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)
Nothing says “misguided leadership” like Agency Theory. The whole idea of Agency Theory is that corporate leaders (and, by implication, all humans) are motivated by one thing—their own “rational self-interest.” Effective corporate governance is therefore the effective manipulation of this one motivation in all others.
This is nonsense on the face of it. Even miners trapped underground for two months have multiple motivations. To get free, of course, but also to spare their families from suffering, to make a good impression to the outside world, and so on. We all know we are motivated by more than just rational self-interest, if that is taken to mean “getting as much as possible for oneself.” What has made the career of Agency Theory possible is the fact that the drive to “get as much as possible” does exist and takes very obvious (and, at times, successful) forms. By comparison, the other motivations often seem muddled and unpredictable.
In fact, human beings have a rather precise set of four innate motivations, or drives. They are the result or our unique evolutionary path and, together, they comprise a very successful method of survival for our species. These four drives are the drive to get what we need and want (the one drive recognized by Agency Theory), the drive to protect and defend what we need and want, the drive to form trusting and long-lasting bonds with other human beings, and the drive to understand ourselves and our surroundings. These drives are not metaphors; they are what is actually going on various parts of the human brain as it makes ordinary, everyday decisions. It doesn’t take much thought to see that no human organization—family, business, army, congregation—can exist without all four of these drives playing their parts.
Agency Theory leads to “misguided” leadership because it says to leaders: “Only one of your four drives matters and the other three are extraneous. We’re going to ignore them and we advise you to do the same.” This is worse than the blind leading the blind; it is a case of leaders pretending to be blind and leading others by falsely assuming that everyone else is blind, too.
Good and effective business leadership recognizes all four drives—in the leaders, in all the employees, in the customers, in suppliers, in the investors, and in the public which may have no direct dealings with the company but is nevertheless affected by the company’s actions. If it sounds like quadrupling the leader’s already tough job to manage four drives instead of just one, remember that this is, in fact, what we all do every day. Our brains are physically designed to do it; specifically, the prefrontal cortex of the brain is designed to balance multiple drives when they conflict—as they often do—and arrive at a satisfactory decision.
As a leader, you will experience a “say/feel” gap: when your messages are incongruent with your physical expressions. In truth, facial expressions convey your feelings much more accurately than any words you say.
Research about messages estimates that 55 percent of meaning is derived from body language, 38 percent from vocal intonation and only 7 percent from actual words.
We discern emotional content from others’ facial expressions, with seven universal emotions that can be found across all cultures, according to studies by Paul Eckman:
Negative: anger, fear, sadness, disgust and contempt
Studies of CEOs’ facial expressions reveal that honest and robust social smiles trump all others when one wants employees to feel hopeful and buy into goals. The worst possible expressions are dislike, especially when combined with anxiety (fear). Condescending, scared leaders will invariably cut themselves off from others.
"You have to read peoplequickly to fit into the social network," says Miles, 43. "My whole world is about trying to read people, to find that one ticket in, and get them to do something differently." As a CEO coach, the chief executive officers he works with today include Marius Kloppers of mining giant BHP Billiton (BHP), Best Buy's (BBY) Brian Dunn, Stephen Elop at Nokia (NOK), and Shantanu Narayen, of softwaremaker Adobe Systems (ADBE). Miles is typically reticent when asked about his executive advisees, wary of betraying their confidence.
"Our first encounter was three hours," says New York Life CEO Theodore Mathas, "and I think we got up to when I was in the seventh grade. He asked questions like 'Did you get your homework done?' and 'Did you spend more time with your mom or your dad?' It was a little unusual." Miles says his goal is to understand what shaped the executives as human beings. "I care less about what they think than what they have done." Says Mathas: "He made me feel comfortable, but it was clear he wasn't there to be my friend."
An arm's-length relationship makes Miles more valuable. After hours of interviewing senior executives and those who work with them, he paints a portrait that can be surprising to the subject—and crucial to their careers. For some, it's the key to getting a CEO job. For others, Miles' insights are indispensable in managing the transition to the top job. And friends or not, they all regard him fondly. "I love him unreservedly," says Kloppers, with a laugh. "He's wicked smart," says Narayen. "It has been fascinating to see the wisdom he brings," says Stephen MacMillan, CEO of medical device maker Stryker.
