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Coaching People Development

3 Reasons Why We All Need to Make Time for Coaching

3 Reasons Why We All Need to Make Time for Coaching

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Reasons Why We All Need Coaching

People get the most benefits from a coach if they speak to them regularly, throughout their careers. Sometimes it’s just the act of setting up a coaching session that helps – it’s a reminder that having a job and working with a team can be challenging. And that taking a step back is perfectly acceptable.

Why we all need to make time for coaching.

We’ve all been there. A frustrating email comes through at work. We fire off a reply that probably isn’t the most reasonable way to respond. And then, inevitably, regret it later.

In an ‘always-on’ working world, where being run off your feet has somehow come to mean being important, our thinking time has been squeezed to the point of being non-existent. Colleagues annoy us; we snap. Big changes happen; we have a quick moan in the kitchen while the kettle boils. We don’t get on with our boss; we hand in our notice and leave.

But what if we had the time to think through our workplace stresses? To talk, constructively, about what we’d like to get out of a situation? To plan our responses – and our future – rationally, instead of being led by emotions?

This is exactly what having a coach gives you. An opportunity to stop, to think, to find a way to be a better colleague, and the best version of ourselves.

The chance to pause

So what does coaching actually offer that a quick chat by the water cooler wouldn’t? These are the main benefits, in my experience of both talking to professional coaches myself, and setting up sessions for other people:

1. There’s no judgement

Speak to anyone else within your company – including someone from HR – and they’ll have their own vested interest in what you’re saying. A coach, on the other hand, won’t know the people you’re talking about and can act as a safe, impartial sounding board.

You can get everything off your chest, tell them your wildest ambitions to take over the company, talk through the stuff you wish you’d done differently – and then leave feeling lighter, clearer and happier. (Ready to respond calmly when that email arrives.)

2. It’s all about you

Should I apply for that promotion? How can I tell my team this big piece of news? Why am I finding it hard to manage some colleagues and not others? Training and development sessions are all very well, but they often end up being too generic to make a real difference to everyone.

With a coach, you can dig deeper. You can spend a whole session talking about that one email, if it’s what you need. And the more you see them, the more they’ll get to know you and your exact situation. Meaning everything they say back will be tailored and (truly) helpful.

3. It’s constructive

Coaches don’t just listen; they actively listen. They hear everything you tell them, then they play it back to you and help you find a way forward. They shine a light on situations in ways you wouldn’t have thought of. They ask questions you might not want to be asked. They help you think about things logically, carefully and with an eye to the bigger picture. They can turn even the rantiest of rants into a rational and reasonable action plan for tomorrow.

Reasons Why We All Need Coaching

Making it regular

Coaching sessions aren’t just for the ‘bad’ times, either. In fact, people get the most benefits from a coach if they speak to them regularly, throughout their careers. Sometimes it’s just the act of setting up a coaching session that helps – it’s a reminder that having a job and working with a team can be challenging. And that taking a step back is perfectly acceptable.

That’s all very well, you might be thinking. But what if you don’t have the money to pay for everyone in your company to leave the office once a week? What if it all seems like too much of a faff to set up?

We can help. Having seen first-hand the benefits of coaching a few years ago when our company went through some big changes, we wanted to find a way for more people in more companies to speak to someone regularly. So we designed and built Performance Coaching.

Learn more about LHH’s Performance Coaching

Source: ezra

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Change Management Coaching People Development

Being A Good Manager During Times Of Uncertainty

Being A Good Manager During Times Of Uncertainty

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Being A Good Manager During Times Of Uncertainty

How can organizations help leaders care for themselves so they can care and support others? How to make them good manager during times of uncertainty? Many organizations are extolling the virtues of coaching as the frontline support for leaders at all levels of an organization. Coaching was obviously a hallmark of successful organizations before COVID-19. However, many leaders are finding that coaching is particularly helpful when faced with profound uncertainty.

In the face of extreme uncertainty triggered by a global pandemic, millions of people around the world responded in a most bizarre way: they hoarded toilet paper.

It was an incredible phenomenon: consumers of different cultures, languages and socio-economic profiles united by a single act of desperation.

But why toilet paper? Months after panicky shoppers stripped the shelves of grocery markets around the globe, it’s still not entirely clear why this commodity was subject to so much hoarding.

