Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog

Credit Crisis: Are We Set for the Perfect Storm?

In this video clip, taken from Robert Prechter's interview with The Mind of Money, Prechter and host Douglass Lodmell discuss "real" money vs the FIAT money system, and what is backing your dollars under our current system.  Enjoy this 4-minute clip and then watch Prechter's full 45-minute interview here >>

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Watch the full 45-minute interview FREE Get even more valuable insights as Mind of Money host Douglass Lodmell interviews Elliott Wave International's President, Robert Prechter, about how to keep your money safe, the deflation versus inflation debate, and many more topics that are critical to your financial future. Start watching the free 45-minute interview now >>

  Robert R. Prechter Jr.: Conquer the Crash: You Can Survive and Prosper in a Deflationary Depression

 

It's the Economy, Stupid!

By Roger Lowenstein in Bloomberg BusinessWeek, January 23, 2012

Charles Murray, the conservative sociologist, has written an incisive, alarming, and hugely frustrating book about the state of American society. No sense withholding the punchline: He thinks we’re in decline. The American rich are living cloistered and isolated lives, depriving the mainstream of their fraternity, their wisdom, and their skills. A growing number at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum are dropping out in another respect—abandoning work, family, and community. At risk is what Murray affectionately terms the “American project.”

Murray simply means that America, as a nation, grew up freer and also more industrious, neighborly, and tolerant than most. The combination of freedom with responsibility produced, until mid-20th century, a more virtuous and happy society.

Coming Apart in effect consists of three books, and during the first two—on the well-educated and the underclass—only occasionally does Murray’s moralism and finger-wagging offend.  As the subtitle attests, what he actually examines is white America.  Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve, restricted his focus as a way of “stripping away distractions” of race to focus on class, a more salient dividing line. His troubling news is that the sociological underclass—once widely assumed to be a subset of black America—is increasingly evident in all ethnicities.

The separation occurs in two ways. Through the 1960s, America’s rich were culturally similar to other Americans.  Now, the cultural habits and preferences of America’s elite would be unrecognizable to mainstream U.S.A.

As Murray documents, the well-off used to live in the same or in contiguous neighborhoods as others. Bigger homes were not much bigger; they cost twice as much—not 10 times as much. 

Physically isolated from middlebrow Americans, the elite are less likely to be part of the same associations, PTAs, Kiwanis clubs.  Money does not define their culture as much as education.  But education enables wealth, and vice versa.  Given the increasing rewards that our economy returns for brainpower, differences in wealth tend to be self-perpetuating.

Murray’s second part details the declining hold of the “founders’ values” among lower-class white Americans. Murray identifies these values as industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religiosity.

The politically correct will find his language obnoxious, or so Murray dearly hopes. Regardless, he builds a strong statistical case that among the lower socioeconomic rung, the bonds of community, work, family, and faith are fraying.

Murray says we are becoming a European-style welfare state. That conclusion is debatable, but it is a debate that we should all follow and engage in.  Hereby a modest proposition is offered: Vastly diverging wages had something to do with it.

 Charles Murray: Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010

Growth Edge Coaching

By Dr. Jennifer Garvey Berger

Our form of mind plays a role in each of our impressions and decisions, which of course means that giving thought to a client's form of mind can improve a coach's ability to be helpful.  Most coaches have a style and approach that are better suited to some forms of mind than others.

No matter what approach a coach might take--a targeted approach or a psychologically spacious approach, it can be helpful to understand the various forms of mind the client might have, the benefits of coaching that client might experience, and the particular coaching challenges the pair might face together.  With this focus, a coach and a client can together explore the client's growth edge, that space where the client reaches the edge of her current capacities.  With a focus on that edge, the coach and the client can create more powerful and helpful working relationships.

Coaching and the Self-Sovereign Mind

The collaboration between a leader who sees the world through a self-sovereign form of mind and a coach can be both difficult and extraordinarily rewarding.  Those who see the world mostly through their self-sovereign form of mind can bring an unusual level of clarity and certainty about what needs to happen next.  Because ideas of cause and effect are so tightly drawn, these leaders are unaffected by the nuances that might concern others.

The key thing to remember about the self-sovereign mind is that its focus may seem narrow: on what that person experiences or thinks directly.  This person can have control over his own impulses and desires, which means that he can see them without acting on them.  He cannot gain a distance on his own psychology or, for that matter, anyone else's.

