“The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires.”

William A. Ward

A recent study suggests that there is a statistically significant link between CEO family deaths and the companies’ profitability over a decade¹. These researcher identified 6,753 deaths occuring to CEOs and family members–1,015 corresponded to CEOs, 282 to children, 733 to partners/spouses, 1,364 to in-laws and 3,061 to parents. A link between CEO family deaths and significant economic decline of the company (operating returns on assets) was statistically significant. The biggest effects were cases where the CEO had only a single child and the smallest effects were deaths of in-laws.

Are Leaders Who Spend for Luxury Good for Shareholders?

How does the personal spending of CEOs (real estate in particular) affect the economic performance of a company? Professors David Yermack and Crocker Liu studied major real estate purchases of just about every top executive in the Standard & Poor’s 500 index². They found pretty convincing statistical evidence that the financial performance of companies decreases when CEOs purchase large homes and real estate. They suggest that these purchases are related to “executive entrenchment”and “foreshadowing poor future stock performance.” The good news is that they didn’t find that buying a house near a golf course or the water have a statistically significant impact on financial performance.

Do MBA Professors Make Good Leaders?

Do MBA professors who teach about leadership and organizational development really understand how to manage talent in organizations? Sure, some consult and most publish but are they really a role model for leadership–or should they be?

A new study by Jiang & Murphy analyzed the performance of 215 executives who were former business school professors³. Their results suggested that companies with former business school professors now as executives demonstrated significantly higher financial performance than non-former professors as executives. They didn’t find any differences in company performance between executives who were professors in the highest ranked business schools compared to those in non-ranked schools.

I’m not sure what you can do to prevent family health problems of senior leaders but apparently you can impact the “bottom line” by recruiting relatively lower paid management faculty and putting them up in corporate apartments at least during their first 18 months of on-boarding……Be well…..

Technorati Tags: teaching, MBA, shareholder return, CEO success, Envisia Learning, Envisia Tools, coaching, leadership, talent management, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

1. Bennedsen, M., Perez-Ganzalez, F. & Wolfsenzon, D. (2007) Do CEO’s Matter? [↩]
2. Liu, C. & Yermack, D (2007). Where are the shareholder’s mansions? CEO’s home purchases, stock sales and subsequent company performance [↩]
3. Jiang, B. & Murphy, P. (2007). Do business school professors make good executive managers?. The Academy of Management Perspectives. 21, 29-50 [↩]

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Government Training

Competencies: leadership, managing change, process improvement skills, financial leadership, interpersonal skills, self-development

Who benefits: high ranking federal employees

Consultant Usage: doubtful

What’s it about? Why are you reading this blog?  It is New Year’s Eve.  Shut it down, go party, be with friends, have fun, be merry, dance into the new year.  But please don’t spend the last day of the year glued to your computer.

There are two days a year when Bloggers get a free pass to go wild and be irresponsible: December 31 and April 1.  Today being December 31, I choose to be totally irrelevant and if I offend anyone, tough hits.  Off I go in my imagination….

We need a better year than this one.  Can’t afford a repeat of the mistakes of the past 12 months.  So let’s get the new bosses off to an appropriate training program and get it right the first time!  (And some transition training for the old bosses.)

There is a training firm in the Washington, D.C. area by the name of Management Concepts.  While their training is generally open to any interested person, the do specialize in training for employees of the federal government.  With the big changes coming up next month, I thought I might match some of their courses to some of the Players on the big scene.  Just trying to be helpful.  So here are my recommendations:

To the new President –- Leading and Managing Change

To the new Secretary of State — Managing Stakeholder Relationships

To the new Secretary of the Treasury — Effectively Managing Financial Resources

To the continuing Secretary of Defense — Interpersonal Skills: Developing Effective Relationships

To the new Director of Homeland Security — Improving Organizational Systems and Processes (especially at airports)

To the old President -– Post-Retirement Work Transition

To the old Vice President — Emotional Intelligence 360-Degree Assessment

Well, that’s all folks.  Happy end of the year holiday season to all of you and thanks for reading this Blog.  Catch you next year.

