HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: The Prodigal Executive

Competency: coaching

Who benefits: executive coaches, senior managers and executives

Consultant Usage: executive coaching

What’s it about? Let me begin with a disclaimer.  The author, Bruce Heller, is a good friend.  Bruce is an executive coach.  Been one for 15 years.  I have to share an image with you.  He is a big guy.  I mean big.  I can’t help visualizing Bruce walking into an executive’s office and saying “Hi, I‘m your executive coach.”  I know I would look up and say “Sure man, anything you say.”

But Bruce is a gentle fellow trapped in football player’s body.  He is also a smart and practical guy and it shows in the book he has just written on executive derailment. 

The book is aimed at those who are in their early stages of an executive coaching career or those who are thinking about entering the field (primarily as an external, but some chapters are directed towards internal coaches and coaching).  And if this is you, I would recommend that as you read this book you keep a laptop or pen and paper handy and copy some of his pithy lines for reuse when you meet some of the tough people you are liable to coach in your emerging career. 

This book is also for senior managers and executives who are thinking about hiring an executive coach for one of their wayward employees.  It is a quick guide to what executive coaches can and cannot do and a good primer when interviewing executive coaches.

The subtitle of the book gives you a good idea of what you will find in the book: “How To Coach Executives Too Painful To Keep, Too Valuable To Fire”.

What you will find inside and what I like best about the book are The Stories.  Bruce is a story teller.  These are stories of value.  They have learning points attached to them. 

There are chapters like “When to Hold’em and When to Fold’em”; myths like “You Can’t Teach an Old Dog New Tricks”; people stories like “Vladimir the Improver”.  And in the middle of the book there is a chapter every HR practitioner of any ilk should read: “Prescription Before Diagnosis is Malpractice”. 

Overall it is a short book, reads fast and gets to the point. 

At the end you will discover what Bruce means in his opening sentence.  And as opening sentences in books go, this is one of the best I have ever read: “My job is to defuse atomic bombs in the workplace.”  Yikes!

Catch you later.

Technorati Tags: derailment, derailed, coaching, executive coaching, executive coaches, heller, bruce heller,   bill bradley, william bradley, bradley

“I feel my best when I’m happy.”

Winona Ryder

Emotions do indeed play a role in productivity, morale of talent and customer service.

Any guess what medical condition or health risk is the most costly to employers? 

If you guessed stress, smoking, obesity, inactivity or diabetes you are way off the mark.  In fact, the most costly is depression¹.

Depression takes a pretty heavy toll on the U.S. workplace, affecting about 6 percent of employees each year and costing over $30 billion annually in lost productivity and absenteeism.

In a recent study in the Journal of American Medical Association, researchers reported on how a telephone treatment program had a substantial impact on cost savings, return to work and minimizing the length of the depressive symptoms compared to a  control group².

The study involved 604  workers at 16 large U.S. companies and included included pilots, lawyers, bankers, truckers and janitors.  The study participants completed an online questionnaire that measured health risk factors including depression. Half of those identified were encouraged to seek a mental health specialist or contact their doctor.  The other group received cognitive behavioral therapy over the phone.

Employees who received the telephone intervention worked, on average, about two weeks more during the yearlong study than those in the control group and more workers in the intervention group were still employed at the end of the study. Finally, the intervention employees were almost 40 percent more likely to recover from depression during the yearlong study.

Preliminary cost savings from more hours worked averaged about $1,800 per employee compared to the program’s initial $100 to $400 per worker cost.

It would appear that work/life balance benefits, including mental health insurance, would be something that employers would see value given just how prevalent and devastating depression can be in the workplace (Clinical depression affects about 7% – 18% of the population on at least one occasion in their lives, before the age of 40).

Furthermore, recent research with 24,324 employed workers, suggests that increased levels of job strain and a lack of social support at work are associated with higher risk of depression³. 

In our own research using our stress and health risk appraisal called StressScan we have found that a pattern of three scales are particularly sensitive to predicting depression: 1) Low Psychological Well-Being; 2) Low Eating/Nutrition habits; and 3)  High Negative Appraisal coping⁴.  These scales are also related to clinical condidtions present in diagnosing depression in all of us.

