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Navigating the Territory: Good Ideas for Leading in Complex Environments
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Volume 2, Number 3
April, 2010
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 Greetings! This issue of Navigating the Territory: Good Ideas for Leading in Complex Environments addresses several topics. There's a brief piece on public speaking, the thing many people fear more than death but something anyone in a leadership role must be prepared for. Highlights of the 2010 Sherpa Study on Executive Coaching describes trends in the coaching industry, and it's supplemented with descriptions of three complementary offerings, the "Team Survival Intensive," "Team Coaching," and "Leader as Coach," that are available through Reidy Associates. There's also a description of a new book on community collaboration written by my longtime colleague, Tom Wolff, a highly experienced and respected leader in the area of community building. Enjoy!
For back issues of this newsletter, you can find them in the archives:
http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs076/1102561682356/archive/1102700377250.html
Thanks for your interest and support.
Deborah
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Getting Past the Fear of Public Speaking
| by Deborah Reidy
| According to most studies, people's number one fear is public speaking. For many people, public speaking is higher on their list than fear of snakes, fear of heights, and even fear of death! Why is this so? Most of us have no difficulty talking informally to a group of friends and family, nor do we blanch at the prospect of talking with a group of colleagues around the lunch table. I actually believe that the fear of public speaking is related to a fear of being judged and/or humiliated. Years ago, I was having dinner with a colleague and a friend of his, a high school teacher. While I have completely forgotten the context, the teacher's pronouncement has become etched into my brain forever: "When you open your mouth, your mind is on parade." For the next six months, I barely uttered a word! Once I recovered, I set about trying to develop a system to help myself and others organize presentations that could be delivered comfortably and even enjoyably. Since that time, I've worked with hundreds of people to develop and deliver presentations, including people who had never before spoken in public. I've refined the process into five steps, described below. The primary emphasis is on having a thesis, a main point, upon which all your other material hangs. That way, the parade of your mind will be a delight to onlookers, and you'll find people clapping and cheering along the whole route.
Steps for Organizing a Presentation:
PREPARE: Select a topic; analyze the situation (audience, setting, event purpose); from this preparation, decide on initial objective
ENVISION:Brainstorm possible content (I recommend using mindmapping. See Reidy Associates Newsletter, December 2009); identify a thesis.
REFINE:Decide on the framework or structure (problem/solution, chronological, compare/contrast, etc.); fill in details
REVISE:Fine tune objective(s)
PRACTICE:Record, practice in front of a mirror, practice with a live audience; revise again.
While there are many additional tips for delivery of your presentation, the key to a successful presentation is the quality of the preparation.
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The Status of Executive Coaching in 2010
| Highlights of the Sherpa Annual Report
by Deborah Reidy
Introduction
For the past five years, Sherpa Coaching has surveyed executive coaches and those who hire coaches, to gather information on trends in the industry. Email invitations go to a worldwide list of thousands of coaches, clients, HR professionals, trainers and executives. This year, over 1000 people responded to the survey. Below are some highlights of the findings.
What is Executive Coaching?
There are many different descriptions of what executive coaching is. Sherpa Coaching defines executive caching as "regular meetings between a business leader and a trained facilitator, designed to produce positive changes in business behavior in a limited time frame."
Executive coaches, as a general rule,
*do not share their own experience (as do mentors),
*do not give advice (as do consultants),
*do not impart specific knowledge (as trainers do) and
*avoid personal issues. ( the role of a counselor, therapist or life coach)
Why are Executive Coaches Used?
In the early days of coaching, an executive who wasn't living up to expectations was the most likely to be assigned a coach. Over the past five years, there's been a clear trend: Coaching is widely used as a
leadership development tool. More coaching is now devoted to developing upcoming talent, and a smaller share of coaching is designed to address specific problems. Executive coaching is seen, more and more, as part of succession planning. From VP level all the way to the top, a generation of leaders is ready to retire. Those who responded to the survey wish to leave a legacy as they retire: a great place to work for those who follow them.
