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)
The first mark of conscious leaders is self-awareness and the ability to tell themselves the truth. It matters far more that leaders can accurately determine whether they are above or below the line in any moment than where they actually are. Distortion and denial are cornerstone traits of unconscious leaders.
When coaching leaders, use the tool of feedback. Gather lots of data from multiple sources and give leaders feedback about how they are seen in the world and about how they appear to be wired at a personality level. Leader after leader will interpret this direct feedback as a threat to their identity and go below the line. It is a natural reaction.
For this reason, knowing when you are below the line is more important then being below the line. Leaders are in real trouble when they are below the line (closed, defensive and committed to being right and keeping their ego alive) and think they are above it. This leadership blindness is rampant in the corporate world.
CHOOSING TO SHIFT
Why is it so important to be above the line?
Creativity, innovation and collaboration (all keys to high-level problem solving) occur best when we operate above the line. In fact, they don't occur at all below the line, where it is necessary to be if your physical well-being is threatened and you need to fight, flee, freeze, or faint. In such a situation, survival trumps high-level problem solving, creativity and collaboration. Most leaders work in environments in which creative problem solving is necessary for winning, but this is available only when leaders lead from above the line.
Because when we are unaware, we unconsciously engage our default behavior. Only when we become aware of who we are and how others see us are we able to change our behavior.
Sometimes, just being aware, allows the problem to solve us--rather than requiring us to solve the problem.
Intelligence, talent and experience are all vital qualities for leadership, but they're not enough.
They don't make the difference between success and failure. It's commonplace for businesses, once successful, to go into a funk. They need a turnaround because the smart, experienced people in charge who know the place better than anyone else have failed. The usual solution is to bring in an outsider with a stellar track record, but that approach doesn't always work. It all depends on how a leader thinks.
Neuroscientists now tell us that believing is seeing rather than the reverse. The human brain constructs its own images of reality and then projects them onto the external world. Reality is what each of us believes it to be. Our mental models--rich or impoverished--determine the breadth and depth of our personal reality. How you think determines what you see and how you respond to situations.
There are many labels for such mental models: maps, paradigms, mindsets, worldviews, and cognitive lenses, to name a few. They can be called frames. A frame isa set of beliefs and assumptions that you carry in your head to help you understand and negotiate some part of your world.
A good frame makes it easier to know what's happening, see more options and make better choices. Frames are vital because human affairs don't come with computerized navigation systems to guide you turn by turn to your destination. Instead, you need to develop and carry accurate maps in your head.
Such maps make it possible to register and assemble key bits of available data into a coherent pattern--an image of what's going on. When it works fluidly, the process takes the form of "rapid cognition," which Malcolm Gladwell examines in his best seller Blink.
The ultimate goal is fluid expertise, the sort of know-how that lets you think on the fly and navigate organizations as easily as you drive home on a familiar route. There is no shortcut to developing this kind of expertise.
Framing involves matching mental maps to situations. Reframing involves shifting frames when circumstances change. Life maps, frames are both windows on a territory and tools for navigation. Only experience and practice bring you the adroitness and wisdom to take stock of a situation and use suitable tools with confidence and skill.
The book, "How Great Leaders Think," helps you sift through the competing voices and merges them into an inclusive framework embracing four distinctive ideas and leadership. The ideas are powerful enough to capture the subtlety and complexity of leadership, yet simple enough to be helpful.
Most have chosen to adopt best practices of those whom they respect to improve their own leadership style. So, which is the better method to develop leadership skills --- improve your innate signature talents or copy what others have developed and used successfully?
The short answer is don't jump from one leadership fad to another but do engage in authentic conversations and self-assessments to know you better.
Many business executives and entrepreneurs are used to doing things their own way and find it difficult to accept criticism or instruction. Yet, one of the best sources for an unofficial business education is a good mentor coach.
What is a mentor coach?
Someone who is really interested in helping you accomplish your goals. You can talk to them when you run into problems or want to prevent problems from developing.
Why find a mentor coach?