Although he's been consulting for barely a decade, Miles has already developed a client list rivaling those of the world's best-known consulting sages, such as Marshall Goldsmith and Ram Charan. "Stephen is near the top, especially given his age," says Goldsmith, 61, the longtime dean of the executive-coaching set. "He probably has a broader knowledge base than me."
The work pays handsomely. CEO coaches can earn annual fees per executive of $75,000 to $250,000, according to people in the field. One coach says a really big name can earn as much as $75,000 for a two-hour session—a figure that Miles greets with a laugh. He won't discuss his own compensation, noting only that "our fees vary depending on the length and depth of the project."
"My job is to assess people to find out how much potential and capability they have, and whether it fits the needs of the company," he says, adding that nothing is more important than getting succession right. "It's a whole lot of work, but your personal brand and your company's brand is on the line." When Miles arrived at Heidrick & Struggles in 1999, the search firm had only a small leadership-services practice.
Executives stress that in the course of giving advice, Miles never promotes his company's recruiting business. In fact, several CEOs note that they rarely think about his Heidrick affiliation. While legendary management theorist Peter Drucker validated advisory work, helping leaders from Procter & Gamble's AG Lafley to General Electric's Jack Welch, the profession can still evoke images of hucksterish motivational speakers and earnest sidekicks offering self-evident tips. Some skeptics resent Heidrick's muscling into counseling. They argue that a recruiting firm primarily interested in scoping out executive talent shouldn't be trusted to do coaching. "Once you have information about talent, it's hard to have that information not seep into other areas," says veteran recruiter Peter Crist. Leadership consultant Geoff Smart calls it "a structural conflict," though he admits that he's impressed with Miles' "commercial success."
CEO Kevin Kelly, who helped rebrand Heidrick as "a global leadership advisory" firm, hopes to build on Miles' work: "What he's doing is the future of the industry." Indeed, Heidrick's overall revenue dropped 36 percent last year, to $396 million, but its leadership-consulting services grew 11 percent, to $26 million. Miles says simply that Heidrick gives him the resources, reputation, and relationships he needs: "It's an incredible brand."
Senior management’s goal is to develop an atmosphere of trust and generosity of spirit. When leaders give workers something they can believe in—a cause greater than the common good—they engage both hearts and minds.
While there is an inherent desire to identify and bond with one’s leader, people instinctively defend their own interests and exercise caution before committing their careers and livelihoods to anyone.
Pay Disparities
Pay disparities can throw a massive wrench into the trust equation. In 1990, the average American worker earned $27,000. Adjusted for inflation, this figure remains constant two decades later. But CEO compensation in the United States has increased 100 to 400 percent, and surveys show that 90 percent of institutional investors believe most executives are overpaid.
A company’s emotional climate may account for up to 30 percent of job performance, according to Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee authors of Primal Leadership. CEOs, they note, are responsible for creating more than 50 percent of this climate.
The work environment is the field in which the collective passion of the enterprise takes root and grows.
People experience the work environment or culture in a good way or bad way. There is an old Yiddish proverb that applies to every organizational leader: "The fish always stinks at the head." The leader with CEO Disease doesn't know the smell that he or she is spreading throughout the organization. The personally coached CEO discovers what smell he or she is spreading across the corporate culture and works to make it a productive and positive scent. This scent has a dramatic impact on organizational performance and success.
According to research conducted by John Kotter and James Heskett (Corporate Culture and Performance), when strong culture firms are focused on the right values, they radically outperform their competitors.
Numerous studies indicate that sustainable business success depends on three key leadership areas:
The greater good. Leaders must influence others to join a cause greater than making a profit or creating good products or services. They should give employees reasons to believe in the company and its leadership ideals. They must establish themselves as credible, trustworthy and unselfish—role models who are looking out for the group and individual performers. They should ask others to join “us,” without sacrificing their “me.”
Clear vision. Continual change may be traumatic for employees, so leaders must paint a convincing picture of the future that motivates and prepares people for what’s coming.
