Articles

The Coaching Process

June 27, 2012 By Ira Chaleff

Coaching is used to support the development of current and future organization managers and executives. It is an individually customized process that seeks to raise the executive’s awareness of the impact of his or her style and behaviors, maximize the executive’s unique strengths, provide him or her with new tools and strategies for achieving desired results, and help the executive transform or minimize unproductive behavior. This is achieved within a framework that typically follows the steps below, though the process is invariably adapted to the individual’s needs.

PHASE I – ASSESSMENT/CONTRACTING

Interview client who will be coached and authorizing principal to assess current strengths and weaknesses in relation to professional/organizational expectations
Confirm that coach and client are a good match; introduce alternative coach if needed
If contract permits, gather data using assessment instruments and/or interviews of stakeholders (typically client’s peers and staff who report to client)
Aggregate and analyze data, prepare report
Give client clear feedback to raise awareness of professional development needs
Create development plan with client that identifies behavioral goals and objectives, steps to be taken, commitments by both parties and anticipated time frame

PHASE II – DEVELOPMENT

Coach client in the development of awareness, skills and strategies to leverage strengths and address deficiencies to improve own performance and that of client’s team
Use a combination of in-person visits and scheduled phone conferences
Use questions, observations and feedback to increase self-awareness, self-reflection, and insight into the relation of own behavior to desired/undesired outcomes
Provide tools and techniques to support development and monitor their implementation
Provide a practice arena for new behaviors through preparation and practice for crucial conversations and interactions
Reassess behavior change with additional feedback from original stakeholders or authorizing principal as appropriate and address remaining issues

PHASE III – FOLLOW-UP AND MAINTENANCE

Estimated time frame: seventh through tenth month – monthly meetings

Maintain contact with coachee in lengthening intervals
Monthly scheduled meeting to review and reinforce
Additional meetings if old issues re-emerge
When stability of developmental gains confirmed, create and implement closure sequence
Final briefings with authorizing principal

ESTIMATED LENGTH OF COACHING RELATIONSHIP:

Four to ten months, depending on individual availability and progress and program design

COACHING FEES

We can design coaching programs to meet the needs and budgets of our clients. We have ample experience as to which models and durations are most likely to produce the desired results in different situations and will provide options and our recommendation once we understand your coaching needs.

We can also design team coaching programs that combine the steps of individual coaching above with senior team development activities.

Please contact us with any questions.

OrganizeYour Work Space for How You Work

January 24, 2012 By Emily 1 Comment

by Emily Barnes

A well-organized office is one that not only looks good but is functional too. It is organized to match how you work, live, and travel – not how someone else does. The basic rule of thumb for placing things in a space is to put frequently used items close to you and infrequently used ones farther away with the remaining things situated somewhere in the middle. However, that rule falls short of telling you how to consider job duties while organizing your work space – so some of us use the “put-it-anywhere” approach. But, people who organize their space according to the work they do, how they want or need to do it, and where they do it, report being better organized and, generally speaking, feeling more in control of their work than the “put-it-anywhere” population.

To help you organize your space so that it better suits your job functions, here’s a brief introduction to the concept. Listed in this table are a few typical job duties:

Job Duties	Desk	Car	Airplane	Hotel	Home
E-mails	*
Web research	*				*
Calls	*	*		*
Reading, analyzing			*		*
Writing	*		*		*

The asterisks indicate where these duties are performed. While most of the work is performed at the desk, some of it occurs elsewhere. Using the above example, let’s start organizing.

E-mail & Web Research. Arrange the computer monitor so that your head is not tilted too far up or down for viewing, and put the mouse pad directly to the left or right of the keyboard to avoid awkward twisting of your wrist and forearm. Make sure you do not have to lean too far left or right to reach speakers, pen/pencils, sharpener, printer, any docking stations, or disk drives. Easy access to these tools will help you move smoothly from one task to the next. Create file folder categories to hold your emails or research. Mirror these steps at work and home.
Calls. At your desk, first adjust the chair so that your back rests comfortably against the back of the chair, and your feet are flat on the floor while your arms are at a right angle to your desk surface. Position the chair towards a pleasant view – decide what that view will be and make sure that it suits your personality. Do you need a picture, flowers, a plant or something else to enliven the view? Sit in your chair and situate the phone close enough to you so that your body does not have to twist into another position to use it. Keep the basic tools required for calls in a drawer or stationed closest to the telephone: pens, pencils, writing tablets, paper calendar or electronic organizer, and files.Keep two notepads in the car (one is your back-up) and make sure you can reach one as required. Since you know you will be making calls while in the car, put these things in a box or case: headset, pen, pad and copy of your phone/address book.For hotel calls, put a separate copy of your contact list in a permanent travel folder that accompanies you on every trip. Include a notepad along with current work that might arise during the trip and a portable office kit (sized 5×7; includes clips, stapler, scissors, tape, rubber bands, ruler). What else belongs in the folder? Consider, realistically, the kind of work you are likely to do while traveling and think through the material you will need to support your doing that work. It’s a good idea to create a checklist to reference before traveling so as to make sure you include the necessary items for your trip.
Reading, Analyzing. Organize this work around the concept of mobility since you will be reading mostly at home or while traveling. But first, answer some questions. On a scale of 1-5, how important is the reading material? What’s the deadline for reading? Your answers will help you decide what you will read, take home, or take on the next trip. Separate the reading you want to accomplish in the next few days and put it in a special travel case to carry home with you. When preparing for your next trip, transfer the desired reading material into your travel folder.
Writing. Before you begin writing, clear your desk of all papers and clutter unrelated to the writing project that requires attention. Put these unrelated materials in labeled file folders then mark their To-Do dates in your calendar before storing the folders in a file cabinet. Make sure paper, reference materials, and other supplements you need for that project are handy before you begin writing. Since you might also be working on a particular project while on an airplane or at home, keep the materials for that project organized together in folders, a binder, or a travel case for easy carrying between your office, home and travel destinations.