Here are some keys to identifying depression in bosses and co-workers:

SIGNS AND SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION OF EMPLOYEES

One of the following major elements are typically observed for at least 2 weeks to suggest that an employee is experiencing depression.  These include:

1. Depressed mood (feeling sad, helpless or hopeless etc.)

or

2. Loss of interest in normal daily activities (e.g., having little interest in activities you typically enjoy).

It is sufficient to have either of these symptoms in conjunction with five of a list of other symptoms over a two-week period. These include:

• Feelings of overwhelming sadness or inabilty to feel emotions.
• A decrease in amount of pleasure or interest in almost all daily activities.
• Intense feelings of guilt, nervousness, helplessness, hopelessness, worthlessness, loneliness and/or anxiety
• Disturbed sleep. Sleeping too much or having problems sleeping can be a sign you’re depressed. Waking in the middle of the night or early in the morning and not being able to get back to sleep are typical.
• Trouble concentrating, maintaining focus or making decisions and have problems with memory.
• Changes in appetite with weight loss or gain.
• Agitation. You may seem restless, agitated, irritable and easily annoyed.
• Fatigue (mental or physical) and loss of energy.
• Low self-esteem. You feel worthless and have excessive guilt.
• Less interest in sex. If you were sexually active before developing depression, you may notice a dramatic decrease in your level of interest in having sexual relations.
• Recurrent thoughts of death, dying or suicide.
• Feeling and/or fear of being abandoned by those close to you.

The good news is that depression is typically treatable and for employees, getting some help would appear to be a direct cost savings for employers…..Be well….

Technorati Tags: mental health, depression, worksite wellness, health promotion, leadership, engagement, productivity, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

1. Goetzl, R. et al. (1988).  The relationship between modifiable health risk and health care expenditures: An analysis of the multi-employer HERO health risk and cost data base. JOEM, 40, 843-854 [↩]
2. Philip S. Wang, MD, DrPH, et al.  Telephone Screening, Outreach, and Care Management for Depressed Workers and Impact on Clinical and Work Productivity Outcomes: A Randomized Controlled Trial.  JAMA, 2007, 298(12), p. 1401-1411 [↩]
3. Emma K. Robertson Blackmore, Stephen A. Stansfeld, Iris Weller, Sarah Munce, Brandon M. Zagorski, and Donna E. Stewart (2007). Major Depressive Episodes and Work Stress: Results From a National Population Survey. American Journal of Public Health, Sep 2007; doi:10.2105/AJPH.2006.104406 [↩]
4. Giesser, B., Coleman, L., Fisher, S., Guttry, M., Herlihy, E., Nonoguch, S., Nowack, D., Roberts, C. & Nowack, K. (2007). Living Well with Multiple Sclerosis: Lessons Learned from a 12-Week Community Based Quality of Life Program. Paper presented at 17th Annual Art & Science of Health Promotion Conference, March, 2007, San Francisco, CA [↩]

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: How to Manage Virtual Teams

Competency: team development

Who benefits: senior managers, team leaders, project managers

Consultant Usage: important background material for team building consultants

What’s it about? Sloan Management Review (MIT) has an excellent article in its Summer 2009 issue regarding the management of virtual teams.  (Registration and/or purchase required.)

We are talking here of “people who are based in dispersed geographical locations, come from different cultural backgrounds, speak different languages and were raised in different countries with different value systems.”  MBWA (managing by walking around) just isn’t an effective tactic! 

Here are some of the highlights of the article:

“The overall effect of dispersion (people working at different sites) is not necessarily detrimental but rather depends on a team’s task-related processes, including those that help coordinate work and ensure that each member is contributing fully.”

“Even small levels of dispersion can substantially affect team performance.”

“When assembling a virtual team, managers should carefully consider the social skills and self-sufficiency of the potential members.”

Which reminds me, Hey bosses, I am a virtual team with you guys.  Is it time for my performance review yet?

Catch you later.

Technorati Tags: teams, team building, team management, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley

“Motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.”
Jim Ryun

In raising Ajax, our 7-month year old guide dog puppy in training, we have learned alot again about just how long it takes to learn a new habit.  Our first guide dog puppy seemed to take forever to learn new habits but he eventually passed and was a working guide dog for many years before he was retired. 

It has made me wonder about how long it takes for new behaviors to become unconscious and totally automatic.  I guess if he practices enough, he will become expert at the “sitting” behavior required of all guide dogs in training.