Cohesive culture. Employees expect their leaders to read a situation in emotional terms and foster a climate of collaboration.
Albert Einstein once said, "We should take care not to make the intellect our god; it has, of course, powerful muscles but no personality. It cannot lead; it can only serve."
Leaders know and science has discovered emotionality's deeper purpose: the timewornmechanisms of emotion allow two human beings to receive the contents of each other's minds. Emotion is the messenger of love;it is the vehicle that carries every signal from one brimming heart to another.
Because human beings remember with neurons (the cells of nerve tissue), we are disposed to see more of what we have already seen, hear anew what we have heard most often, think just what we have always thought.
Within the brain, every mental activity consists of neutrons (electrically neutral subatomic particles) firing in a certain sequence. An "Attractor" is an association of ingrained links that can overwhelm weaker information patterns. If incoming sensory data provoke a quorum of the Attractor's units, they will trigger their teammates, who flare to brilliant life.
An Attractor can overpower other units so thoroughly that the network registers chiefly the incandescence of the Attractor, even though the fading, firefly traces of another pattern initially glimmered there. A network then registers strikingly new sensory information as if it conformed to past experience. In much the same way, our sun's blinding glare washes countless dimmer stars from the midday sky.
The limbic brain (i.e. the emotional brain) contains its emotional Attractors, encoded early in life. Primal bias then forms an integral part of the neural systems that view the emotional world and conduct relationships. If the early experience of a limbic network exemplifies healthy emotional interaction, its Attractors will serve as reliable guides to the world of workable relationships. No individual can think his way around his own Attractors, since they are embedded in the structure of thought. And in human beings, an Attractor's influence is not confined to its mind of origin. The limbic brain sends an Attractor's sphere of influence exploding outward with the exuberance of a nova's gassy shell. Because limbic resonance and regulation join human minds together in a continuous exchange of influential signals, every brain is part of a local network that shares information--including Attractors.
Limbic Attractors thus exert a distorting force not only within the brain that produces them, but also on the limbic networks of others--calling forth compatible memories, emotional states and styles of relatedness in them. Through the limbic transmission of an Attractor's influence, one person can lure others into his emotional virtuality. All of us, when we engage in relatedness, fall under the gravitational influenceof another's emotional mind with ours. Each relationship is a binary star, a burning flux of exchanged force fields, the deep and ancient influences emanating and felt, felt and emanating.
The limbic transmission of Attractors renders personal identity partially malleable---the specific people to whom we are attached provoke a portion of our everyday neural activity. Ongoing exposure to one person's Attractors does not merely activate neural patterns in another--it also strengthens them.
Business Leadership Emotions
Business has a long tradition of ignoring emotions in favor of rationality. Feelings are dismissed as messy, dangerous, weak and irrelevant to day-to-day operations.
But a growing body of evidence reveals that subconscious feelings drive decisions. Psychologists, neuroscientists and behavioral economists now agree that leaders who fail to understand how emotions drive actions will ultimately fail.
Emotionally astute leaders leverage feelings to gain employee commitment, engagement and performance, according to Dan Hill, CEO of Sensory Logic and author of Emotionomics: Leveraging Emotions for Business Success (Kogan Page, 2008).
Similarly, experts featured in a Time magazine cover story (January 17, 2005) confirmed the link between satisfaction and productivity, citing a 10 percent improvement in job performance among fulfilled employees.
A company’s emotional climate may account for up to 30 percent of job performance, according to Daniel Goleman, Richard Boyatzis and Annie McKee authors of Primal Leadership. CEOs, they note, are responsible for creating more than 50 percent of this climate.
“Leadership isn't something you do writing memos, you've got to appeal to people's emotions. They've got to buy in with their hearts and bellies, not just their minds” Lou Gerstner, former CEO, IBM
You have just accepted a new position as the Chief Executive Officer (CEO). But why, before you even hold your first meeting, do you get the sense your employees hate you?