Whether at home, the office, or traveling, you can perform your job with the least amount of shuffling. The key is to focus on what you do and how you do it, then practice doing it better. Here are three steps to organizing space to answer the needs of a job:

List your primary job duties
Determine which of those job duties you usually perform while

At your desk where you work
In your car
On an airplane, train — or boat!
At a hotel
At home
Anywhere else

Create a plan to accommodate the work you intend to perform in each place.

© Emily Barnes 2004

How to Outwit E-Junk Thugs

January 24, 2012 By Emily

by Emily Barnes

As long as you are a participating member of an electronic mail service, you are going to get it. Unless you have a team of highly aggressive e-cops patrolling your e-premises and taking down the bad e-guys before they reach your desktop, you are going to get e-junk. Get used to it. But, rather than let e-junk rain on your e-motions, take charge! You really can outwit e-junksters, electronic mail thugs. Here are five actions to take starting now:

Set-Up A Junk Room. Many internet service providers allow users to have multiple mailboxes. Use one of them exclusively for receiving junk e-mail. Create an e-junk mailbox and use it exclusively to surf the internet, register at web sites, engage in discussion groups, or have online information sent to you. Conduct all of your “public” activity only from the protection of this junk mail control center. When lurkers grab your e-junk screen name while you browse, they will get a first-class seat in your junk room! Now, how cool is that? (If your primary mailbox is already inundated with junk e-mail, make it your junk room and create another address for controlled use.)
Never Open E-Junk. Sometimes spam mail contains an HTML code that, when the e-mail is opened, returns a message to the originating server saying the addressee’s account is active. In such cases, additional e-junk is guaranteed to follow. For this reason, it is better to delete e-junk than to open it. Some senders invite you to “Unsubscribe,” another way to “register” you for more junk mail. Avoid this by simply deleting the e-mail before opening it.
Always Delete E-Junk. Spammers attempt to get you to open their e-junk by using subject lines that suggest they know you: “Remember Me.” They pretend to respond to a query you never made, “Here’s the information you requested.” Your choices are to delete, delete, delete all of it or suffer the consequences of opening it.
Rule Your Junk-Free Mailbox. Make your e-junk mailbox the decoy for all of those e-thugs lurking in the shadows, for folks sending lots of e-jokes, for everything unrelated to your important business or personal matters. Browse it occasionally, read the funnies, scan it for relevant information, and feel your power when you delete the trash that is sure to accumulate there.
Expose E-Junksters. Every once in awhile you will dislike seeing the same old no-good thugs passed out in your junk room. Go ahead and turn them over to the e-cops. One very proactive authority is the Mail Abuse Prevention System (MAPS www.mail-abuse.org) which has a database that lists internet service providers who allow their members to send unsolicited mail or to profit from having it sent. Subscribers to MAPS can block traffic from offending ISPs listed in the database. Another resource is SpamCop, www.spamcop.net, which offers free and paid spam reporting and prevention services. If you register for these services, remember to do it from your junk mail control center. You cannot be too careful.

These five steps create a handy acronym for controlling your e-junk. Without looking back, what is it?

First, let’s review: If you really want to outsmart e-thugs, you will need at least two e-mailboxes. Use one as the waiting room for strangers and the other as the waiting room for people you know. Surf only from your junk box, delete junk mail without opening it and report e-thugs as often as possible. You can control e-junk! Now, the acronym: SNARE. That’s right. Snare e-junksters; turn’em in!