This means that people with this mind can seem unreflective; in fact, in many ways they do not reflect, because they cannot gain enough distance from their own thinking in order to reflect upon it.

People with self-sovereign minds may be among the most difficult coaching clients.  Most coaching strategies are developed for those who have socialized or self-authored minds; a coach might try strategy after strategy and find that they all fall flat.  Yet, because of the demands of the modern adult world ask for sensemaking beyond the self-sovereign mind, developmental coaching is an important and valuable gift for these clients.  The most helpful skills are those that support the client in taking on new perspectives.

The major developmental challenge for a person with a self-sovereign mind is to get a window into his own mind and emotions---and then to use that window to begin to imagine the inner workings of others.

Change your mind before trying to change others.

It might be that one of the most important minds to change about what is possible during a coaching conversation is the coach's mind.  For example, if a client seems captured inside her own perspective, a coach might want to get her to take the perspective of an important other.  A developmentally appropriate task might be to get the client to take notes--capturing direct quotes when possible--about what the other person actually says.  Then, with the coach, the client can begin to piece together the alternative perspective.

 Jennifer Garvey Berger: Changing on the Job: Developing Leaders for a Complex World

 John Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership: Book Notes & Coaching Tips

Academic Equality for Global Economic Survival

By Guest Author Jan K. Katz, MS

The middle-class axiom “study hard and you’ll get a good job” has proven untrue in the recent economic downturn. This axiom rarely exists at poverty level, where academic accomplishment could be interpreted as an attempt to separate oneself from the community.
 
A good sense of humor, telling a story well and having a good relationship with each student are ‘nice to have’ when teaching students of upper socioeconomic classes, but essential when teaching poverty-level students (1). In a recent survey of job skills relevant and necessary in the 21st century work environment (2), creative thinking and social skills drive 80% of skills needed for 21st century jobs: 
 
Social Intelligence: connecting to others in a deep and direct way, sensing and stimulating reactions and desired interactions.
Virtual Collaboration: working productively, driving engagement, and demonstrating presence as a member of a virtual team.
Cross-Cultural Competency: operating in different cultural settings.
Transdisciplinarity: literacy in and understanding concepts across multiple disciplines.
Novel & Adaptive Thinking: thinking and developing solutions and responses beyond the routine or rule-based.
New Media Literacy: critically assessing and developing content that uses new media forms, and leveraging these media for persuasive communication.
Cognitive Load Management: discriminating and filtering information for importance, understanding how to maximize cognitive functioning using a variety of tools and techniques.
Design Mindset: representing and developing tasks and work processes for desired outcomes.
 
Only 20% of needed skills, computational thinking and sense-making, are covered by standardized testing. Standardized testing creates an environment where ‘teaching to the test’ trumps creativity and honesty. (3)
 
In Finland, a decade of national school reform focused on creating academic equality throughout the country. (4) It is being heralded as a veritable school reform miracle. After scoring low for years in the international Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development random “PISA” survey, Finland has ranked in the top three with Singapore and Korea for the past decade. The United States only holds a middle rank. (5)
 
Finland’s national education policy reform focused on equality, not excellence.

There is no tuition required for any school in Finland. The only standardized test of student performance is the matriculation exam given at the end of high school. Each classroom teacher is responsible for creating their own testing and grading. “Compared with the stereotype of the East Asian model - long hours of exhaustive cramming and rote memorization - Finland's success is especially intriguing because Finnish schools assign less homework and engage children in more creative play.” (5)
 
It’s time to restore the “garden” in kindergarten and prepare America’s future workforce to play together creatively and cooperatively in the ‘sand box’. 

 
(1) Ruby K Payne, 1995, “A Framework for Understanding Poverty”. http://www.ahaprocess.com/About_Us/Ruby_Payne.html
(2) Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools, December 2011, "Future Skills Profile for the 21st century work environment" from the report "Key Findings From A Survey of Hiring Decision-makers”. http://www.acics.org/events/content.aspx?id=4718
(3) Steven Leavitt and Stephen Dubner, 2009, “Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything”. http://www.freakonomics.com/
(4) Pasi Sahlberg, 2011,“Finnish Lessons: What Can the World Learn from Educational Change in Finland?” http://www.amazon.com/Finnish-Lessons-Educational-Change-Finland/dp/0807752576
(5) The Atlantic, December 29, 2011, “What Americans keep ignoring about Finland’s School Success”. http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/12/what-americans-keep-ignoring-about-finlands-school-success/250564/ 

Beyond Management

The systems and structures that we call "management" are obsolete.  They were developed during the industrial era more of a century ago while work has changed today.

