Coach John G. Agno is your own cultural attache; keeping you abreast of what's effective in leadership. People learn better and are positively motivated when supported by regular coaching.
PERSONAL COACHING Leadership onboarding coaching helps the executive adapt to the employer's culture, create rapport with their team and develop productive ways to achieve necessary goals.
SELF ASSESSMENT CENTER Leadership skills and style testing. Know how you motivate and coach people to gain success at work and in life.
WHAT IS LEADERSHIP? Leadership is an interactive conversation that pulls people toward becoming comfortable with the language of personal responsibility and commitment.
LEADERSHIP TIPS “The crux of leadership development that works is self-directed learning: intentionally developing or strengthening an aspect of who you are or who you want to be, or both.” Primal Leadership by Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis & Annie McKee (Harvard Business School Press)
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When we come to know and accept ourselves, we become free to accept others and appreciate how they complement us.
Whether you are looking for a job promotion, seeking peace within your team, or looking to improve relationships, we can all benefit from learning more about what drives and energizes us. Finding common ground among an office or different personalities can sometimes be difficult or even detrimental to a career or an organization.
What if discovering what motivates you and others, you can begin to identify and eliminate what doesn't? In "The Birkman Method: Your Personality at Work" by Sharon Birkman Fink and Stephanie Capparell defines a critical workplace assessment that has given millions of business professionals the awareness tools they need to reach a higher level of performance.
The Birkman self-assessment goes beyond behavior to give insight as to why certain things will satisfy or stress you. It is built on the foundation that once you discover your own personality and interests, you can better understand others, resulting in a more fulfilling work environment.
Each person who buys the book, will be able to complete a full Birkman questionnaire and receive his or her own personal "life style gird" with an easy-to-understand summary of key Birkman scores, which are more thoroughly described in the book. The book then helps you understand your results and personal report.
There have been a number of books published that allow you to take a self-assessment within the book or authorize you to take one onlineand then provide a more complete understanding of who you are within the book.
There are four parts to the "Color Q" assessment and one supplemental section. Together, they take you about 10 minutes to complete by selecting your preferences within the book.
Other self-assessment books available online or at your local bookseller (see examples below), direct the reader to take an online assessment and then an email report is confidentially delivered to the person who took the self-assessment while the book references detailed information on the various personality styles/classic profiles.
The key to enjoying and succeeding at work and life lies in knowing your core strengths--and making the most of them. Are you an Introvert or Extrovert? Grounded, realistic and accountable? Competitive and theoretical? Spontaneous and action-oriented? Creative and empathetic? To find out, get a clear blueprint for using your natural abilities more effectively by taking one or more self-assessments to determine your personality type and what you do best.
Introverts and Extroverts
Many people believe that introverts, by definition, are shy and extroverts are outgoing. This is incorrect. Introverts and extroverts differ in how they process information. Introverts get their energy internally. Extroverts gain energy from being with other people, often the more the merrier.
There are shy extroverts and outgoing introverts. Most of us have a little of both in us, but lean one way or the other.
Introverts often prefer to spend time alone or in small groups of people, and they tend to carefully gather their thoughts before they speak. Extroverts love to talk and typically "think out loud," processing information by talking.
You don't need a degree in psychology to see how this could cause serious problems in a relationship. Introverts and extroverts approach the world in fundamentally different ways. Introverts think extroverts talk too fast, too loud and too much. Extroverts often believe introverts are awkward, withholding or cold.
People involved in the delivery of coaching may also become ambassadors of coaching in their sphere of influence. However, it is the high-level management of coaching initiatives that sets the overall frame and direction of coaching within an organization and provides the central basis for successful coaching.
What qualifies you to be a manager responsible for coaching in your company?
What experience do you already have in the field?
What relevant training/education have you undertaken?
What coaching bodies and associations do you belong to?
What relevant characteristics/signature talents do you bring into the organization?
What are your key strengths and weaknesses in terms of implementing and improving coaching?
What is the breadth and depth of your coaching capability?
On a scale of 1 to 10 (10= very high), what degree of coaching implementation and improvement intelligence do you have?
How committed are you to enhancing your coaching intelligence further?