You may know that leaders often fail for a few common reasons: due to unclear or outsized expectations, a failure to build partnerships with key stakeholders, a failure to learn the company, industry or the job itself fast enough, a failure to determine the process for gaining commitments from direct reports and a failure to recognize and manage the impact of change on people. You may also know that leadership onboarding coaching can help you build trust within the corporate culture to turnaround this high rate of failure.
1) Someone else had aspirations for your job, didn't get it, and concluded that the selection process had serious flaws.
2) The blame must fall on someone and, because you're the biggest beneficiary, you are the biggest target.
3) Your style of leadership or rumored future plans could be the problem. Even if you made no indication of any future plans, rest assured the rumor mill is alive and well.
4) Someone in the company knows you from another company or from within the company, and got to know you during your climb up the ladder. His or her 'memories' of you are more like nightmares. S/he might have even worked for you at a previous company.
5) There are concerns you will bring in a new team and replace current management, which could involve new hires or people from your old company.
6) Your real or rumored lifestyle may offend certain people in the company.
7) You seem so different from their beloved previous leader that you can't be any good.
8) You come from another industry and don't understand what "our industry" and "our culture" are all about.
9) No one really knows what you're going to do, how you're going to act, or what policies you will follow, but everyone knows that in spite of that, it will be and has to be stopped.
10) You may already know an executive in the company and you may not think very highly of him. In all probability, he will know this, too, and be part of an 'undercurrent' problem you experience with him because he will be concerned that you will readily replace him.
In his book, CEO PRIORITIES (Career Press), retired international CEO, Neil Giarratana, shares "conduct and survival related" insights and recommendations aimed at providing future and current CEOs with the means to be on the positive side of that "popular opinion" equation and thereby reduce or eliminate the disdain factor so omnipresent in today's discussion of business leadership.
After making her name at Ford and Chrysler, Julie Roehm (pronounced raim) was lured to taking a senior vice president position at Wal-Mart in 2006 to liven up the place, only to be ousted 10 months later.
Leaders often fail for a few common reasons: due to unclear or outsized expectations, a failure to build partnerships with key stakeholders, a failure to learn the company, industry or the job itself fast enough, a failure to determine the process for gaining commitments from direct reports and a failure to recognize and manage the impact of change on people.
John G. Self of JohnGSelf Associates, Inc., an executive search firm in Dallas, TX, said, "When I first read L. Kevin Kelley’s comments in the Financial Times – that 40 percent of 20,000 executives that Heidrick & Struggles placed quit, were fired or forced out in 18 months – [I] was astounded. As a recruiter, I have never had that kind of failure rate. But I have since read other studies and apparently, between the poor recruiting processes and the refusal of executives to reach out for help, Heidrick’s experience is apparently an industry average."
Roehm acknowledged mistakes, among them moving too quickly and not adapting to her new workplace. But she also paints a picture of warring fiefdoms and a passive-aggressive culture that was hostile to outsiders. Wal-Mart, she says, "would rather have had a painkiller [than] taken the vitamin of change." What has she learned? "The importance of culture. It can't be underestimated."
Roehm, 40 something, has been patiently rebuilding her career. "You try to hold your head up and go out and do what you know you're good at," she says, "knowing there is nothing to be ashamed of."
She has built a consulting practice with clients like Credit Suisse and ADP and blogs about auto marketing for AOL. She continued to live in the Wal-Mart headquarters town of Bentonville, Ark., with her husband Mike and two kids, but back then they had put the house up for sale and hoped to move to the Northeast as she interviewed for a full-time job. "What I care most about is the culture of the company," she says. "I think it's really important to find a place where you fit in."
FastCompany reports in their April 2012 issue that Julie Roehm is now back in the game.
After five years from losing her executive job at Walmart, she's rejoining the workforce as the senior vice president of marketing for software giant SAP. The spiral that began with her firing in 2006, was due in part, to her acceptance of gifts from Draftfcb, the communications agency she'd just awarded the superchain's $580 million account. But with a new company, she may finally be able to put all that in the past.
Zoe Cruz, as co-president of Morgan Stanley from 2006 to 2007, was regarded as one of the most powerful women on Wall Street and a potential CEO successor. Cruz appeared to be surviving the credit crisis that had roiled Wall Street...but...Ms. Cruz's departure from Morgan Stanley came abruptly.
