Self Leadership Coaching Blog » Leadership

Year of the Tiger 2010

Andrew Bryant, CSP — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 01:27:14 +0000

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!

Leadership is Influence

Andrew Bryant, CSP — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:37:30 +0000

There are many definitions of leadership but my favourite in terms of its practicality is:

“Leadership is getting work done with and through others, whilst gaining their trust and cooperation.”

In a modern matrixed organisation, the ‘others’ that we need to lead may be our subordinates but just as likely they will be our peers, our bosses and our clients.

Aristotle (384-322 BCE) spoke about influence as requiring ethos, pathos and logos. Ethos can be translated as ethics, character and personal brand; pathos is empathy for the other person’s position and logos is a logical argument.

Your personal brand will be built by your confidence and your competence – the more you demonstrate that you can get the job done the more people will rely on you and be influenced by you. Effective leaders have a “my word is my bond” credo that builds influence muscle each time they exercise it.

Empathy is acknowledging how the other party feels. Steven Covey encouraged us to get the habit of “seek first and then be understood” this is essential to effective influence. When thinking about the person we wish to influence, we should consider; the organisational culture, their unit/department culture, their bosses expectations, peers expectations, how they are measured, the nature of their work and any major forces that impact them from outside the organisation.

When we acknowledge and empathise with the forces that drive the person, they will most likely reveal the ‘currencies’ that most matter to them.

Currencies include such things as; contributing to a vision, doing the right thing, challenge, recognition, contacts, acceptance and gratitude.

Identifying currencies requires good listening and rapport building skills but when you know just what the other person values you can influence them to do almost anything. I say “almost” anything because if you attempt to influence somebody to do something that is not in their or the organisations best interest you will most likely fail.

With logos we must present our influence proposal in a way that ‘makes sense’ to the mind of the listener. You must frame your message in a way that will be well received. A good formula for framing is the 4-mat system (McCarthy) which gets you to consider, Why, What, How and What’s Next?

Your listener wants to know why they should listen to you, what are you going to talk about, how they should use the information and what they should do next?

So if I was going to influence you to consider developing your leadership and influence skills and your currencies were learning and growth I might say something like,

“Have you considered how much more effective you could be if you knew how to influence? (WHY) Because your ability to influence at all levels inside and outside the organisation are essential to you creating business growth (WHAT). You can learn to increase or leverage your existing influence by attending one of my programs or hiring me in-house (HOW), so why not contact me to find out when you can begin? (WHAT’S NEXT).”

Now of course written like that it looks a bit like a sale pitch but when used with rapport and for the good of the listener this information is powerful.

The Evolution of Coaching

L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 01:03:27 +0000

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.

Now if that doesn’t surprise you as it did me, then let me remind you that Thomas Leonard did not create the field of “Coaching” until 1991. So this chapter was published 6 years earlier! And while there’s a few things I’ll mention in a minute that doesn’t fit for Meta-Coaching, mostly it is right on target. Chapter 18 is addressed to executive leaders and managerial leaders in an organization about how to be a leader coach. Now is that relevant? To see for yourself, here are a few key quotations from the book:

“Coaching is face-to-face leadership that pulls together people with diverse backgrounds, talents, experiences and interests, encourages them to step up to responsibility and continued achievement, and treats them as full-scale partners and contributions. Coaching is not about memorizing techniques or devising the perfect game plan. It is about really paying attention to people— really believing them, really caring about them, really involving them.

“To coach is largely to facilitate, which literally means ‘to make easy’ —not less demanding, less interesting or less intense, but less discouraging, less bound up with excessive controls and complications. A coach/facilitator works tirelessly to free the team from needless restrictions on performance, even when they are self-imposed. In these next few pages we will talk about some of the most vital aspects of coaching: visibility, listening, limit-setting, value-shaping, skill-stretching.” (325-326)

Under the title of “Coaching by Wandering Around,” Tom Peters writes about leaders and managers who use coaching as their methodology for leading:

“Coaching is the process of enabling others to act, of building on their strengths. It’s counting on people to use their own special skill and competence, and then giving them enough room and enough time to do it. Coaching at its heart involves caring enough about people to take the time to build a personal relationship with them.” (328)