Find optimal ways to fill your identified gaps
Use external guidance and support to develop your coaching capability to the needed level: receive mentor coaching on being an effective manager responsible for coaching in a firm.
Employ one or more suitable coaching experts to raise your company's internal coaching implementation and intelligence.
Consider full outsourcing: Have an external coaching manager appointed to the role of managing coaching in your company.
Pick and start with only those areas where you already have suitable coaching capability.
Whatever choices you make, keep ownership of the process as a whole and find a suitable mix of external and internal coaching capability for your specific purposes.
Excellent coaching can only produce benefits and unfold its potential when properly implemented and used by the person(s) being coached. A slight lack of integrity and quality in a coaching initiative may lead to a significant loss of trust, consistency or functionality and bring about the failure of a coaching program.
1. Identify and define your company-specific integrity and quality standards for coaching.
2. Get and/or develop suitable people to meet the requirements properly, monitor integrity and quality effectively and carefully.
3. Intervene and act promptly where the standards are not fulfilled and ensured.
It is particularly important to create a learning atmosphere where people, who are being confidentially coached, are encouraged and feel comfortable to talk openly with their professional coach about their setbacks, problems and concerns in order to allow their perceptions to evolve.
No manager or executive within an organization wants their boss or the human resource (HR) department to know their personal weaknesses or concerns. That is why the best solution is to engage an "outside professional coach" whose integrity and ethics will maintain the confidentiality of conversations with the person-being-coached. It is especially important for HR departments and top management to be aware of the risks of breeches of confidentiality and possible conflicts of roles/interests in the context of utilizing "internal coaches" within an organization.
Setting clear rules, in particular regarding confidentiality, and ensuring a safe and respectful learning environment in a coaching program is essential to maintain trust of participants. Top management must respect the confidentiality/privacy of personal and performance coaching and not abuse coaching (e.g. by telling an "internal coach" to manipulate an 'uncomfortable' employee in a certain way).
In today's fast-paced and hyperconnected global economy, leaders are pressured to make multiple decisions and do so quickly.
In such an volatile environment, leaders tend not to take the time to reflect and use sound judgment; the result is hurried decisions that lead to poor outcomes for themselves and their organization.
In particular, some leaders tend to decide instinctively based primarily on their own experience, without paying enough attention to the changes in the larger context. Risk averse, they may either procrastinate when faced with difficult decisions or make decisions that may yield tactical benefits but be unviable in the long term.
Other leaders are more willing to make bold decisions that could generate strategic long-term benefits. But given their self-centered and emotional personality, they tend to rush into decisions without heeding their intuition, let alone getting input from others.
Wise leaders are more effective decision makers due to their unique decision logic--that is, the set of systems, processes, and reasoning principles they use in decision making--developed over time and tested in different scenarios. Context awareness and ethical clarity altogether form the cornerstone of a wise leader's decision logic. This clarity gives wise leaders discernment--the ability to judge well in crises and make ethically sound and yet pragmatic decisions using a combination of logic, instinct, intuition and emotion.
Also known as worldview, mental model or mind-set, our perspective of the world is based on the sum total of our knowledge and experiences. It defines us, shaping our thoughts and actions because it represents the way we see ourselves and situations, how we judge the relative importance of things, and how we establish a meaningful relationship with everything around us.
Shifting perspective means becoming sensitive to the context around us and being able to see the world without any filters. It allows us to broaden our worldview and empathize with people who think and act radically different from us. A perspective shift could yield different insights and actions.
When interpersonal conflicts arise within their team, wise leaders resolve them by framing the conflict in a larger context. They enjoy and excel at coaching and mentoring others in their process of shifting their perspective.
Albert Einstein once said: "One cannot solve a problem with the same mind-set that created it in the first place." As the global business environment, driven by diversity and interconnectivity, becomes increasingly complex, we all need a range of skills to deal with the challenges. Smart leaders need to identify and understand the limitations of their perspective and then learn to shift it.
An insight is a thought we've never had before. It's a fresh thought.
Insights are those "Aha! moments" when the clouds part and the solution to your problem arises right in front of you. They happen when fresh new light is spread on a subject you've considered for some time. We all have experienced these moments of deep understanding, even if we might not know what to call them or how to describe them.
