Coaching Tip: The Leadership Blog

Trusting Virtual Teams

82% of Fortune Magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" have virtual employees and policies in place.

Whether employees work from home, clients' offices or across the globe, more and more managers do not see their direct reports on a day-to-day basis.  This trend benefits employers, as remote workers have a 60% higher intent to stay than employees in traditional office settings.  Virtual employees are happier, have more life/work flexibility and become more productive workers.

In the Virtual Manager: Cutting-Edge Solutions for Hiring, Managing, Motivating and Engaging Mobile Employees, author Kevin Sheridan tackles the challenges that many companies are facing as the business world adjusts to a virtual workplace.

One of the greatest challenges of managing virtual employees centers on the issue of trust.

Trust can not be mandated; it must be earned.  However, it is difficult to earn trust when most of our interaction occurs via email, Intranet and voice mail.  So how does one make this trust come about, develop and sustain itself for a virtual team?

Extraordinary virtual managers know that in order to let go and fully trust their employees, they must be very scrutinizing and careful during the talent selection process.  By hiring only people they innately trust from the get-go, managers are able to start out on the right foot with new hires and support their autonomy.  Virtual managers, who cannot let go and continue to micro-manage, annoying checking in or checking up on their remote employees, will damage trust at their organization.

Trust must begin with, and be led by, the virtual manager.  Teamwork requires trust from all sides, and the most successful virtual teams are no different.  Management must foster a culture of trust between employees to create the most engaged and driven virtual workers.

Engaged leaders foster engagement in virtual workers who will be worthy and capable of being trusted.  Because trust is the foundation of a virtual team, organizations will benefit from hiring virtual leaders.

 Kevin Sheridan: The Virtual Manager: Cutting-Edge Solutions for Hiring, Managing, Motivating, and Engaging Mobile Employees

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

What All Major Depressions Have in Common

Signs of deflation are visible but the public will be fooled

Deflation requires a precondition: a major societal buildup in the extension of credit (and its flip side, the assumption of debt).
-- Conquer the Crash, 2nd edition (p. 88)

Has the United States met that precondition?

Well, consider that total credit market debt as a percent of U.S. gross domestic product was

• 280 percent in 1929 at the start of the Great Depression
• 380 percent in 2008

The current build-up of credit goes far beyond major -- it's unprecedented.

It's been rising steadily for 60 years. The slope literally looks like the side of a steep mountain.

Bank credit and Elliott wave expert Hamilton Bolton studied every major depression in the U.S. In 1957, he made this observation:

All were set off by a deflation of excess credit. This was the one factor in common...the signs were visible many months, and in some cases years, in advance. None was ever quite like the last, so that the public was always fooled thereby.

Let's read again from the second edition of Conquer the Crash (p.92):

A deflationary crash is characterized in part by a persistent, sustained, deep, general decline in people's desire and ability to lend and borrow...

The U.S. has experienced two major deflationary depressions, which lasted from 1835 to 1842 and from 1929 to 1932 respectively. Each one followed a period of substantial credit expansion. Credit expansion schemes have always ended in bust. The credit expansion scheme fostered by worldwide central banking...is the greatest ever...If my outlook is correct, the deflationary crash that lies ahead will be even bigger than the two largest such episodes of the past 200 years.

Is there evidence now that a deflationary trend is underway? Dear reader, the evidence is abundant and growing by the day.

To begin with, just a casual observation of our national economic life reveals a deep general decline in people's desire and ability to lend and borrow.

But there are many specific signs pointing to bankruptcy, default and a deflationary spiral.

Yet they're not grabbing the headlines. The "good" economic reports and levitating stock market are. The public will likely be fooled again. But make no mistake, the signs are there.

---

Learn Why Deflation Is the Biggest Threat to Your Money Right Now Discover Robert Prechter's views on the unfolding deflationary trend by reading the 90-page report, The Guide to Understanding Deflation. This guide will help you survive a major deflationary trend, and even equip you to prosper. Plan and prepare for your financial future. Download Your Free 90-Page Deflation Survival Guide eBook.

This article was syndicated by Elliott Wave International and was originally published under the headline What All Major Depressions Have in Common. 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.

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

Recognizing Habits That Undermine Goals

Minds at Work in Cambridge, Mass, founded by Robert Kegan, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and Lisa Lahey, a development psychologist who also teaches at Harvard, guides executives through a step-by-step process of self-examination and gradual behavioral change.

The program is based on the idea that, like dieters with a weakness for doughnuts, many executives want to change but behave in ways that impede their progress.  So, rather than teaching technical skills, Minds at Work gives managers structured exercises to help them pinpoint the ingrained habits and beliefs that are undermining their goals.