“Coaching is tough-minded. It’s nurturing and bring out the best; it’s demanding that the team play as a team.” (329)

“Every coach, at every level, is above all a value-shaper. The value-shaper not only brings company philosophy to life by paying extraordinary attention to communicating and symbolizing it.” (330)

“The best coaches spend as much time developing the team’s ability to believe in what each member can contribute as they do working with individual players. It sets the tone for the way people should aim to work together and trust evolves in the process.” (334)

Now for what Tom Peters wrote that does not fit for coaching today as we know it via Meta-Coaching. This indicates the way coaching has evolved from 1984 to today:

“Five Coaching Roles: In short, sometimes coaching is not coaching, but counseling, or sponsoring, or confronting, or educating.” (337)

“It turns out that successful coaches instinctively vary their approaches to meet the needs of this person at this time, or that group at that time. They perform five distinctly different roles: they educate, sponsor, coach, counsel, and confront.” (338)

The theme of this chapter on Coaching is that the leader is a coach and the leader who coaches appeals to the best in each person, has an open door, is a problem-solver and cheerleader, thinks of ways to make people more productive, manages by wandering around, is a good listener, etc. (354-357).

“Effective coaching means creating winners, keeping the faith in the thick of turmoil, building momentum, finding tiny glimmers of light (to reinforce) in the midst of darkness…” (357)

“Effective leadership is full-time people development. … In coaching, the name of the game is execution.” (359)

“Coaching includes praise— expressing approval or admiration, applauding, commending and lauding small (and large) victories.” (361)

“Coaching is ongoing leadership. … Coaches stretch you to your limit, a limit often beyond what you thought possible.” (362)

“The best coaches set in motion a continuing learning process —one that helps people develop a tolerance for their own struggles and accelerates the unfolding of skill and contributions that would not have been possible without the ‘magic’ attention of a dedicated coach.” (377)

“Leading is a hands-on art. Coaching is the essence of leading– developing those with whom we work. Coaching is MBWA (management by wandering around.” (384)

As I reflect on these writings some 26 years ago, no wonder coaching has become such a powerful modality in the business world. And today we stand on the shoulders of such giants as Tom Peters.

Learning to Walk the Talk

Radu Palamariu — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 13:09:54 +0000

It is more than a year ago that I walked through the door of the Self Leadership International office for the first time. I was a young graduate of psychology, coming all the way from Romania to learn about training and leadership development in Singapore; with very little idea of what my internship will bring about.

Now, one year later, I can whole heartedly say that it was the greatest learning experience of my life.

Not only did I learn tremendously in the area of leadership development, but even more importantly I developed myself imensely on a personal level. I can’t possibly name all the things I learnt, as it would be a post too long for anyone to read…but I do want to share with you three of the most important ones:

1. The importance of open and honest communication

A lot of companies actually have this somewhere in their guidelines, but in the Self Leadership office this was indeed a ground rule. And it was great to realize how saying things openly and directly can make so much of a difference in my working relationships, in the way I related to my colleagues and in the overall atmosphere in the office.

It also leads to no politics, as everybody knows pretty much everything and there is no need to hide anything. Plus, the most powerful breakthrough for me was to start saying what I thought, even if I was afraid. I especially refer to giving negative feedback or to stating opinions contrary to the others.

Learning to Learn, from Unconscious to Conscious

Andrew Bryant, CSP — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 09:20:10 +0000

I believe that to survive and prosper we need to learn faster and to teach better.

Did you know that your learning follows a path? Firstly you don’t know what your don’t know, which is a state I like to call “blissful ignorance.” On the learning path this is known as unconscious incompetence.

When you learn about something new you first enter a stage of knowing what you don’t know or can’t yet do; this is known as conscious incompetence. This stage can be uncomfortable for adult learners as they feel awkward and self-conscious as they start practicing the skill. Many people have given up at this stage, think of those guitar lessons or yoga classes that you so eagerly signed up for. If the goal is important enough we push through the discomfort of not knowing and move to the next level, if you have learned to drive a car or use a piece of new software you know what I mean.

With practice comes conscious competence – you know how to do the skill although you might still need to pay some attention to the task. Think about when you just passed your driving test or learned how to ride a bike – you could do it but you were still a bit wobbly.