Technorati Tags: leadership, financial leadership, interpersonal skills, self-development, managing change, transitions, interpersonal skills, 360 degree assessments, retirement, process improvement, stakeholders, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: The Best Business Books of 2008

Competency: self-development

Who benefits: you

Consultant Usage: self-development and references

What’s it about? I am declaring today a holiday for everyone who reads business books.  FastCompany.com put together a slide show of the 10 best business books for 2008.  As an avid reader it feels like a present to me, so I am making it a gift to you.  Check it out.  And keep a pen and piece of paper handy so you can write down your favorites. 

I am planning on reading 5 or 6.  Hope you find at least one or two that “speak” to you. 

Enjoy. 

Catch you later.

Technorati Tags: innovation, creativity, design, sustainability, technology, advertising and marketing, global business, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: What Got You Here Won’t Get You There

Competencies: self-development, career development, coaching, talent management

Who benefits: motivated individuals, manager/supervisors who coach, professional coaches

Consultant Usage: excellent resource for professional coaches or talent management consultants

What’s it about?  It is never too early to make New Year’s resolution.  Especially if you don’t plan to keep it.  Get it out of the way early.   And according to USA Today, the average New Year’s resolution lasts about 3 days, so why wait to make that all important resolution?

In keeping with the general theme of change that I have been writing about for the past couple of months, let me suggest a personal change resolution.   With all the changes happening in the outside world (economy, political, environment…), how about preparing yourself to change with the times?  If I were still an active full-time employee or consultant, I would in a heartbeat.  I would do anything I could to maximize my flexibility in these times of uncertainty. 

I would take the advice of two friends.  One says “position yourself for opportunity”.  The other recommends a specific public program on dealing with the intrapersonal side of change.  Today I am passing that program on to you for your consideration and as a possible New Year’s resolution. 

The program is What Got You Here Won’t Get You There.  The presenter is Marshall Goldsmith.  The course is based on his book of the same name.  Can’t make the course, at least read the book.  The program will only be offered three times next year (the late year one will be in November or December in San Francisco – the date may not have been announced yet).

You can check out Dr. Goldsmith at his website.   It is quite impressive. 

Or you can settle for my summary: The Economist calls him one of the most credible leaders in the modern era of leadership; Forbes calls him one of the five most respected executive coaches in the world; Wall Street Journal calls him one of the 10 best executive educators; and Business Week calls him one of the most influential practitioners in the history of leadership development.  The book mentioned above is one of the all time best sellers in the business category. 

His goal in the course is to get you to change.  He wants you to understand what is getting in your way to moving closer to your ultimate goals.  He wants you to identify the poor work habits and unconscious behaviors that currently keep you in place.  Then, and only then, he wants you to develop a positive, long-range strategy to get you to your destination.  Others do the same thing, but apparently no one does it better. 

If you know you can’t get to his program, or your organization is being short-sighted and not investing in people during this downturn, you can catch Dr. Goldsmith on a You-Tube video courtesy of the good folks at Google.

If I could only go to one program next year, this is the one I would go to.

PS: if you are of the mindset that you are okay, it is all them others out there who need to change, Dr. Goldsmith is presenting The Manager as Coach: Promoting High Performance in 8 locations (including Los Angeles) in the US and Europe next year.  But be warned, the first 25% of his program is devoted to changing you.  In the end, it all comes back to YOU, doesn’t it?

Catch you later.

Technorati Tags: intrapersonal skills, change, managing self, career development, career, careers, leadership, coaching, the manager as coach, executive coaching, Marshall Goldsmith, bill bradley, william bradley, bradley

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Leadership Transitions Version 3.0

Competencies: self development, leadership, numerous managerial competencies

Who benefits: leaders in transition

Consultant Usage: coaching/training tool

What’s it about? In less than six weeks the US will have a new President.  The changing of the guard, the transition, is likely to be unlike any we in the US have seen before.  Then what happens?

I think it goes without saying that the first 100 days will be crucial.  Fans and detractors will be watching intently. 

Quite possibly the new President might benefit from a new interactive CD-ROM from those good folks at Harvard.  A lot of people could benefit from this CD-ROM…like all the new folks stepping in to replace those folks who have brought us the current recession. 