Ingredients for Learning a New Behavior

There is, in fact, a big difference between “experts” and those “who are expert” in what they do.

In a recent book co-edited by Anders Ericcson called “The Cambridge Handbook of Expertise and Expert Performance”, the authors conclude that great performance comes mostly from two things:

• Regularly obtaining concrete and constructive feedback
• Deliberate practice

Two authors in the Cambridge Handbook (Janice Deaking and Stephen Cobley) analyzed diaries of 24 elite figure skaters to determine what might explain some of their performance success.  They found that the best skaters spent 68% of their practice doing really hard jumps and routines compared to those who were less successful (they spent about 48% of their time doing the same difficult things).

Having raw talent is wonderful but it’s what you do with it that really seems to matter.  “Only dead fish go with the flow” is an old saying–if you don’t work to get better it just doesn’t happen naturally.  Ericsson and others use the word “deliberate pratice” to mean focused, structured, serious and detailed attempts to get better.  That means it has to be challenging and difficult (i.e., practicing the most difficult tasks).

As it turns out, expert performance requires about ten years, or ten to twenty thousand hours of deliberate practice.  Little evidence exists for expert performance before ten years of deliberate practice in any field¹.

How Long Does it Take for New Habits to Form?

New research by Phillippa Lally and colleagues from the UK suggest that new behaviors can become automatic, on average, between 18 to 254 days but it depends on the complexity of what new behavior you are trying to put into place and your personality².

They studied volunteers who chose to change an eating, drinking or exercise behavior and tracked them for success.  They completed a self-report diary which they entered on a website log and were asked to try the new behavior each day for 84 days. For the habits, 27 chose an eating behavior, 31 a drinking behavior (e.g., drinking water), 34 and exercise behavior and 4 did something else (e.g., meditation).

Analysis of all of these behaviors indicated that it took 66 days, on average, for this new behavior to become automatic and a new “habit” that seemed pretty natural.  The range was anywhere from 18 to 254 days. The mean number of days varied by the complexity of the habit:

• Drinking / 59 days
• Eating / 65 days
• Exercise / 91 days

Although there are a lot of limitations in this study, it does suggest that it can take a large number of repetitions for a person for their new behaviors to become a habit.  Therefore, creating new habits requires tremendous self-control to be maintained for a significant period of time before they become more “automatic” and performed without any real self-control.  For most people, it takes about 3 months of constant practice before a more complicated new behavior gets “set” in our neural pathways as something we are comfortable with and seemingly automatic.  So, adopting a new physical workout routine or learning to become more participative as a leader might take quite a while with or without coaching to truly become more natural.

Well, it explains why teaching Ajax to lay down at home might not generalize to another setting and practicing his “learned” behaviors over and over again is what makes it routine for him…Now, if I can get some of the executives I coach to understand this, I might be more successful…Be well…

Technorati Tags: guide dogs, seeing eye dogs, Guide Dogs of America, leadership, executive coaching, performance, layoff, social support, mastery, expertise, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack, Envisia Learning, deliberate practice

1. K. Anders Ericsson, ed., The Road to Excellence: The Acquisition of Expert Performance in the Arts and Sciences, Sports and Games. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1996, pp.10-11 [↩]
2. Lally, P. et al. (2009).  How are habits formed: Modeling habit formation in the real world.  European Journal of Social Psychology, DOI: 10.10002/ejsp.674 [↩]

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: How to Make Knowledge Work Fun

Competencies: career planning, managing yourself

Who benefits: consultants or consultant wannabes

Consultant Usage: how to pick clients; your Google business card

What’s it about? I had loads of fun writing today’s posting.  Know why?  Cuz I know how to pick my clients!

Author and professor Larry Stybel has a short post on his Blog about knowledge workers becoming consultants.  His comments are dead on and straight forward. 

It is one of those articles that you read and at the end you are thinking “I knew that”.  Yet he says it in such a refreshing way you want to go back and read it again.  (The article is about a 90 second read, so even if you are not a consultant, read it anyway.  You will discover why you are likely to become a consultant and some important first steps in your soon-to-be new career.)

His description of the four different modes in the professional life of the independent knowledge worker: insanity, give-back, work, and fun, made me chuckle.  I had received an email on this exact topic from a colleague just last week (thank you S.W.).   As simple as the four definitions are, it is easy to overlook their importance.  All consultants should consider having these four sentences framed and mounted next to their telephone or entered as a screen saver on their computer.