Delivery Methodologies
Complementing the one-to-one relationship between the leader and the coach, new methodologies for delivering executive coaching have evolved. Coaches are offering workshops and seminars which teach coaching skills to managers and executives. They also offer team coaching, a process that gets an entire leadership team on the right track. (For more information on these options offered by Reidy Associates, see "What We're Up To" at the end of this newsletter.)
There continues to be a diversity of viewpoints about whether an executive coach should use a standard process with each of her coaching clients or whether the coaching process should be individually tailored to each client. The study found:
*40 percent of executive coaches 'develop a unique approach from one client to the next'.
*An additional 40 percent have 'developed their own process
for coaching'.
*Only 20 percent follow a published process that guides their
coaching engagements.
In-person coaching continues to be seen as the most effective method of delivery. In fact, in-person delivery accounts for more coaching than any other method: 45% of the total, up from 40% in 2006. This year, in
response to the economic downturn, webcam coaching took a few percentage
points away from in-person coach but 75% of executive coaches say in-person delivery is most effective, a figure that has increased every year since 2006. And over 90% of HR professionals and coaching clients believe in-person delivery is the most effective.
Finding Experienced Coaches
As the industry matures, so do its practitioners. Currently, the average age of coaches is increasing. 80% of women and 85% of men in the field are 46 and older. Seven out of ten US executive coaches now
have formal training and certification in the classroom. More than
nine in ten coaches with formal training are now certified, up from just
50% four years ago.
Where will you find the most experienced coaches? To hire a veteran, should you look to larger coaching concerns or smaller ones? There are far more veteran coaches among smaller firms (100 employees or less) than among larger firms. In
fact, over 40% of the executive coaches surveyed were one-person shops,
and another 35% + reports a company size of 2-5. Apparently, larger coaching firms are becoming a training ground for independents.
Calculating Return on Investment (ROI)
Just 18% of HR professionals calculate ROI. Four out of five use anecdotal evidence, or they don't monitor ROI for coaching. In 2010, as in years past, larger companies (1000 employees and up) don't try to measure ROI any more than smaller firms do.
The amount of money spent on coaching is significant, and it's growing. HR professionals say coaches are usually engaged for people who need leadership development, and they tell us demographics will boost demand for coaching. Despite all the expense, few people seem to track return on investment. For a common way to calculate ROI, see the full Sherpa Executive Coaching 2010 Survey
Adapted from the Sherpa Executive Coaching 2010 Survey. |
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The Power of Collaborative Solutions: Six Principles and
Effective Tools for Building Healthy Communities
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by Tom Wolff
My new book, The Power
of Collaborative Solutions, is written for all of us who are trying to make
our community, organization or the world a better place.
In over 40 years of work in communities around the globe, I
have seen folks struggle to improve the places where they live and work. They
confront all the usual barriers to community and organizational problem
solving: fragmentation, limited information, duplication of efforts, competition,
not engaging those most affected, and lack of cultural competence. For example, in NYC on 9/11 the police and fire departments
could not communicate or coordinate their efforts because their radios were on
different frequencies. Too often that happens in our own communities: Those people
who need to work together to address an issue are on different frequencies
literally and figuratively.
I have heard a social worker tell a different story. She was
once invited to the house of a family she worked with to come by on a Saturday
morning. She arrived to find six other women like herself in the room. The mom
came in and announced, "You are all
social workers working with my family. I am going to leave the room. Could you
please talk with each other?" Collaborative solutions are needed.
We often fail to engage those most affected by the community
issue we are addressing. We address issues of new immigrants or gangs but do
not engage the immigrants or the gang members themselves: We do not bring them
to the table to solve the problems.
I have seen so many communities struggle because of these
issues so I set out to do something about it. I became involved with hundreds
of communities and thousands of community leaders and am in the unique position
of having worked with these communities and their leaders building successful
collaborative solutions. These efforts work!