There is no time like now to get it right…for presidents, executives, and other leaders at all levels stepping into new positions. 

This CD-ROM outlines a number of pitfalls to beware of, strategies to avoid them, assessments to prepare the leader for the new position.  And most importantly, it offers tips and tools for setting clear priorities; building teams; working with a new boss; creating lasting relationships and a host of other needed leadership skills.

This may be the worst analogy in history, but to me being a new leader is like getting on a train about to pull out of the station.  Either you get on successfully or you take a hard fall. 

Personally, if I were moving into a new leadership position in the near future, I would not like to risk the fall.  I would invest in this CD-Rom.

Catch you later.

Technorati Tags: leadership, the new leader, leadership skills, leadership pitfalls, leadership techniques, leadership assessments, leadership tools, bill bradley, william bradley,   bradley

“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.”

Karen Kaiser Clark

Looking for an easy, simple, reliable, and valid way to measure whether a coaching, training or consulting intervention has impact?

The “post-then-pre” method of self-report evaluation offers one solution for documenting behavior change. The data collection instruments are relatively easy to develop, use, and analyze¹.

Problems with Typical Approach to Evaluating Leadership Programs

A typical approach to evaluation has been to use a pretest-posttest research design to document behavior change. However, in certain types of self-report program evaluation, pretest-posttest comparison results may be an inaccurate assessment of impact because participants may have limited knowledge preventing them from accurately assessing baseline behaviors².

By the end of the program, their new understanding of the program content may have an impact on the responses on their self-assessment (this is referred to as a response shift bias). If a pretest was used at the beginning of the intervention, participants have no way to correct an answer at the end of the program if they made an inaccurate assessment at baseline.

The evaluation problem, then, is that a pre-assessment taken at the beginning of an intervention may be invalid because participants have limited knowledge in responding accurately to the questions being asked to respond to after the intervention has been completed.

Consider the following pre-assessment question for an executive coaching intervention: “Have you utilized a participative approach to involving your team in problem solving, decision making or planning processes?” To answer this question accurately, the respondent must have some idea what is meant by utilizing a “participative approach”.

An executive who doesn’t know exactly what is meant by “participative leadership” may tend to overestimate his/her behavior on some type of pre-assessment. After actually participating in the executive coaching program and learning about different strategies and approaches for including employees in problem solving, the participant can more validly answer the question.

Now suppose the executive has demonstrated an increase in applying more participative approaches with his/her team as a result of the coaching intervention. On any post assessment aimed at measuring this change in behavior, the executive reports the same level of utilizing participative approaches with his/her staff. The post-assessment level is accurate, but because the pretest was an overestimate (due to the executive’s lack of knowledge), it will appear that no change in behavior has occurred between pre-assessment and post-assessment.

Such an evaluation result makes it appear that the coaching had no effect on this type of behavior when, in fact, it significantly increased this leadership behavior.

Using the Post-Then Approach to Evaluation

The “post-then” evaluation design corrects this problem. The problem is handled by not providing any pre-assessment at the beginning of the intervention. Then, at the end of the intervention, the participant answers two questions. The first question asks about behavior as a result of the program (“Post” evaluation).

Then the participant is asked to report what the behavior had been before the program (“Then” evaluation). This second question is really the pretest question, but it’s asked after the program when the participant has sufficient knowledge and/or experience to answer the question validly. Research has confirmed that this “post-then” approach is a more valid way of evaluating interventions. These change scores also lend them selves to statistical analyses—you can utilize a paired sample t-test to determine whether changes over time are meaningful with most statistical packages.

The “post-then” design accounts for changes in learners’ knowledge and/or behavior by allowing participants to first report present behaviors (post); and then rate how they perceived these same behaviors just before taking the course (then pre). The retrospective pretest at the end of the program is more accurate because it’s answered in the same frame of reference as the post-assessment. Thus, the problem of what’s called “response-shift bias” in self-report, pre-post designs is minimized³.