Traditional management structures, systems and tools intended to make the first factories efficient are now obsolete.  Applying them to knowledge-based work has exactly the opposite effect, causing all kinds of breakdowns.  In "Beyond Management" (Palgrave Macmillan, December 2011) author Mark Addleson explains why workers have to manage themselves and tells them how to do it.

Beyond Management explains why the tools, rules, competition and compliance favored by management are actually disorganizing rather than empowering knowledge workers.

Management is dead.  Peter Drucker saw this first; "as we advance deeper into the knowledge economy, the basic assumptions underlying much of what is taught and practiced in the name of management are hopelessly out of date.....As a result, we are practicing, teaching and practicing policies that are increasingly at odds with reality and therefore counterproductive."

The problem we are up against, which Drucker saw, is that management cannot be transplanted from the industrial age, where it began, into the age of knowledge-work, from steam power and smokestacks to smoke-free offices and on-the-go smartphones.  Once you understand that management practices are playing havoc with knowledge workers, it is relatively easy to see what you ought to do.

Organizing is an important part of life.  We all know about it and how to do it.  Organizing is collective work, which is why knowledge workers participate in networks, establish groups, and form teams.  And, whether they do it face-to-face, on the phone, or nowadays, online, on social networks sites or texting, organizing is unquestionably, a grassroots effort.

Most of what happens and what people do when they are organizing (gauging motives, assessing relationships, cooperating, sharing knowledge, aligning) happens beneath the surface of what we see and hear and has to do with the meanings they make.

Besides conversations, what connects a group and distinguishes a loose network, say, from a tightly connected one, is how participants interact: what they say to each other and what meanings they make and share, along with their intentions, attitudes, and relationships, which you can't see and wouldn't know about unless you were part of the group.

Making meaning (individually and collectively) is the real work of organizing.  This means you can't tell how people are doing and whether it's going well or badly unless you're inside with them.  To differentiate good, or productive, organizing practices from ones that produce breakdowns, we have to find out all we can about the socialness of networks and teams and the work that participants do in making meaning of what is going on.

Knowledge work is social.  Everyone involved ought to be thinking and talking about whether, why, and how the work they are doing together is either up to the mark or falls short of what they expect.  Apart form anything else, these conversations are the lifeblood of accountability.

Even when everyone is doing it with the best of intentions, organizing can be a tricky process, requiring persistence and agility.  Of course, we need administrators, just as we need plans, strategies, guidelines and budgets.  They are not ends, but some means of doing good work.

The main merit is that you work and organize on a human scale: person-to-person, relationship-by-relationship.  For the sake of good work, for our humanity and for the future, this matters a great deal.

 Mark Addleson: Beyond Management: Taking Charge at Work

  John G. Agno: Women and Time

  Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition

How to Overcome Poor Presentation Skills

The higher you go up the corporate ladder, your technical skills become less important and your social skills become more important.  Why is that?

If your operational management was in a technical area, you now have the ability to delegate the data gathering and analyzing tasks to others while it is your responsibility to educate the leadership of the organization and industry why, what and how action must be taken based upon what the analysis reports.  That requires face-to-face interactive conversations and presentations to various interested and influential parties.

It has been said many times, that what got you to your current position (technically-based fact-finding) won't keep you in your in your new role.   It's not unusual that 40 to 45% of leaders in new positions fail within the first 18 months of their promotion or hiring.  

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.

Executive onboarding coaching (of the newly recruited or promoted executive can turnaround this high rate of failure) by helping the newly appointed leader develop the interpersonal skills necessary to succeed at the next level.  One of those important skills is being able to present their ideas and vision is a convincing manner.

Presentations are such a vital tool of living, yet many bright, talented, dedicated people never get as far in life as they'd like because they can't present to a high standard.  The fact is, people do judge by appearances.  For example, in Corporate America, a woman's wardrobe is an essential component of her presentation.  It is as important as her handshake, her eye contact and her attitude.

Many people are terrified of giving presentations.