Some have theorized that the trend began at one or two stores and – fed by stories from traditional news organizations and social media – it and the panic behind it spread. Some of the earliest stories – including a February incident where armed thieves stole hundreds of rolls from a truck making a delivery to a Hong Kong grocery store – added fuel to the fire. Let’s face it – it’s hard to read a story like that and not rush out to pick up a few extra rolls for yourself. 

Others have suggested that the rush to buy toilet paper was related to our need to gain some control over the uncertainty that came with the pandemic. Or, as an online survey of shoppers across Europe and North America put it: “People who feel more threatened by the pandemic stockpile more toilet paper.”

 During Times Of Uncertainty

It is scenarios like this that underline the fact that the uncertainty about COVID-19 – how we catch it, who will catch it and when it will cease to be a threat – can be as consequential as the actual virus.

For business organizations, that presents a special challenge. Uncertainty has served as a significant challenge for companies for years. So much so that responded to uncertainty has become its own school of thought.

The evolution of uncertainty management strategies.

Hardly anyone mentions the name Dale Brashers in the same sentence as “global pandemic.” But as we continue to struggle under the persistent ravages of COVID-19, you can bet that will change.

A professor of communication at the University of Illinois, Brashers is the author of Uncertainty Management Theory (UMT), which suggests that while many people struggle in scenarios where doubt and ambiguity are the order of the day, uncertainty in and of itself does not have to be a negative. It is, Brasher theorized, neither positive nor negative, but rather a reality that we can choose to confront or ignore.

“Understanding various types of uncertainty enhances our ability to describe and explain its influences on behaviours and to develop strategies for improving people’s lives,” Brashers wrote in 2001.

Brashers was not the first person to try and differentiate between types of uncertainty. In the 1920s, American economist Frank Knight wrote Risk, Uncertainty, and Profit, an examination of the impact of uncertainty on businesses and profitability.

Knight argued that there were two types of uncertainty: uncertainty risk (scenarios where we know the potential outcomes and odds of success or failure), and genuine uncertainty (where we cannot know the possible outcomes or their probabilities). Knight believed that business organizations that are unable to differentiate between calculable risk and true uncertainty are doomed to fail.

“When we act like everything is a risk, we greatly increase the chance of failure,” Knight wrote.  “However, the opposite can also be a problem: We act like everything is unknowable. Uncertainty often gets blamed for inaction.”

If you were to take Uncertainty Management Theory, add in a healthy dose of Knightian Uncertainty, what would you have? Although the variations are almost infinite, you’d likely be describing an organization that was built on agility.

An antidote for uncertainty

The concept of the agile organization was around long before COVID-19 changed our worlds. But in recent months, research has started to establish a clear connection between organizations that embrace agile business models – which emphasize intense collaboration, cross-functional teams, adaptive decision-making and continual improvement – and those rooted in more sluggish strategies.

A late June study from McKinsey looked at 25 companies across seven sectors that “have undergone or are currently undergoing an agile transformation.” The study found that business units that had fully adopted agile strategies before COVID-19 struck outperformed those that had not in nearly one-third of the companies studied.

“According to their self-assessments, almost all of their agile business units responded better than their nonagile units to the shocks associated with the COVID-19 pandemic by measures of customer satisfaction, employee engagement, or operational performance,” the study concluded.

The link between agile management and confronting uncertainty is fast becoming known in the business world. Another survey of 1,100 IT and business professionals found that a third of respondents were moving to adopt agile business practices in response to COVID-19.

If agile planning and management is one of the best antidotes to uncertainty, how can leaders help the people they lead deal with uncertainty?

The uncertainty challenge for leaders

There is no specific playbook for leading in a time of uncertainty. The best practices of accountable leadership – effective communication, resilience, calm under pressure, collaboration, emotional intelligence – are certainly applicable. But there is one thing that the most successful organizations almost always do to help ensure their leaders succeed in the face of uncertainty.

Leaders need to be supported by their organizations before they can help others.

Leading in a time of great uncertainty is a challenge for leaders because their first inclination will be to focus all of their efforts on meeting the needs of their employees. However, that leaves many leaders vulnerable to the same frustrations and anxieties that come with uncertainty. Like a passenger in a de-pressurizing airplane cabin, it’s important for leaders to put their own oxygen mask on first before they try to help others.

How can organizations help leaders care for themselves so they can care and support others? Many organizations are extolling the virtues of coaching as the frontline support for leaders at all levels of an organization.

Coaching was obviously a hallmark of successful organizations before COVID-19. However, many leaders are finding that coaching is particularly helpful when faced with profound uncertainty.