Using a “post-then” evaluation design for self-reported behavioral changes can provide substantial evidence for intervention impact. Although a leadership example was provided here, the methodology can be adapted and easily applied to other behaviors, knowledge and attitudes. Using a “post-then” evaluation design greatly helps practitioners provide greater evidence about the impact of their interventions using a fairly simple, but powerful, self-report approach.

So, how much would you say you knew about this quick and powerful way to improve evaluation of leadership development programs before you read this blog? Be well…..

Technorati Tags: surveys, Envisia, Envisia learing, retention, talent management, engagement surveys, job satisfaction, worklife balance, job stress, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

1. Nowack, K. (1986). Pre-post-then evaluation of a behavioral modeling approach to supervisory skills training. Performance & Instruction, 25, 14-16 [↩]
2. Metzoff, B. (1981). How to get accurate self-reports of training outcomes. Training & Development Journal, 35, 56-61 [↩]
3. Howard, G. & Daily, P. (1979). Response shift bias: A source of contamination of self-report measures. Journal of Applied Psychology, 64, 141-150 [↩]

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Why Talent Is Overrated

Competencies: self-development, talent management, performance management

Who benefits: individuals with career aspirations, managers and supervisors of high potential employees, coaches

Consultant Usage: career development, career coaching, executive coaching

What’s it about? Two 22-year olds.  Recent college grads.  Hired by a large company along with a bunch of other guys (it was 1978).  They shared a cubicle, wrote and rewrote memos, and played waste-basket basketball with draft memos.  They did not demonstrate any ambition.  They did not have any visible career aspirations.  So begins this provocative article.

The author asks the question “What is talent?”.  Then the provocation begins: Is talent irrelevant?  Could it be? 

The author’s answer, for the most part, is yes, talent is overrated.  Read the article if you want the details, but his main hypothesis is that the cream rises to the top through a process called “deliberate practice”.  By this he means practice that is deliberately designed to improve performance.

It is something separate from hard work and practice-makes-perfect.  Deliberate practice is designed to push an individual just beyond his or her current capabilities.  It requires dedicated practice, but at a level outside of our comfort zone.  It is not maintaining current levels of performance!

For the cream to rise, certain elements kick in.  First, feedback from the outside is imperative.  Second, focus and concentration at exceptionally high levels are required from the inside – the kind of focus and concentration that can leave one exhausted.  It ain’t fun.  Fun is doing what we can already do well.  If it were fun, everyone would be doing it.  It means insistently seeking out activities that we aren’t good at.  Practice and feedback and practice and ….

There is a good summary of what deliberate practice means in work life: It is the janitor who maintains the building while figuring out how to eventually manage it. 

So what happened to the two 22-year old kids in the cubicle?  One was Steve Ballmer, now CEO of Microsoft; the other was Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of General Electric.  At some point they set their stretch goals, developed the self-regulatory skills common to high performers, and sought continuous feedback.  That’s what made them different than everyone else.  As for Tiger and Yo-Yo, you know who they are, you will have to read the article to see where they fit in!

If the article whets your appetite and you want more, the article was taken from the newly released book Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else.

Catch you later.

Technorati Tags: talent, talent management, deliberate practice, feedback, bill bradley, william bradley,   bradley

“There’s a world of difference between truth and facts.  Facts can obscure the truth.”

Maya Angelou

The leadership and talent management “facts” just keep coming. In fact (no pun intended), thanks to some readers, I now have even more to share with you!  

1. Hay Group, a global management consulting firm in a recent study discovered that among 75 key components “trust and confidence in top leadership” was the single most reliable predictor of employee satisfaction.

2. A recent survey of more than 300 small businesses conducted by the management consulting firm Six Disciplines Corporation found that the number one characteristic setting apart high and low performing companies was the strength of the senior leadership.  The second most common trait shared by successful small businesses was the ability to attract and retain quality talent and keep those working satisfied.

3. Data from the 2006 market study “High Potential Leadership Selection and Development” Institute of Executive Development and RHR International Question #5 revealed: “Which of the following characteristics/abilities do you think are most important for your organization’s future leaders to posses?  1) Strategic Thinking/Ability to Develop Others 50%; 2) Business Acumen/Knowledge 38%; 3) Ability to Manage Organizational Change/Relationship Building 29%; 4) Cross Cultural/Cross National Understanding 18%; and 6) Ability to manage the performance of others 17%.