If you have great ideas but present them poorly, many people will fail to see their worth.  You'll often be beaten by somebody whose ideas are less worthy than yours, but who presented them superlatively.  Now imagine what life would be like if you were both very smart and a great presenter.  The world would be pretty much yours for the taking!

Do You Suffer from a Lack of Coachability?

The biggest reason that new hires fail is a lack of coachability.

The 2012 hiring season is here and 46% of the people about to be hired will fail within the first 18 months on the job.  And the real surprise?  They're not going to fail for lack of skills; they will fail for lack of attitude.

When new hires fail, 89% of the time it's because of attitude and only 11% of the time because of skill.  It's not that skills aren't important, but when the top predictor of a new hire's success or failure is dependent on attitude, then attitude is clearly what we need to be hiring for.  And that requires defining the specific attitudes (both good and bad) that make a specific organization different from all the rest, and then turning the hiring and interview process focus onto those attitudes.

What do job seekers need to know about getting hired?

Because companies are now looking for attitude, as well as skill, it really changes how people need to prepare for an interview.  If you do have the right attitude, and you've got the experience to back it up, then make sure you let them know.

Networking is one way to get a company's attention, but one thing that people misconstrue is what networking is actually about.  Job seekers need to ask, "how can I add value" and then work from there.

Based on research of 20,000 new hires over a three-year period, "Hiring for Attitude" (McGraw-Hill December 2011) by Mark Murphy, CEO of Leadership IQ, reveals a new approach for choosing high performers with fantastic attitudes and great chemistry.

Here are the top five reasons why new hires failed:

Coachability (26%): The ability to accept and implement feedback from bosses, colleagues, customers, and others.

Emotional Intelligence (23%):  The ability to understand and manage one's own emotions and accurately assess others' emotions.

Motivation (17%): Sufficient drive to achieve one's full potential and excel in the job.

Temperament (15%): Attitude and personality suited to the particular job and work environment.

Technical Competence (11%):  Functional or technical skills required to do the job

Note: For what questions to ask to determine if a job candidate is "coachable" read chapter 3 of this book:

 Mark Murphy: Hiring for Attitude: A Revolutionary Approach to Recruiting and Selecting People with Both Tremendous Skills and Superb Attitude

If you are a newly recruited or promoted executive, be sure to connect with an onboarding coach before beginning your new assignment.  Why?  

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.

Executive onboarding coaching (of the newly recruited or promoted executive can turnaround this high rate of failure).

7 Habits of Spectacularly Unsuccessful Executives

By Sydney Finkelstein, the Steven Roth Professor of Management at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, published "Why Smart Executives Fail" 8 years ago.

Habit # 1:  They see themselves and their companies as dominating their environment.

Habit #2:  They identify so completely with the company that there is no clear boundary between their personal interests and their corporation's interests.

Habit #3:  They think they have all the answers.

Habit #4:  They ruthlessly eliminate anyone who isn't completely behind them.

Habit #5: They are consummate spokespersons, obsessed with the company image.

Habit #6: They underestimate obstacles.

Habit #7: They stubbornly rely on what worked for them in the past.

The bottom line: If you exhibit several of these traits, now is the time to stamp them out from your repertoire.  If your boss or several senior executives at your company exhibit several of these traits, now is the time to start looking for a new job.

 John Agno: Can't Get Enough Leadership: Book Notes & Coaching Tips

 

How Negative Media Can Mess Up a Successful Family Business

At the end of the 1920s, Al Capone was at the pinnacle of his success.  The Outfit brought in more than $100 million a year, all of it cash.  The business was centered on selling beer, liquor and prostitution but also included ownership of gambling establishments, dog tracks, dance halls, roadhouses and other resorts.

But, the tides changed for Al Capone after the Saint Valentine's Day Massacre.

Before that day, Chicago had been willing to tolerate him because, whether it was illegal or not, the people wanted what he was selling.  As Al himself said, "Nobody wanted Prohibition.  This town voted six to one against it.  Somebody had to throw some liquor on that thirst.  Why not me?  I give the public what it wants.  I never had to send out high-pressure salesmen.  I could never meet the demand."

But after February 14, 1929, all that seemed to change.  The newspapers were full of accusations, and the public was quick to react.  No one wants to live in a lawless town, and Al Capone had come to symbolize recklessness and an utter disregard for order that went unchecked by the authorities. 