If you get into a situation that feels uncomfortable, simply talking to your mentor coach can clear up the cobwebs. Mentoring used to be the norm. People would spend time with a master craftsman as they learned their trade. As we've moved to a technical information economy, those kinds of relationships seem to be lost. But we need high touch as well as high tech.
What do you talk to a mentor coach about?
Anything you'd like some perspective on. Pressing decisions, setting priorities, personal or professional plans, problems. They can also put you in touch with people who can help you reach your goals.
What qualities should you look for in a mentor coach?
The short answer is a mix of real-world business experience, competencies and insight. It should be someone who has had a similar experience that you wish to have. Someone with high integrity who can be trusted. Someone who is politically savvy. Someone who believes in "tough love" and can tell you the way it is.
How do you find a mentor coach?
Look for someone you respect and make sure you "click." Look for people who have worked with a professional executive/business coach within all of your social and professional networks. When you find them, ask about their experience working with their mentor coach.
Once you identify a prospective mentor coach, it is up to you to engage that person in an open-ended mentoring/coaching relationship. Have realistic expectations; a mentor coach is not going to solve all your career or personal problems. However, you may be surprised at the new clarity and confidence you will acquire through this new interpersonal relationship.
In its heyday, Eastman Kodak Company was an icon of innovation in photography; a juggernaut in its field. The film giant gave us the "Kodak Moment," which persists as the quintessential photographic experience even though in today's digital camera age "selfies" on smartphones are a major factor.
Supremely confident, making decisions that presumed the past was an appropriate guide to the future, Kodak executives didn't understand that the world was changing dramatically. Creative changes in customers' taste, technologies and global economic circumstance continue to destroy the Kodaks of this world.
Kodak leadership missed a number of innovative opportunities in the past. That is why it has been so difficult to change Kodak's corporate culture from film-based imaging to digital imaging.
One of those lost opportunities
In the late 1950s, Kodak owned the paper copy business using a photo sensitive paper and monobath solution to create an extra copy of a document. So, when Chester Carlson, a physicist and patent attorney, came calling with the xerography technology, Kodak leadership turned him down....primarily because to build such a copier would be very expensive, require continuous service support and Kodak management had seldom heard of a customer who needed more than one copy at a time.
Carlson then went over to the Haloid Company, also in Rochester NY, with his new technology where he was welcomed. Haloid then formed a joint venture with Battelle Development Corporation (BDC) in Columbus, OH, for 55% of the patient rights, to invest and develop the xerography technology resulting in three technical improvements.
In 1962, Xerox Corporation (the new name for the Haloid Company with Battelle owning $350 million of Xerox stock) introduced the Xerox 914, a revolutionary new copier that cost $15,000 each. Prior to the product introduction, Joe Wilson, Haloid Company president, had come up with an innovative marketing approach for this new expensive copier that led to the success of xerography: Lease the 914 copier for only $100 per month and charge the customer an additional $.01 for each copy made on the machine. The result for Kodak was its paper copier business quickly vanished.
Kodak Focus on Film
Eastman Kodak was a leader, until it wasn't. It was rock-solid and the dominant company in the photography industry until creative destruction turned granite to sand. With little or no competition, during which nearly every snapshot that mattered was "a Kodak moment," the introduction of the Instamatic Camera increased film consumption by four-times. Kodak was totally focused on its fim business.
When Polaroid came onto the scene, Kodak improved the technology of its cameras, projectors, film and processing equipment. And it priced aggressively to turn Polaroid into a luxury item, leaving Kodak as the supplier of film to Polaroid while continuing to be the primary source for photographs. After all, cameras were like razors, and Kodak was selling all the blades (the film and the film processing).
When focus causes you to wear blinders, you are far more likely to be blindsided, and that's exactly what happened to Kodak--over and over again.
Filmless Photography was Predictable
Given Kodak's reliance of film, the company's fall as a result of the turn to filmless photography was predictable. If that were the whole picture, the analysis would lead to a company failing to reinvent itself when it should have.
In 1975, two years after I was recruited from my eight-year career at Kodak as a marketing specialist, Steve Sasson, a Kodak engineer, created a digital camera. In such devices, images are stored on a silicon chip. Film is unnecessary. Sasson not only created the digital camera, he also applied for and later received a patent for the underlying technology. That was the genesis of creative destruction of film and the cameras that used it.