4. More than half of global executives wish they could start over in a different career according to a recent 2007 survey by search firm Korn/Ferry.  People define their work as a job, career or calling—we are lucky if what we wind up doing is truly our “calling.”

5. According to RHR International, 40% to 60% of high level corporate executives brought in from outside a company will fail within 2 years based on their 2006 analysis of clients.  Those who do fail most often derail quickly sometime between 7 to 9 months in the job.

6. Last year there were 28,058 executive turnovers including board members and executives from CEO down to VP a 68% increase over 2006 according to Liberum Research analysis of North American public companies—of those 44% of the positions were filled from outside the company.

7. At large companies, chief financial officers are turning over at a rate of 22% a year according to Russell Reynolds Associates because CFOs are under extreme pressure in the regime of Sarbanes-Oxley and they are the face of the company to Wall Street.

8. In a recent Gallup Management Journal, 59% of employees in the US reported “not being engaged” and 14% were “actively disengaged” which Gallup describes as “undermining what their engaged coworkers accomplish.”

9. ISR 2007 research study reported that five of the largest Asia-Pacific economies including Australia, China, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand were included in the study of more than 3,000 “top talent”.  The study revealed that the region is full of “talent at risk” staff and Malaysia has the largest proportion (47%) of employees that define themselves as either disillusioned or actively disengaged.  Singapore ranked second with 40% followed by the other countries above 30%.

10. In recent Gallup survey, 80% of British workers reported that they lack commitment to their jobs with 25% being disengaged compared to only 12% in France. In Singapore, 17% of the talent reported being “actively disengaged” at work.

10. ISR also found that 88% of at-risk staff in China indicated they would leave their current positions while 92% of Australians and 95% of Singapore’s talent at risk planned to leave.

11. 81% of executives consider employee retention an important business priority compared to 41% in 2007 (Annual emploee turnoversurvey of more than 600 organizations TalentKeepers Inc.

12. According to a recent 2008 survey of 16,237 U.S. workers by Marietta, Ga.-based consultancy Leadership IQ, 47% of high performers are actively looking for new jobs, by posting and submitting their resumes and even going to interviews. Compare that to only 18 percent of identified low performers who say they are looking for new jobs, and 25 percent of middle performers who are actively searching, according to the findings.

All in all, emotions and attitudes might be more important than “facts”….Be well….

Technorati Tags: talent management, succession planning, coaching, executive coaching, executive development, surveys, kenneth nowack, ken nowack, nowack

HOT READS FOR THE PRACTIONER

Title: Psychometrics in Coaching

Competency: coaching

Who benefits: professional coaches and organizational consultants

Consultant Usage: various assessment tools for coaching

What’s it about? A psychologist tells his patient “I have completed my diagnosis and have determined that you are a psychoceramic.” “What in the world is a pyschoceramic” asks the patient?  The psychologist replies: “A crackpot.”

Groan if you must, but I have been waiting years to write that joke.  If you are not a professional coach or organizational consultant, I suggest you stop here.  Smile and get back to your work.  Today’s post is for those of you who make a living from coaching or consulting.

Personal disclosure: I am paid a miniscule amount intermittently by Envisia Learning who hosts this Blog site.  One of the principles has an article which appears in this book (and a mighty fine article it is, boss).

Psychometrics in Coaching: Using Psychological and Psychometric Tools for Development (2008) explains a variety of models and concepts for practitioners and how to use them in coaching practices.

Besides being a new book, it is an important book.  Coaching is more and more being recognized as an important profession and in need of professional standards.  Just saying you are coach and being a good listener does not make one a professional coach.  If you are not up on assessment instruments and good at using them as feedback in your practice, you are not coaching at a high professional level. 

There are 35 contributors, many of the names you are likely familiar with.  I urge you to have this valuable resource in your tool kit.  You can order the book from the original publishers in the United Kingdom, Kogan Page, Ltd. or from our friends in the USA at Amazon.com.

Catch you later.