If you are stuck, get unstuck.  Here's how. Use this four column exercise to become aware of what "big assumption" you are protecting:   

a. Complete the statement, "If only, ________________________." This is a complaint of why something is not happening for you.  

b. After you have written the complaint, determine what commitments or convictions you hold that are actually implied in this response. Then write out the statement,

"I am committed to the value or importance of________________________________" in the first column. This allows you to transfer the "complaint" into a statement of "commitment." The language of complaints tells us what we can't stand; the language of commitments tells us what we stand for. Where there is passion, there are possibilities for transformation. 

c. Write down in the next column (next to the listed commitment) what you are doing and/or not doing that prevents your commitment from being fully realized. This process allows you to move from the language of "blame" to the language of "personal responsibility." 

d. In the 3rd column, next to each "doing" or "not doing" statement, write down what you are "protecting" -- by recognizing a competing commitment or value: "I may also be committed to ____________." This helps you to notice any contradiction that is showing up which is keeping you from honoring the previous commitment. This step will help you understand why your "immune system to change" is working against getting you where you want to be. This step allows you to move from the language of "New Year's Resolutions" to the language of "competing commitments." 

e. Now in the last column, next to the competing commitment you have identified, write down the "big assumption" that is the basis for the competing commitment that you are protecting. "I assume that if __________________ ." This step allows you to move from the language of "big assumptions than hold you back" to the language of "assumptions that you hold." 

Now you begin to understand why this change business is so difficult and discouraging at times. To effect significant change, we must continuously notice whenever these competing assumptions show up and test whether we want to hold on to our big assumption. Remember that the process of living a life of discovery and continual self-awareness and learning is important but difficult. 

The above exercise is taken from the book, "How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work" by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey (Jossey-Bass 2001).  

“On the one hand, you have one foot on the gas and you want to delegate,” Dr. Lahey says. “On the other hand, you have a foot on the brake because you are committed to never being shown up.”

Counterproductive habits are difficult to give up because they serve a purpose, Dr. Lahey says: they help executives protect their self-image.  But, she says, managers who are willing to investigate and challenge their own deeply held beliefs often find that their original assumptions were incorrect, a discovery that allows them to change, she says.  She and Professor Kegan offer some case studies in their book, “Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization.”

Source: The New York Times, March 18, 2012

 Robert Kegan: How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work: Seven Languages for Transformation

 Robert Kegan: Immunity to Change: How to Overcome It and Unlock the Potential in Yourself and Your Organization (Leadership for the Common Good)

 John G Agno: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge.

Lady Luck, Superwoman and Your Career

LinkedIn, a large professional network with more than 150 million members worldwide, released data about global professionals’ perceptions of the role Lady Luck has played in their career trajectory.  Over 7,000 surveyed professionals globally found that 84% of professionals believe in career luck.  48% consider themselves to have better career luck compared to others.  Could it be many career women enjoyed better career luck by being coached? 
 Barbara A. McEwen: When Doing It All Won't Do: A Self-Coaching Guide for Career Women--Workbook Edition

Out of the fifteen countries LinkedIn surveyed professionals in, the United States ranked as the seventh luckiest country. Forty-nine percent of respondents from the U.S. reported feeling slightly luckier, or much luckier, than other professionals.

Globally, the top five most important factors that contribute to luck are:
1.    Having strong communications skills
2.    Being flexible
3.    Having a strong work ethic
4.    Acting on opportunities
5.    Having a strong network

The number one most important factor that U.S. professionals attribute to luck is, “strong work ethic,” which seventy percent of respondents selected.  However, only Superwoman can juggle it all. 

As you know, career women struggle with countless expectations, too much to do in too little time, and the fact that they receive little of the support or recognition they want and deserve.  In an effort to squeeze even more into their nightmarish schedules, these women continue to make choices that actually undermine their health, family life, careers and important relationships.

In the February 14. 2011 edition of The New Yorker magazine, Tina Fey wrote: "What is the rudest question you can ask a woman?    How old are you?   What do you weigh?   No, the worst question is: How do you juggle it all?  The topic of working moms is a tap-dance recital in a minefield.  'How do you juggle it all?'  people constantly ask me, with a accusatory look in their eyes.  'You're screwing it all up, aren't you?' their eyes say.  My standard answer is that I have the same struggles as any working parent but with the good fortune to be working in my dream job."

Women are dancing to a frenzied beat, believing just because they can, they should.  They have been taught, if they are capable of doing something, it shouldn't be necessary to look for help.   This has led women to become frustrated by experiencing long days and frantic schedules.  Many working women are exhausted.  Isn't it time that career women reclaimed their time and life?

“With St. Patrick’s Day upon us, we thought that evaluating what professionals can do to enjoy that proverbial ‘Luck of the Irish’ in their careers would be a fun and useful exercise,” said LinkedIn’s connection director, Nicole Williams. “It’s clear from the results that you need to make your own luck to succeed. Nothing beats being proactive and building a strong network!”

Here are some self-coaching books that can help career women integrate their work and personal lives better while making their own luck:

 John G. Agno: Women and Time   

  John G Agno: Women, Know Thyself: The most important knowledge is self-knowledge.

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

"When Doing It All Won't Do: A self-coaching guide for career women" by Barbara McEwen & John G. Agno. 

Purchase and download for the Nook eReader and iPad tablets at Barnes & Noble   for $9.99

Purchase and download at Amazon for the Kindle Edition - for $9.99   

Purchase and download all eReader formats at Smashwords  (Various Formats, except the pdf Workbook Edition, are available) for $9.99

More information at: http://www.independentauthornetwork.com/john-agno.html