read a classic— Tom Peters’ 1985 book, A Passion for Excellence: The Leadership Difference.  This book followed his best selling book on great companies, Search for Excellence (1982).  By the time I read over 300 pages, I knew that I was going to use a number of quotes on “coaching.”  Then I turned the page to Chapter 18.  It has a one line title, Coaching. Continue Reading »

Neuro Linguistic Programming – NLP

NLP is a model of how humans think, feel, behave and communicate. When NLP was developed in the 1970′s by Bandler and Grinder it was a radical departure from the field of psychology, which at the time was focused more on human dysfunction than peak performance.

Today, with the acceptance of positive psychology, NLP appears less radical can be viewed as an excellent framework for learning to communicate effectively, to model people and systems and to design strategies for peak performance. Learning NLP can improve the performance of athletes, sales people, business people, coaches, trainers, teachers, therapists and parents.

NLP for Consulting, Training and Coaching

I use NLP and NeuroSemantics in my consulting, training and coaching and I enjoy sharing the technology through public programs that I hold in Singapore and other parts of SE Asia. You can get a list of the upcoming programs by clicking here. I highly recommend NLP Communication and  Coaching Essentials which is the first 3-day of a NLP Practitioner program and covers how to communicate and coach effectively plus we are conducting  a full NLP Master Practitioner training in October.

NLP  Association of Singapore Video

If you like watching videos on YouTube then you can watch part of my presentation to the Singapore NLP Association.