Technorati Tags: psychometrics, assessments, feedback, coaching, tools for development, Association for Coaching, bill bradley, william bradley,   bradley

“Honest criticism is hard to take, particularly from a relative, a friend, an acquaintance, or a stranger.”

Franklin B. Jones

I think we need to do a “360″ on 360 feedback¹.

How would you like to be diagnosed with a new illness and have your doctor tell you that the latest wonder drug has shown in over 33% of the cases to actually worsen the condition? Well….

What would you think if I told you that earlier research (Taylor & Brown 1988) suggests a triad of “positive illusions” which include: 1) People inflate the perceptions of themselves and their skills; 2) People exaggerate their perceived control over life events; and 3) People express unrealistic optimism about their future. Interestingly, most individuals report being less prone to each of these positive illusions even after they are told about them (Pronin, Gilovich & Ross, 2004).

What would you think if I shared with you that a meta-analysis of over over 3,000 studies (607 effect sizes, 23,633 observations) on performance feedback found that although there was a significant effect for feedback interventions (d=.41), one third of all studies showed performance declines².

What would you think If I told you that although feedback does result in significant performance improvement based on a meta-analysis of 26 longitudinal studies, effect sizes are relatively small suggesting that “zebras don’t easily lose their stripes” Smither et al. (2005).

What would you think If I told you that based on twin studies 33% of the variance in holding leadership roles is due to genetic factors (Arvery, Zhang, Avolio & Kreuger, 2007) and findings from numerous studies of personality show that genetic effects account for approximately 50% of the variance in five factor domains (Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001).

What would you think if I shared with you that professor Leanne Atwater and colleagues at Arizona State University found that improvement following an upward feedback intervention only resulted for 50% of the supervisors who received it³.

What would you think if I shared with you that a recent meta-analysis of 26 longitudinal studies indicate significant but small effect sizes suggesting that is unrealistic to expect large performance improvement after people receive 360-degree feedback⁴.

What would you think if I share with you that Watson Wyatt’s 2001 Human Capital Index, an ongoing study of the linkages between HR practices and shareholder value at 750 publicly traded US companies found that 360-degree feedback programs were associated with a 10.6 percent decrease in shareholder value⁵.

What would you think if I shared with you that Self-ratings are weakly correlated with other rater perspectives⁶.

What would you think if I shared with you that bosses, direct reports and peers overlap only modestly on how they view an individual⁷.

Finally, what would you think if I told you that a recent survey by Rasmussen Reports (2006) found that “92% of those surveyed in a national poll of 1,854 U.S. workers reported they are an “excellent” or “good” boss.” Unfortunately, only 67% rated their managers favorably and 10% said their boss performed poorly.

As Bill Cosby said, “A word to the wise isn’t necessary. It’s the stupid ones who need all the advice”…..Be well….

Technorati Tags: multi-rater feedback, 360 feedback, feedback interventions, coaching, behavior change, ken nowack, nowack, kenneth nowack, evisia learning, Talent Accelerator, 360

1. Nowack, K. (2007). Why 360 Feedback Doesn’t Work. Talent Management, 4 (8), p 12 [↩]
2. Kluger, A. & DeNisi (1996). The effects of feedback interventions on performance: A historical review, meta-analysis and preliminary feedback theory. Psychological Bulletin, 119, 254-285 [↩]
3. Atwater,L., Waldman, D., & Cartier. (2000). An upward feedback field experiment. Supervisor’s cynicism, follow-up and commitment to subordinates. Personnel Psychology, 53, 275-297 [↩]
4. Smither, J., London, M., & Reilly, R. (2005). Does performance improve following multisource feedback? A theoretical model, meta-analysis and review of empirical findings. Personnel Psychology, 58, 33-66 [↩]
5. Pfau, B. & Kay I. (2002). Does 360 degree feedback negatively affect company performance? HR Magazine, Volume 47 (6), June 2002 [↩]
6. Nowack, K. (1992). Self-assessment and rater-assessment as a dimension of management development. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 3, 141-153 [↩]
7. Harris, M. & Schaubroeck, J. (1988). A meta-analysis of self-supervisor, self-peer and peer-supervisor ratings. Personnel Psychology, 41, 43-62 [↩]