© Emily Barnes 2004

Four Steps to Better Managing Your To-Do List

January 24, 2012 By Emily

By Emily Barnes

Raise your hand if The List (your to-do list) is as long as your arm! If you add more to-do’s in a day than you check off in a day, you might be a bona fide Monkey Farmer. I’d bet you the first jungle harvest that you really want to be a Monkey Charmer. But how does a self-afflicted List Maker, Breaker, Taker or Faker (one who adds completed tasks to a perfectly enormous list just to check them off) move from farming to charming that clinging monkey right off the back? I’ll tell you in a minute.

First, if there’s a ring of familiarity to all this monkey talk, you might remember a book, “The One Minute Manager Meets the Monkey,” by William Oncken, et al., written over ten years ago. The Monkey is a metaphor for the tasks that are yours to complete. Whenever someone gives you a task to do they are putting a monkey on your back and you have to do something to get it off. Accept enough tasks and you can be weighed down by all those monkeys. Oncken and his esteemed colleagues, Hal Burrows and Ken Blanchard, showed us how to keep other people’s monkeys off our backs. Now, we need to learn how to keep our own monkeys off our backs!

This article is dedicated to Monkey Farmers, those diehards who habitually rake in ideas, to-do’s, must-do’s, and other tasks that absolutely must be completed today! A Monkey Farmer is a true monkey lover — someone whose to-do list is not about meeting other people’s priorities. Instead, it’s about one’s own habitually unrealistic attempts to do more than any twenty-four period will allow and the subsequent anxiety related to it.

Stop, or it will cost you dearly. Is anything on The List really worth hyperventilation? Chances are slim that the answer is yes. So, before you even look at The List for the day, adjust your attitude. Get a grip; calm down. Take a lonnng deep breath. Before you know it, you will be able to tame your monkey loving tendencies — (ahem!) and then write a story about it. Here’s what you do:

Define your Big Picture.
Know your Payoff.
Simplify your Role.
Negotiate your Tradeoff.

Notice that each step requires the same thing. What is it?

Define Your Big Picture
The first step to taming your monkey is to recall why you’re doing what you’re doing. What is your Big Picture? If you have already formed your Big Picture, take a few minutes to review it. This awareness alone will help you at least stay on the fringes of a realistic perspective as you approach The List.

If you have not already developed your Big Picture or need to fine-tune it, this exercise might help: Ask yourself: “What must I do in order to feel great about how I manage this area of my life?”

Health — Physical and emotional well being
Career/Work — Livelihood
Self Image & Presentation — Personal care, professional style
Spirituality — Relationship with higher power
Home — Place to relax, recharge, energize, play, sleep
Relationships — People who really matter to me
Family / Spouse, significant other, children, relatives
Fun & Adventure — Playtime, hobbies, travel
Wealth — Financial resources
Social Responsibility — Contribution to people and causes

When you have answered the question for all the areas above, you will have a better idea about the Big Picture you’re striving to create in your life. The idea is to give yourself a reference point, or Filter, for decision making concerning your monkeys.

Know Your Payoff
With your Big Picture in view, look at The List and put every item on it through your Big Picture Filter. Starting with the first monkey on The List, decide if this thing is worth doing in the first place. If it is or will be important to at least one of the areas in your Big Picture, your payoff for doing it will be pretty good, good, or great! Putting your energy into doing it will return something valuable to you or to an outcome you want in the Big Picture. But, if something on The List does not create at least a pretty good payoff in your Big Picture categories, do not waste your time doing it. Cross it off the list! Quickly!! Lose that monkey and move on.On a scale of 1-10, with 10 being very important, decide what the payoff is for every item on The List. If your payoff is pretty good or better than that, your next decision would be when to do it: now or later. If you choose to do it later, then schedule the time NOW for you to do it later. The monkey just turned into an appointment.Simply put, The List is really a bunch of appointments to keep with yourself. Perhaps, at last, you will really scrutinize what goes on it! Your goal is to make sure that the pay-off you get by doing a task is tangibly related to your Big Picture.
Simplify Your Role
Once an item actually survives the Big Picture Filter, consider how you might be able to simplify your role as it relates to completing that item on The List. For example, for monthly transmissions to your accountant, you can streamline this routine process so that it becomes simpler to do. It might mean making an extra copy of an invoice when it is first produced and putting it in an envelope already addressed to the accountant — which would mean spending a few minutes printing enough address labels to last for the year so that the process of mailing is finger-snap easy.Be alert to making your weekly or monthly routines more difficult than they need to be. Look for opportunities to simplify your work; you might discover new ways to get it done faster and to keep your role as simple as possible.
Negotiate Your Tradeoff
Sometimes no matter how dreadful a task may be, it still might rank high in your Big Picture. It might take more time than you want to give it, or you cannot figure out how to simplify your role. At moments like those, you absolutely must recognize that sometimes it is impossible to balance what you really want to do (or avoid) with what you actually can (or can’t) do. Balance may be so impossible to achieve you might as well acknowledge that a trade-off is required. For example, if starting a business is high on a person’s list, she may trade it for relationships or her own health. The problem for some people is that they’ve made tradeoffs-by-default — that is, they didn’t intend to trade one thing for the other. They just kept doing things they wanted to do while avoiding making deliberate decisions around the same issue until the trade-off resulted from a chain of events. Don’t let this happen to you. First, decide what you want for yourself. Then, decide how you will do what you can to make it happen without sacrificing other things in your Big Picture.In the best of worlds, life will throw us monkeys out of the blue. When faced with a conflict regarding monkeys on The List consider the tradeoff required to take one course of action over another. This pause between thought and action might be exactly what’s needed to focus on the Big Picture.