Mark Vergano, CEO of chemical giant Chemours, told The Wall Street Journal, that he had been working with a psychologist for five years to become more consistent, clear and confident. “Those have been my mantra as we deal with the global pandemic,” he told the WSJ.

It’s important to note as well that coaching can be even more effective when it is offered throughout an organization, and not just at the senior-most levels. Numerous studies indicate that well-coached employees are more engaged, more productive and less likely to be shaken by uncertainty. This is particularly important if an organization is attempting to adopt a more agile approach to its planning and decision making; coaches with a speciality in agile organizations can be invaluable in generating engagement and buy-in on cultural change.

When confronted with uncertainty, our greatest comfort can be found in one simple observation: Whether it’s coaching support for leaders, or the adoption of an agile mindset for decision making, the key strategies for success during a pandemic are, thankfully, the same strategies we need to thrive in a time when uncertainty is not the order of the day.

Those organizations that got a jump start on building a better leadership culture, and adopting agile management models, are proof that there is no better time to start preparing for uncertainty than now.

Categories
Coaching

Can Coaching Boost Employee Wellness, Engagement and Retention?

Can Coaching Boost Employee Wellness, Engagement & Retention?

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Wellness at work has never been more important than now. Considering the current climate of job hopping and the high cost of recruitment – not to mention the fact that happier employees actually work harder – it’s easy to see how employee morale can make or break a company.

Increasing your team members’ wellness is likely to improve productivity, help them perform better in leadership positions, keep them engaged with the company and reduce days off for stress, sickness and burnout – all of which can help you save time and money as a business.

Why coaching leads to higher productivity 

The science says yes – ‘happy’ employees do actually work harder. Research from the University of Warwick shows that people work more efficiently when they’re happy – in fact, it makes workers around 12% more productive. (warwick.ac.uk)

It’s easy to see why wellness impacts on performance at work. If employees are engaged in their roles, feel supported and listened to, and understand how they are contributing to the success of the company, they’re more likely to take positive action than if they are constantly battling negative feelings of frustration and dissatisfaction.

Why wellness can help employees to work better

  1. Employees will be more invested and engaged. If workers enjoy their roles and feel that they’re contributing to the company as a whole, they’re likely to feel more driven, pay more attention and go the extra mile in their roles.
  2. Employees can develop more mental resilience. Employees who feel supported and encouraged are likely to be able to deal with demanding workloads and high pressure situations much more effectively than those who are already feeling low.
  3. Wellness helps teams to work better together. Individuals who report high scores of wellness tend to have better work relationships with their managers, peers and direct reports, meaning more efficient teamwork and higher quality collaboration.

How business coaches can help with employee wellness

Employee engagement, wellness and performance all go hand in hand – which is why business coaches aim to improve all three. This can create a snowball effect, where success drives more success.

We’re all human, and everyone faces challenges at work from time to time. Without support, these experiences can make employees feel frustrated. However, coaching can help employees to develop the skills to face these challenges head on, contributing to a more supportive, positive corporate environment for everyone.

The bottom line? Coaching can help boost your team morale and improve your employees’ experience in the workplace, increasing job satisfaction, engagement and productivity.

Categories
Coaching People Development

How to Promote a Culture of Caring and Compassionate Leadership

How to Promote a Culture of Caring and Compassionate Leadership

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leadership development

Empathy and compassion are generally considered founding principles within the whole area of Emotional Intelligence and Psychological Safety, which are redefining the approach to leadership development that de-emphasizes technical skills and amplifies the so-called “soft skills.”

Alex Vincent, Ph.D., SVP, Global Teams Solutions

Your employees have been working at home for months, wrestling with wonky VPNs and navigating crowded home offices and bored children. While some have thrived in the new world of virtual work, others have struggled. With the pandemic still crippling the global economy and social justice protests shaking the foundation of our society, uncertainty is the order of the day.

In an environment like that, it’s not unusual for leaders to feel somewhat confounded about how to treat the people they lead. How do you keep your people motivated, engaged and focus on the business strategy while also acknowledging that many of them will be suffering under the strain of these current challenges?

Increasingly, those involved in forging the next generation of leadership development believe that skills like empathy and compassion are the keys to connecting to, and motivating, employees in troubled times.

Empathy and compassion are generally considered founding principles within the whole area of Emotional Intelligence and Psychological Safety, which are redefining the approach to leadership development that de-emphasizes technical skills and amplifies the so-called “soft skills.” It expands the role of leader to act more like a coach and sounding board. Although those are simple concepts, they represent daunting new demands on leaders.