An insight is a discovery or realization that goes beyond face value, beyond the obvious. It is a deeper, more universal understanding that is often very relevant to you. With insight, a new cognitive structure is formed that is different from the sum of its parts, and it usually calls for a different action.
While the circumstances in which people have their insights are as varied as the individuals, everyone has reported a common state of mind. It's an easy going, unpressured, open, and ungripped state. The more often you reside in this state of mind, the more often you will have insights.
Conversely, when you are agitated and bearing down with your thinking, insights become more elusive. While the Insight State of Mind is our natural, default state, we inadvertently think ourselves out of it.
A strategic insight is a simplifying "Aha! moment" that often radically redefines business and the competitive advantage. Once articulated, these strategic insights seemed like simple common sense to everyone. They are easily understood and acted upon. In fact, implementation usually occurs with far less effort than forced march that often characterizes strategy implementation.
The Art of Insight is a new book that teaches readers how to have more "Aha! moments" in life. Based on the authors' years of research, reflection, and experiences, The Art of Insight presents practical methods of recognizing and cultivating an Insight State of Mind. Charles Kiefer and Malcolm Constable describe these thinking methods that are designed to foster fresh thoughts and perspectives. But this is not a rigid set of rules--it's a creative pursuit.
Thousands of leaders attend leadership training every year to glean insights into how to lead better. At the end of the training, most of these leaders will resolve to become more effective by using these new insights; hopefully with the guidance of a personal executive coach. Unfortunately, few of them will implement these good intentions. Yet, they need to pay attention to their intentions in order to get to where they want to be.
Although the executive education debate still rages on whether leadership is learned or innate, there is no doubt that the subject is being taught. Back in October 2003, BusinessWeek reported that 134 companies from 20 nations spent $210 million to enroll 21,000 employees in executive leadership programs. Since leadership development is not an event, that's a significant investment in classroom activities that may or may not produce company leaders or even better managers.
Resources: Support desired changes with coaching and infrastructure.
The most important resources for leaders to access are human resources, both for themselves and for their organizations. It turns out that when desired behaviors are reinforced by personal coaching and institutionalized in human resources (HR) practices, they are much more likely to be sustained.
Coaching sustains change because it personalizes and reinforces a leader's intent for the future. In the last 20 years, as leadership coaching has mushroomed, the range of coaching expectations and services has exploded. To use coaching to sustain change, leaders should answer these four questions:
To lead to sustainable change, coaching needs to be based on a more rigorous typology of outcomes. Leaders sustain personal behavior change when they identify specific behaviors that can and should be changed: coaches provide feedback and advice about how to make those new behaviors consistently happen. Leaders sustain change when their coaches help them to see the valued corporate outcomes or personal results that come from the change.
Expert coaches can help leaders to sustain changes in both behavior and results. They may explore candid (and at times brutal) information about the leader's behavior and performance. They may make suggestions about how to improve and challenge the status quo. They may help the leader to create a personal leadership brand by combining behavior and results into a leadership identity.
When leaders use coaches to help sustain their behaviors, their chosen behaviors will be more likely to endure over time.
Most people think that strategy is about analysis and plans, rather than about choice.
Where do you choose to play? And on that chosen playing field, how do you choose to win? Without clear choices, firms have no chance of winning.
For example, they analyze a lot of things before figuring out what is worth analyzing and important to analyze. And then they lay out a strategic planwhat they plan to do. But that isn't very helpful. What is helpful is making a few key choices about where to play and how to win (backed by some analysis and lots of judgment).
Without a clear strategy, it is hard to make an intelligent business choice. Although it doesn't guarantee success, a strategy shortens the odds of success. Organizations can't win consistently without well understood strategies.
Ask yourself these five questions to position your company to win:
1. What is your winning aspiration? The purpose of your enterprise.
2. Where will you play? A playing field where you can achieve that aspiration.
5. What management systems are required? The systems and measures that support the capabilities and the choices.
In "Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works" (Harvard Business Review Press), two of today's best-known business thinkers finally get to the heart of what strategy is for: winning, and what it's about: choice.