Earlier I asked what each of the four steps listed above have in common with the others. Answer: Each step requires you to ask the right questions when you consider adding a task to your list.

1. Define your Big Picture. What is my Big Picture? Where does this task fit into it?

2. Know your payoff. Considering the fit, is this task very important, mediocre important, or not that important? What value does it give me?

3. Simplify your role. If I do this, how can I simplify it? How can it take less of my time and energy?

4. Negotiate your tradeoff. What must I give up now to get the outcome I want later?

The message is simple: Do not treat monkeys lightly. Although your ambition might sometimes exceed practical reality, you can always stop and start over again. Stop, take a deep breath. Start over. Now go and manage that list.

Men Managing “Mean Girls”

January 24, 2012 By Ira Chaleff

Understanding Their Dynamics to Achieve Greater Results in Your Organization

by Kari Uman

The recently released movie, “Mean Girls” examines the relationships between high school girls and the cruelty they inflict upon each other by gossiping, backstabbing, and sabotaging one another. If this sounds suspiciously like the dynamics among the women in your office, you might be witnessing a grown-up version of “mean girls” adolescent behavior: women using passive-aggressive behavior (behavior that is neither direct nor obvious about who is the instigator) 10, 20 or 30 years later against other women to deal with anger, frustration, and feelings of powerlessness in the workplace. Women who engage in these behaviors shift the focus away from the organization’s mission or customer needs to the internal dynamics of the team.

Men managing teams of women often find this behavior confusing and bewildering. If you have no more idea how to deal with these behaviors now than you did when you were an adolescent (remember scratching your head in disbelief when you watched this behavior among many of the girls?) but want to see greater results from your team, here are some tips that will help you achieve your organization’s mission and shift the focus back on your customer’s needs.

Model Professional Behavior – The most important thing you can do is to model the behavior that you want others on your team to use. Make sure you are not engaging in the same behaviors that you want others to change – no gossiping, sabotaging, or backstabbing (yes, men can act this way, too.) You will most likely see people behaving respectfully towards others if you model that behavior. Acting unprofessionally gives people permission to do the same.
Develop Norms and Hold Employees Accountable for their Behavior – As a team, develop a list of norms or “rules” everyone wants to live by to create the kind of workplace where everyone can excel. Discuss what everyone will do to hold themselves and others accountable. Establishing norms gives people permission to intervene when they see someone going against the norms and raises the awareness of their own behavior.
Facilitate, Don’t Triangulate – Triangulating means using a third party (e.g. you!) to manage a relationship between 2 other people. If employees come to you separately with complaints about each other, bring both parties into your office and have them talk to each other. Act as a neutral party and facilitator. This will help employees learn how to be direct and sends the message that they need to learn how to manage their own conflicts. If your employees don’t have the skills to manage their own conflicts, send them to a conflict management workshop.
Train or Explain – Help your employees develop good communication skills, such as using “I” messages and feedback models. Using the following model (DESC) when giving feedback to your employees will teach them how to use it as well.

D –

Describe the behavior or event without any judgments or assumptions regarding intent. Be specific as if you are videotaping a scenario. Say, “Yesterday, when you started whispering in the staff meeting” rather than “Why were you whispering in the staff meeting?” “Why” questions make people defensive.

E –

Express your feelings or explain the impact the person’s actions had on you or others. Say, “I was embarrassed (feelings) because the CEO was there and it reflected badly on our office” (impact). People rarely see the impact of their own behavior and this brings their attention to it.

S –

Specify what you want the person to do differently in the future. Say, “In the future, I’m counting on you to act professionally in all of our staff meetings.”

C –

Consequences for changing. Positive reinforcement tends to motivate and move people towards action more effectively. “Thanks for being so responsive to my concerns. Your contributions are always valuable and I want to ensure that they will be seen in a positive light.”

These tips will help you reduce the destructive behavior among women on your team and allow the movie, “Mean Girls” to be about adolescence, not your work force.