That patent could have been the basis for a Kodak reinvention. Is it possible that none of Kodak's executives understood that they had entered the doorway to a new industry with his invention? Were they blind to its potential or fearful that digital photography would adversely affect their precious film business? After all, film did contribute most of Kodak's revenue and profit.
That Kodak patented and then hid the digital camera is fascinating. It's difficult to recall where such an approach has succeeded. It would be better to move profit from one pocket to another before someone picks your pocket. The result has been devastating, leaving Kodak as a non-player in a new industry it could have owned.
Other researchers have shown that people who dream of practicing a routine can improve their abilities in that activity in real life. Early evidence also suggests that lucid dreaming may help improve depressive symptoms and mental health in general, perhaps by giving people a greater sense of self-control.
Many of the studies are small, however, and it isn't always clear whether lucid dreaming is responsible for the improvements or simply linked to them, experts say. People vary tremendously in how often they remember their dreams, as well as their degree of awareness and control while dreaming.
Most people aren't aware when they're dreaming, which tends to occur in a stage known as rapid-eye movement, or REM, sleep. Yet even with the body in a very deep sleep, the mind is very active.
Surveys suggest that about half of us will have at least one experience in our lifetimes. Lucid dreaming comes more easily to some people, but experts say it can be learned.
You can find your own path and feel confident about acting on your ideas to create a better future for the world with meaning, intelligence and sensitivity.
We need to find ways to leverage simplicity to manage increasingly complex and unpredictable situations. We need to develop an approach that uses sense to underpin sustainable success.
A leader builds the confidence necessary to make sound decisions that are the result of consultations, exchange, and debates. When employed with courage, empathy, humility and resilience, the leader stimulates creative initiatives and generates sense that drives action and results. These leaders are not just the CEOs or executives; they are everywhere in the organization.
It is the leader's responsibility to use the right techniques to engage each person in a way that speaks to her, to respect her as an individual, to place trust and confidence in her ability to work effectively with the right guidance.
A leader creates himself or herself step by step, over time, through gestures and acts of self-construction in relation to others. By exploring what divides or creates distance between individuals, we come to know ourselves and become more agile.
The wider the division, the greater the effort needed to understand the other, and the more agility and self-knowledge is gained in the task of understanding. Interpersonal connections and common ground emerge along the way. These efforts enable us to build the confidence needed to exercise leadership as a process of influence with composure.
This capacity is a major step toward exercising responsible, people-centered leadership that is driven by a common purpose and the desire to build sense for them and for the organization.
What is the best method for getting your team based on four continents to work together effectively?
Though most people are unaware of it, the ways you seek to persuade others and the kinds of arguments you find persuasive are deeply rooted in your culture's philosophical, religious and educational assumptions and attitudes. Far from being universal, then, the art of persuasion is one that is profoundly culture-based.
For example, "in China, the boss is always right," says Steve Henning, reflecting on his years of managing in Bejing. "And even when the boss is very wrong, he is still right."
If, like Henning, you find yourself managing staff in a culture that is more hierarchical than your own, you may be surprised and uncomfortable to see how much importance is placed on what you say and how difficult it is to hear the opinions of those in positions below you.
Globalization has led to the rapid connection of internationally based employees from all levels of multinational companies.
Where once an employee might have been expected to primarily collaborate with colleagues from his own country, today many people are part of global networks connected with people scattered around the world.
Yet, most managers have little understanding of how local culture impacts golbal interaction. Even those who are culturally informed, travel extensively, and have lived abroad often have few strategies for dealing with the cross-cultural complexity that affects their team's day-to-day performance.
"The Culture Map" provides a new way forward, with vital insights for working effectively and sensitively with one's counterparts in the new global marketplace. Author Erin Meyer combines a smart analytical framework with practical, actionable advice for working in a global world.
Whether you need to motivate employees, delight clients or simply organize a conference call among members of a cross-cultural team, the eight dimensions featured in The Culture Mapwill help you improve your effectiveness.