While this article had a comfortable familiarity to it, the author’s reference to another Blog about Google business cards was brand new to me.  Of course I am an old fogy – old enough to know that Remington was not only a rifle, but also a shaver and a typewriter.  (If you don’t know what a typewriter is, it was a primitive form of a keyboard.)

Gina Trapani writes in her Work Smart Blog about Google business cards – your profile set to come up on the first page of any Google search involving your name.  What consultant wouldn’t want that?

I am not too old to recognize a great idea when I see one.  I am ending this post right here and right now so I can get started with my Google Profile.  

Catch you later.  

Technorati Tags: career planning, job search, self development, managing self, google business cards, google profile, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley

“First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure.”

Mark Twain

The prevalence of self-enhancement (i.e., high regard for one’s own skills and abilities) is not hotly debated but there is controversy on whether it is adaptive or maladaptive which has implications for understanding and interpreting multi-rater feedback¹.  If self-enhancement means seeing one’s self more positively than others, then the outcomes (performance, health, career and life success) are frequently more favorable but if it is defined as having higher self-ratings than others who provide feedback, then the outcomes are frequently less than favorable.

Much of the literature in 360-degree feedback research suggests that self-ratings tend to be inflated relative to others including some of my own work².  It has been suggested that these inflated self-ratings contribute to the “no clue” gene that many leaders have leading to being “blinded” by how others in their organizations really see them.

In fact, It has been estimated that 65%-75% of the employees in any given organization report that the worst aspect of their job is their immediate boss. In fact, estimates of the base rate for managerial incompetence in corporate life range from 30% to 75% with the average level of poor leadership hovering at about 50%³.

But are leaders viewed the same way by others? 

Do bosses filter the world through their own lenses and are these different from direct reports, peers at the same level and other team members at different levels of the organization?

We analyzed data from three of our most popular multi-rater assessments to test these questions (Emotional Intelligence View 360, Executive View 360, and Manager View 360).  We took a random sample of participants in our data base and compared how self-ratings compared to those of bosses, direct reports, team members and peers.  This sample represents diverse industries and a mix of males and female leaders across three assessments with distinctly different competency models.

What we found in our analyses surprised us a bit:

1. First, contrary to earlier research, self-ratings were not inflated relative to others.
2. We consistently found significant differences in our statistical analyses in the mean ratings of leaders by bosses, direct reports, peers and team members (ANOVAs p’s < .01).
3. Bosses consistently were the toughest evaluators and their ratings were significantly lower than other rater groups.
4. Direct reports tended to consistently and significantly rate leaders higher than any rater groups except for “Team Members” who might lack a “day to day” perspective.

There is some evidence that the different rater groups have different lenses they use to rate and evaluate leaders⁴).

Supervisor feedback tends to be based on bottom-line results (are tasks completed on time and well), technical competence and whether an employee’s behavior draws complaints from colleagues or clients.

By contrast, direct reports base their reviews on factors such as willingness to involve the direct report in decisions, interest in a direct report’s professional development and trustworthiness (i.e., interpersonal and process).

Peers, who lack perspective on their colleagues’ day-to-day performance, tend to focus on leadership potential. Their remarks often reflect opinions on whether the participant has the “right stuff” to motivate and create a compelling vision for others to follow.

Bosses might be tougher in evaluating talent because they are held accountable for the “bottom line” and are more apt to focus on task (what gets done) over process (how things get done).  Our analysis suggests that if your boss has any influence over your career, you might want to find out what makes them look good to senior management and play the political game of emphasizing what you have accomplished (results focused advertising). Our results don’t guarantee that your boss or direct reports will value what you do and how you do your work but it does suggest we are all “feeling different parts of the same elephant.”

I am going to stop now and go ask my boss for some feedback about this Blog…..Be well….