Of course, the police, lawmakers, and judges would probably have been happy to continue turning a blind eye to the Outfit's operations indefinitely because they benefited from the speakeasies in payouts, booze and good times.  But once the public, spurred on by the media, was in a furor, the leaders of Chicago sensed they had to put a stop to Capone or risk losing their power.

When Deirdre Marie Capone, the author of "Uncle Al Capone," asked her Grandfather Ralph, who was Al's partner in The Outfit, what happened on February 14, 1929, here is what he said:

"Al and I had to work hard all the time not to get ourselves killed," Ralph said, "we had a business to run, and the whole family depended on the money from that business.  There were many people who were trying to take our business away from us, and there were many people who wanted to see us dead."

When asked about the St. Valentine's Day Massacre," Ralph shook his head pointedly.  "Al did not plan it," he said firmly.  "In fact, that's the last thing he would have wanted.  He was furious when he heard about it.  He phoned me and was really steaming.  He said, 'That crazy bastard McGurn!  What's he trying to do, crucify me?'"  Al was in Florida at the time and left one of his partners, Jack "machine gun" McGurn, in charge.

Before Al had left for Florida, he was worried about the activities of a rival bootlegger and head of the North Side gang, Bugs Moran.  McGurn had told Al he could handle Moran.  And McGurn came back with, "Nothing to worry, boss.  Leave it to me, I'll take care of him."

Then, after the massacre hit the papers, Al exploded to Ralph over the phone.  "So what does he do?" He ranted.  "He mows down seven people at once!  This kind of thing can ruin us.  The Tribune and the rest of the press will never get off this.  Sure as hell they're already blaming me for it, even though I'm over a thousand miles away in Florida.  And the guys back east aren't gonna be happy about this either.  They'll never believe I didn't plan the whole mess.  And to top it off, he didn't even get Moran.  That son of a bitch is still walkin' around Chicago.  Ralph, this is a nightmare.  Wake me up, will ya?"

Ralph said, "The day after I talked with Al, I confronted McGurn and told him how pissed Al was with him.  You know what he said?  He said, 'God damn it, Ralph, I swear I didn't do it.  Hell, if I'd had done it I would have done it right.  Gimme some credit.  I'm a professional.  I know Moran like I know the back of my hand.  If he wasn't there do you think I would have mowed down those other people?  They weren't even his key men.

Anyway, on the thirteenth, your kid brother Matty and I noticed a car, full of cops, driving slowly past the garage headed south.  Then a couple of minutes later it comes back in the other direction.  When they drove past the third time, I said, That's it, Matty, we're gettin' the hell out of here.  I swear to God that's the last time I was near that garage.  If you don't believe me, ask Matty.'

'Listen Ralph,' McGurn went on.  'Here's the way I got it figured.  Those cops were out to get Moran.  I heard rumors that some cops were hijackin' his booze and Moran was gonna rat them out to his captain friends on the force.  I can't prove it, but I think those cops did the shooting.  Hell, they probably thought Moran was one of the guys they blasted.'"

A historian, David Ward, published an excellent and well-documented book called "Alcatraz-The Gangster Years."  It includes a section about the slaughter on N. Clark Street.  In it, Ward disclosed an announcement made by Frederick D. Silloway, the local prohibition administrator, shortly after the massacre.  He was quoted in the newspapers as saying, "The murderers were not gangsters.  They were Chicago policemen.  I believe the killing was the aftermath to the hijacking of 500 cases of whiskey belonging to the Moran gang by five policemen six weeks ago....I expect to have the names of these five policemen in a short time.  It is my theory that in trying to recover the liquor, the Moran gang threatened to expose the policemen and the massacre was to prevent the exposure." 

In a recently published book, "Get Capone" by Jonathan Eig, the same evidence was uncovered.

It is easy in business and politics to find yourself "railroaded."  Here is what Al Capone said about that, "I was willing to go to jail.  I could have taken my stretch, come back to my wife and child, and lived my life.  But I'm being hounded by a public that won't give me a fair chance.  They want a full show, all the courtroom trappings, the hue and cry, and all the rest.  It's utterly impossible for a man my age to have done all the things I'm charged with, I'm a spook, born of a million minds."

 Deirdre Marie Capone: Uncle Al Capone - The Untold Story from Inside His Family