The 52-year-old executive didn't take personal responsibility for the losses at Morgan Stanley, according to a report in the December 1, 2007 Wall Street Journal. Instead she lashed out at fellow employees in a series of meetings about the losses, raising questions about her management style. She also had pushed some big organizational changes that some executives thought of as arbitrary and ill-informed.
As a result, Morgan Stanley Chief Executive John Mack lost confidence in Ms. Cruz, whom he had repeatedly backed in the face of opposition from senior executives, these people say. Even before the mortgage-trading losses surfaced, Ms. Cruz's leadership style was an issue.
Now: Cruz took the fall after Morgan Stanley sustained a $4 billion trading loss on a bad mortgage bet. "I found it devastating," Cruz toldFortune. "I entertained the idea of going back to school and becoming an architect," she says. But recognizing where her skills lie -- in assessing investment risk around the world -- last year Cruz started her own firm: Voras Capital Management, a hedge fund named after the mountainous region in Greece where she was born.
"We're operating profitably," says Cruz, now 55 and a mother of three. Her outlook on the markets? "Despite extreme volatility, I don't subscribe to the double-dip theory in the U.S. I'm optimistic."
Sources: FORTUNE, November 15, 2010 and FastCompany April 2012
At a time when 50.3% of all managers and professionals are female, women still comprise fewer than 2% of Fortune 1,000 CEOs and just 7.9% of Fortune 500 top earners. The Glass Ceiling remains unbroken. Here are some resources for executive women leaders to reach and flourish in the C-Suite:
An argument for deflation is not to be offered lightly because, given the nature of today’s money, certain aspects of money and credit creation cannot be forecast, only surmised. Before we can discuss these issues, we have to understand how money and credit come into being. This is a difficult chapter, but if you can assimilate what it says, you will have knowledge of the banking system that not one person in 10,000 has.
The Origin of Intangible Money
Originally, money was a tangible good freely chosen by society. For millennia, gold or silver provided this function, although sometimes other tangible goods (such as copper, brass and seashells) did. Originally, credit was the right to access that tangible money, whether by an ownership certificate or by borrowing.
Today, almost all money is intangible. It is not, nor does it even represent, a physical good. How it got that way is a long, complicated, disturbing story, which would take a full book to relate properly. It began about 300 years ago, when an English financier conceived the idea of a national central bank. Governments have often outlawed free-market determinations of what constitutes money and imposed their own versions upon society by law, but earlier schemes usually involved coinage. Under central banking, a government forces its citizens to accept its debt as the only form of legal tender. The Federal Reserve System assumed this monopoly role in the United States in 1913.
What Is a Dollar?
Originally, a dollar was defined as a certain amount of gold. Dollar bills and notes were promises to pay lawful money, which was gold. Anyone could present dollars to a bank and receive gold in exchange, and banks could get gold from the U.S. Treasury for dollar bills.
In 1933, President Roosevelt and Congress outlawed U.S. gold ownership and nullified and prohibited all domestic contracts denoted in gold, making Federal Reserve notes the legal tender of the land. In 1971, President Nixon halted gold payments from the U.S. Treasury to foreigners in exchange for dollars. Today, the Treasury will not give anyone anything tangible in exchange for a dollar. Even though Federal Reserve notes are defined as “obligations of the United States,” they are not obligations to do anything. Although a dollar is labeled a “note,” which means a debt contract, it is not a note for anything.
Congress claims that the dollar is “legally” 1/42.22 of an ounce of gold. Can you buy gold for $42.22 an ounce? No. This definition is bogus, and everyone knows it. If you bring a dollar to the U.S. Treasury, you will not collect any tangible good, much less 1/42.22 of an ounce of gold. You will be sent home.
Some authorities were quietly amazed that when the government progressively removed the tangible backing for the dollar, the currency continued to function. If you bring a dollar to the marketplace, you can still buy goods with it because the government says (by “fiat”) that it is money and because its long history of use has lulled people into accepting it as such. The volume of goods you can buy with it fluctuates according to the total volume of dollars -- in both cash and credit -- and their holders’ level of confidence that those values will remain intact.