Technorati Tags: self-ratings, distortion, self-awareness, multi-rater feedback, leadership effectiveness, 360 feedback, self-insight, emotional intelligence,   kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

1. Nowack, K. (in press).  Leveraging 360 degree feedback to facilitate behavior change.  Consulting Psychology: Practice and Research [↩]
2. Nowack, K. (1992). Self-assessment and rater-assessment as a dimension of management development. Human Resources Development Quarterly, 3, 141-155 [↩]
3. Hogan, R. & Kaiser, R. (2005).  What we know about leadership. Review of General Psychology. 9 (2), 169-180 [↩]
4. Nowack, K. (2002). Does 360 Degree Feedback Negatively Effect company performance: Feedback Varies With Your Point of View. HR Magazine, Volume 47 (6 [↩]

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTITIONER

Title: Beyond Tired

Competency: health management

Who benefits: you

Consultant Usage: great reference for individuals who complain of being tired or fatigued

What’s it about? This is a short article about what causes fatigue and what you can do about it?

It’s not groundbreaking, just helpful.  It’s a good reminder.

I know you are busy.  You are barely reading this while thinking about what you are going to do next…

My all time favorite presenter was a fellow named Morris Massey.  He had a line that has stuck with me for 25 years: “Don’t ‘should’ on yourself.”  (If you don’t get it, say it out loud and fast.)

Generally he is right.  But today is an exception.  What you “should” do next is hit the link above and read this great reminder about fatigue.  Who knows, maybe just reading the article will be an energy booster…so what are you waiting for?

Catch you later.

Technorati Tags: work, stress, depression, medical condition, drug side effects, vitamin and mineral deficiencies, persistent fatigue, stress-busting, biophilia, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley

“Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be.”

John Wooden

The use of executive coaching has been an increasingly popular trend in organizations. There are numerous professional organizations and training institutes devoted specifically to this particular intervention—each with different theoretical models, approaches, processes and ethical/professional guidelines. Many of the larger human resources consulting and outplacement companies now provide and even “specialize” in coaching services¹.

Given the popularity, there has been very little in the literature about who is providing coaching and qualifications that make for the most effective coaches.  A recent survey by Dr. Joyce Bono from the University of Minnesota has really helped to answer some important questions about the ongoing debate about the practice of coaching and similarities and differences between psychologists and non-psychologists in the field².

This survey was completed by 428 coaches (172 psychologists and 256 nonpsychologists) focusing on coaching practices (46 questions), coaching outcomes (23 questions) and information about the “coach” (e.g., education, preferred title, income, ethnicity, formal training, etc.).  The last section asked the coaches to share three competencies they believed was critical to successful coaching.

Compared to nonpsychologists, psychologists who provide executive coaching services were significantly more likely to:

• Meet face-to-face
• Contract for fewer coaching sessions (38% of nonpsychologists reported “often” holding 21-30 sessions compared to only 19% of psychologists)
• Avoid using behavior modification, neurolinguistic programming, or psychoanalytic techniques
• Assist clients with applying new skills back at the job
• Focus more on building rapport with their clients
• Incorporate and utilize more assessments into the coaching interventions (e.g., 360s, personality inventories, interviews)
• Spend less time on topics such as stress management, time management, communication, motivation, adaptability, sales/financial performance, and mentoring
• Use others/reports to evaluate the effectiveness of the coaching engagement

There was enough data in the survey just to compare differences between psychologists (industrial/organizational, counseling, clinical and personality/social).  The findings suggest that few differences occurred in the use of coaching methods or assessments/tools but some statistically significant differences were found for mostly for clinical psychologists (e.g., clinical psychologists tended to use personality inventories more frequently as well as have more CEO/President levels).

Several broad results can be taken from this survey:

1. The real differences between psychologists and non-psychologists as coaches is small

2. There are about the same magnitude of differences between psychologists from different disciplines as there are between psychologists and nonpsychologists.

3. A coach’s background (e.g., education) will provide only limited information about the coach’s ability or approach to executive coaching.

So, what do we make of these findings?  The authors suggest that “Taken as whole, our results appear to favor psychologist coaches, especially with respect to strong measurement, use of data from multiple sources, and use of techniques with empirical validity.”

I know from my observation of the coaching market that it is still “buyer beware”….What do you think?….Be well…

Technorati Tags: emotional intelligence, leadership, talent management, born versus made, executive coaching, personality, happiness, heritability, leadership effectiveness, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

1. Nowack, K. (2003). Executive Coaching: Fad or Future? California Psychologist, Vol. XXXVI, No. 4, 16-17 [↩]
2. Bono, J. et al., (2009).  A survey of executive coaching practices.  Personnel Psychology, 62, 361-404 [↩]