The next stage is unconscious competence where you can complete the task automatically. If you can touch type your fingers know where the ‘Z’ key is without you even thinking. Unfortunately many people drive this way as they talk on their mobile phones and eat fast food whilst navigating the roads! Most people stop learning at this level as the amount of practice to achieve the next level of mastery does not seem worth the effort.

Finally there is consciousness of your unconscious competence – this is a high level of awareness of what you know and how you know it. At this level of learning the master of his or her craft seeks to find the fine distinctions that take knowledge or skills to new levels or into new contexts. Many of us have experienced a teacher who knew thier subject (unconsious competence) but could not really teach it because they lacked a high level of awareness of how they do what they do.

To be an effective leader, teacher, coach or mentor we must understand the learning path and help our staff or students navigate it. We must remember the challenges we had in learning and share how we overcame these obstacles. It is too easy to become frustrated when it takes someone a while to get what we think is easy but we have usually forgotten to help them learn rather than just telling them.

Most importantly if you are stuck at conscious incompetence – ask for help, find a coach or someone who has mastered this before and ask them how they learned to learn the skill.

How are you tomorrow?

Andrew Bryant, CSP — Sun, 21 Jun 2009 13:32:28 +0000

I am currently in the land of smiles (Thailand) teaching a leadership development program for a pharmaceutical company. At the end of the first day I wandered out of my hotel looking to stretch my legs and get something to eat. I chose a restaurant with al fresco dining so that I could watch the world go by.

The waitress arrived, and after taking my order ventured to practice her English by asking, “how are you tomorrow?” I smiled and chuckled and said that I intended to have a really good day tomorrow and that I was also having a good day today.

Her accidental phrase left me thinking because I had just spent most of the day teaching a group of senior managers that they were in control of their thoughts and feelings; in this context how are you tomorrow is not such as silly question.

As I have explained in previous blog posts, self leadership requires self confidence but it also requires self-determination. Self-determination is the free choice to determine one’s behaviours and therefore influence our own destiny. How are we tomorrow will in part be due to what we do today.

Self determination is also defined as the freedom of the people of a given territory to determine their own political status. With the current situation in Iran we see a people passionately attempting to self determine their tomorrow. This situation is a powerful reminder that if we currently enjoy the freedom to exercise our own choice to live and create our own tomorrows we should be truly grateful. Even with the current economic changes we can still take action today to make sure tomorrow is a better one.

Here is wishing you a happy, healthy and prosperous tomorrow.

Why “should” makes you ANGRY

Andrew Bryant, CSP — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 08:55:59 +0000

Should is a signpost to our mental maps. When you say, “I should do this or I shouldn’t do that”, you are telling yourself and those who are listening about your personal ‘rules of behaviour’.

What is more interesting however are the ‘unsaid shoulds’. When we get angry or upset it is most probably because somebody else has not complied with our ‘shoulds‘ or ‘shouldn’ts‘.

For example; if somebody pushes in front of you in a queue, do you feel angry? You do? Well that is because you (and me for that matter) believe that they shouldn’t push in.

Customer service is all about anticipating the expectation of should and shouldn’t. Last weekend I was taking my wife and children to see Barney (the pink dinosaur who dances!) at the Singapore Expo. Well firstly the car park was a nightmare, not enough spaces and people parking illegally and blocking traffic. I could feel my stress levels rising as I knew I should get the kids to the show on time and that the expo SHOULD have provided enough parking.

I chose to drop my family at the entrance and go and find another car park, so after jogging back to the venue I was just in time for the show to start. My wife asked me to find two seat boosters for the kids and so I hurriedly set off in search of these only to be told by expo staff that they had run out of boosters and that I SHOULD have been there earlier!
Now I am not proud of my response to this situation because I raised my voice and told the girl that I had paid for the most expensive seats to see the damn dinosaur and I damn well think they SHOULD provide enough boosters! In defense of the Singapore Expo or the organisers of Barney and Friends we were recompensed with two buckets of popcorn but it is another example of reacting to a ‘should’.

I have just stayed at an excellent hotel (The Grand Millennium Bangkok, Thailand) where my every need was anticipated. On check-in I was asked, “Should I need a wake up call and should I need a car to take me to the airport.” This hotel continued to impress me and I was reminded of how wonderful life is when the world meets or exceeds your mental maps.