Now I am delighted to share what I
have learned from these communities with all of you through my new book, The Power of Collaborative Solutions,
published by Jossey-Bass/John Wiley.
The Power of
Collaborative Solutions describes the six key principles to follow to successfully build powerful
collaborative solutions that have been shown to help turn communities and
organizations around. These principles are simple to understand and easy to
follow:
- Encourage true collaboration as the form of exchange.
- Engage the full
diversity of the community, especially those most directly affected.
- Practice
democracy and promote active citizenship and empowerment.
- Employ an
ecological approach that builds on community strengths.
- Take action by
addressing issues of social change and power on the basis of a common vision.
- Engage spirituality
as your compass for social change.
Along with these principles are
easy-to-use, and effective tools
that can be put to work in your community. Jossey Bass has also put these tools
on the web so they can be accessed for ongoing use in coordination with the
materials in the book. You'll find ways to help coalitions that are stuck in
just talking to move towards acting to get results.
Also
I share the inspiring actual stories of the ways that people have rediscovered
democracy. You will read about the Santa Barbara Pro Youth Coalition and their
work at halting gang violence through the use of ex-gang bangers. And the
Cleghorn Neighborhood Center, a small nonprofit working in a low income Latino
community in Fitchburg, Massachusetts and
their success at creating community change by building leadership in the adults
and youth of their community.
There is a strong spiritual component to my journey and to the work of
community collaboration. Seeking collaborative solutions calls on us to engage
communities with acceptance and appreciation, to work with a wide variety of
groups with deep compassion, and ultimately to understand our deep
interdependence on each other. When we pursue our spiritual purpose in this
work, we come to understand that indeed we are one, and that we can do together
things we cannot do apart.
The Power of
Collaborative Solutions will show you that you can make a difference and have fun in the process. I
hope you take a look. For sample chapters, table of contents and ordering
information go to
Tom Wolff's website |
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| What We're Up To
| The Sherpa Report on the status of executive coaching describing new methodologies for delivering or complementing the work of coaching. Here are examples of 3 approaches offered by Reidy Associates, designed in collaboration with my business partner Cynthia Way and other colleagues:
Team Survival Intensive:
The
Team Survival Intensive was developed specifically for teams being deployed to
a war zone, but is equally relevant for teams that face high stakes, high-pressure
situations. Through increased
self-awareness, self-discipline and conscious choice, people take personal
accountability for their contribution to their team. Participants learn and
practice new capacities in a low stakes environment in a way that is directly
relevant to their past, current and anticipated challenges.
Team Coaching:
Most real work in organizations
is accomplished by teams, and yet many teams perform less than
optimally. Team coaching is on the
cutting edge of organizational interventions. We combine our
organizational learning experience with a state-of-the-art program developed by
Team Coaching International to produce measurable results. A typical engagement begins and ends with team
members completing an anonymous, web-based Team Diagnostic Assessment™. The
initial results serve as a basis for the team coaching, and the end results
serve to measure the effectiveness of the engagement as well as set the stage
for ongoing focus. Following the initial diagnostic, there is a combination of
face-to-face meetings and teleconferences, over a period of approximately six months.
Leader as Coach: The
world is changing at an ever-accelerating pace. Organizational success depends on the ability to adapt
quickly. As a leader, one key
lever for promoting change is your ability to maximize the talent of your
people. In order to develop the talented
workforce you require, you must engage people, individually and collectively in frequent,
on-going conversations about their performance. Yet, many leaders find that these conversations are
challenging and do not produce the results they hope for.
Leader as
Coach
offers a proven approach to build leaders' ability to hold these performance conversations in a way that is motivating, focuses people in the right direction, holds people accountable, and help
them identify their own solutions and learning. Most importantly, they learn
how to create sustainable results within the organization, with their people
and with themselves. For more information about executive coaching or any of the above offerings, please contact me at deborah@reidyassociates.org or 413-536-9256. | @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Reidy Associates offers customized solutions that enable leaders and their organizations to succeed in complex and uncertain environments.
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