Exactly what a dollar is and what backs it are difficult questions to answer because no official entity will provide a satisfying answer. It has no simultaneous actuality and definition. It may be defined as 1/42.22 of an ounce of gold, but it is not actually that. Whatever it actually is (if anything) may not be definable. To the extent that its physical backing, if any, may be officially definable in actuality, no one is talking. ...
Do you want to really understand the Fed? Then keep reading this free eBook, "Understanding the Fed",as soon as you become a free member of Club EWI.
This article was syndicated by Elliott Wave International and was originally published under the headline Robert Prechter Explains The Fed, Part I. EWI is the world's largest market forecasting firm. Its staff of full-time analysts led by Chartered Market Technician Robert Prechter provides 24-hour-a-day market analysis to institutional and private investors around the world.
CEOs, whose every misstep can be murder on their companies' stock, usually speak in corporate jargon lifted directly from the annual report. Get a moment alone with them, and they'll often purge their personal narratives of anything that doesn't show them off as shrewd or heroic.
At a time when some CEOs are busy choosing defense lawyers, using a coach to rehab behavior may seem a low priority. Many believe such help is key to developing a company culture in which CEOs encourage people to tell the truth and, as management expert and author James C. Collins puts it, "conduct autopsies without blame." Stockholders and employees alike, they argue, should be glad of the self-aware, ever-improving CEO. He's likely to be the opposite of the narcissist who perverts the rules in the name of profit worship and crushes anyone who dares criticize his moves.
Plenty of CEOs are interpersonal disasters. Ask board members, and they'll tell you: CEOs get hired for their skills but fired for their personalities. That's one reason why some of the most powerful CEOs of some of the biggest global companies have been relying more and more on these new high priests of corporate survival.
During the boom years, many companies hired scads of coaches--who often didn't have a clue about the firms' overall strategies--to work with managers. To be assigned a coach was to be seen as an up-and-comer. But coaching at the uppermost levels remains a hidden sanctum, with many CEOs availing themselves of the services in total secrecy. They fear that being seen as depending on a coach will make them seem weak--or worse, incompetent. But lately, even boards of directors are insisting on them.
Coaches are distinct from management consultants, who specialize in the operational and strategic realm. The coach's arena is one of interpersonal relations, office politics, and corporate culture. Relying on their backgrounds in both business and psychology, they perform interventions on dysfunctional teams, confront bullies who hijack meetings, and counsel CEOs on wielding their power more effectively--teaching them to inspire and influence rather than command and control.
Sometimes, coaches interview a CEO's family and friends to draw a fuller personality portrait--or to crack open an executive's denial about his own behavior. One senior leader, on the verge of chiefdom at a top-tier financial-services company, couldn't believe that he was coming across as untrustworthy--until his coach read transcripts of interviews with his friends saying they thought he would "stab his own mother in the back." If deeper problems in the CEO's life are uncovered, companies sometimes provide marital counseling and child therapy to help the executive cope. "CEOs realize they need to be the world-class athletes of business," says Bain CEO John Donahoe. "And contrary to being a sign of weakness, it's now perceived as a strength if people are getting help and investing in themselves."
Can coaching actually fix all that? It depends upon the talents of the coach as well as the ability of the CEO to change. The reigning alternative is the $10 billion a year Corporate America lavishes on leadership training. Studies show that the benefits of this seminar-heavy schooling usually vanish within a few months. But research from Case Western Reserve University's Weatherhead School of Management shows that the impact of coaching-like training can last seven years. The emotional-intelligence skills coaches specialize in help CEOs create more productive cultures, which in turn drive up profits, according to Daniel Goleman, Annie McKee, and Richard Boyatzis in their book, Primal Leadership. Premier coaches--like good therapists or sponsors in 12-step programs--hold people accountable for sticking with new behavior. Says Goleman: "Without a coach, a lot of CEOs are likely to give up."
Now, as the era of the imperial CEO draws to a dramatic and painful close, CEOs are relying on these corporate consiglierieven more.