The reason I was in Bangkok was to conduct a 3-day leadership program for senior managers and during that training I emphasised using the phrase, “what’s important to you about that?” This question uncovers a person’s values including their – ‘shoulds’. Knowing your own and other people’s mental map results in effective communication reduced conflict and increased influence.

So shouldn’t you get better at your shoulds?

Leadership Development in Thailand

Andrew Bryant, CSP — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 10:51:00 +0000

Just a quick note to let any of our readers know that I will be in Thailand twice this month, conducting leadership training.

If anyone is interested in meeting me to discuss your leadership or executive coaching requirements feel free to contact me via the Self Leadership website contact page www.selfleadership.com.

Look forward to hearing from you – Andrew Bryant

Common Communication Mistakes

Andrew Bryant, CSP — Tue, 05 May 2009 01:54:31 +0000

A couple of yeas ago I was rushing to meet a new client, a CEO who required some coaching; as I was running short of time I chose to miss lunch and go straight to the appointment.

I was greeted at the company by the company’s communications manager who was to show me to the boardroom to meet the CEO. She politely asked me if she could get me anything, perhaps thinking I might need a tea or coffee. My response was, “well actually, I intend to break at about 3pm, could you possibly get me a sandwich as I am starving!” She looked somewhat surprised but at 3:00pm exactly a 12 inch Subway sandwich arrived in the boardroom.

Giving the CEO the opportunity to take a bathroom break I hungrily bit into the sandwich only to be surprised by the fact it was full of jalapeno chillies! Now I normally like spicy food, but it was the surprise that got me. At the end of the day when showing me out, I asked her whether the jalapenos were revenge for being asked to get me a sandwich, “Oh no”, she replied, “I just had it made the way I like it.”

I use this story in trainings to make the point that most often we communicate the way we like to be communicated to. If you prefer people to be direct, you will speak directly – If you prefer people to build a case you will build a case. So a common communication mistake is not considering your audience and communicating in your default or preferred style.

I provide influence training for an international bank and I find that I really need to stress the importance of a flexible approach to communication. Since the client is a bank I use the analogy that everyone has a PIN (personal identification number) that will unlock their resistance and allow you to communicate with them and, mixing my metaphors, each person broadcasts their SSID (a wireless access point identifier) to tell you how to log on to their network.

Leaders, managers, coaches and trainers need to learn to read people’s preferred communication style in order to adapt their communication in order to be understood. It may be arrogance or even stupidity to expect others to always adapt to you. There is a direct correlation between communication and productivity and so your results in work or life will depend on your ability to get a message across.

Can you learn to read people and adapt your communication to get better results? The answer is, of course “yes” So to help you get started here is a list of things to avoid:

Common Communication Mistakes

Being directive when you want buy in
Using “I” when you want team effort
Using “You” when you want to resolve conflict
Being aggressive or submissive (assertive is the alternative)
Attempting to influence when your are unclear what you want
Not finding out what’s important to the other party
Using only logic without emotion
Using only emotion without some logic
Talking down to people
Asking questions and not listening to the answer

So if you find yourself using any of the above or are not getting the results you want in life and business, then why not contact us to find out how to become an effective and influential communicator?

HR Summit Singapore 2009

Andrew Bryant, CSP — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 02:52:30 +0000

Self Leadership International is a sponsor of the Singapore Human Resources Summit 2009.

Please come and visit us at our exhibition booth to find out more about our Leadership Development, Executive Coaching and Business Communication programs.

Mark Liew an Executive Coach and Leadership Trainer from our team will be speaking about ‘Creating Behavioural Lasting Change’ in the Corporate Learning Stream.

See you there?

Self Leadership Coaching Blog » Leadership

Year of the Tiger 2010

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Leadership is Influence

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The Evolution of Coaching

Coaching, circ. 1984

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Learning to Walk the Talk

1. The importance of open and honest communication

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Learning to Learn, from Unconscious to Conscious

I believe that to survive and prosper we need to learn faster and to teach better.

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How are you tomorrow?

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Why “should” makes you ANGRY

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Leadership Development in Thailand

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Common Communication Mistakes

Common Communication Mistakes

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HR Summit Singapore 2009

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