That expansion of the role and responsibilities of leaders is more important now than ever because of the impact of multiple disruptors in work along with the threat from COVID-19 global pandemic, the accompanying economic lockdown and the powerful nature of the Black Lives Matter movement. All the changes and disruption is starting to take an enormous toll on everyone’s resilience and even mental health.

Data is emerging from jurisdictions around the world on declining mental health. In the United States, the non-partisan Kaiser Family Foundation has been tracking the mental health of Americans throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. The most recent data shows that more than 45 percent of Americans report that their mental health has suffered during the pandemic. The situation is more severe for those who were forced to shelter in place.

In Europe, public health officials have been sounding the alarm for months about a building mental health and substance abuse crisis that is accompanying the pandemic. Dr. Hans Kluge, director of the European branch of the World Health Organization, reported first in March his concerns about pandemic-related mental health challenges.

“Physical distancing and isolation measures, the closure of schools and workplaces are particularly challenging [for] us,” Dr. Kluge said. “It is absolutely natural for each of us to feel stress, anxiety, fear and loneliness during this time.”

It’s all related to what mental health professionals are now referring to as “deaths of despair,” fatalities caused by stressful economic or social conditions that drive higher incidences of drug and alcohol abuse, which may lead to suicide and overdose. “We may be in for a perfect storm of factors driving substance abuse rates higher than we have seen before,” Dr. Lloyd Sederer, former chief medical officer for New York State Office of Mental Health, wrote recently in Medscape Magazine. “The triple trouble of a pandemic, unemployment, and diminished personal and community supports.”

In this context, leaders need to be aware that every time they pick up the phone or assemble everyone for a team meeting on a video conferencing platform, they are tapping into growing reservoirs of stress and anxiety that at some level, must be acknowledged with empathy and compassion.

Some schools of leadership development thought—particularly those built on philosophies such as “positive psychology”—believe leaders need to avoid dwelling on the negatives and amplify the positives. And while that can be effective for motivating some employees—particularly those who are more resilient and less impacted by all of the disruptions—many of your team members may need an approach that will require empathy and compassion. This is really to develop a safe space for individuals to discuss what they are dealing with, professionally and personally, and how they are feeling about their situation. This will require deep listening combined with the ability to suspend judgment and refraining from providing advice.

Before emphasizing the positive aspects of our current situation, leaders need to demonstrate that they understand what stressed or worried employees are going through, and that it’s not unusual that they feel that way. 

It’s important to remember that mental health is still a deeply stigmatized topic in most workplaces. Prior to the pandemic, it was hard for most employees to admit that they were facing a mental health challenge. Research in this area has re-enforced the fear that even acknowledging depression or anxiety will undermine their career brand and limit their future opportunities.

For those employees who have been most affected by the multiple crises we’re facing, leaders must be able to communicate genuine empathy about their concerns, and compassion rather than judgment. There needs to be a sense that it’s okay to talk openly about fears and anxieties, while also acknowledging that others are going through the same situation.

Lamentably, empathy and compassion are skills that evade many leaders today. Most leaders have risen through the ranks of their organizations by demonstrating a grasp of technical knowledge. Rarely, if ever, are they assessed on whether they can relate to their employees on an emotional level. That is why so many leadership development experts are promoting the principles of Emotional Intelligence as the new standard for successful leaders.

Skills like empathy and compassion can be developed in most leaders but they can present as much larger challenges to leaders who have traditionally been satisfied to be judged on deliverables or meeting financial targets. 

Enhancing a leader’s capacity to cultivate empathy and compassion is an iterative process that must be approached over time. The following steps are essential in cultivating these important emotional skills:

Take stock. All leaders must be carefully assessed to determine current levels and potential for empathy and compassion. Every organization will have naturally empathetic and compassionate leaders. But there will also be leaders for whom these skills do not come naturally. Identify the size of your E&C gap.

Study up. Most progressive business leaders know that they must be constantly learning and improving themselves. Reading books on emotional intelligence, resilience and empathy-based leadership approaches can provide an essential base of knowledge on how to integrate E&C into daily leadership practices. 

Don’t go it alone. One of the most effective ways at building soft leadership skills is working with a coach who has experience in these areas. Coaching will not only help leaders confront their own shortcomings, but it can accelerate and help sustain the cultivation of empathy and compassion.

Leadership is still a role that requires toughness and resilience. Leaders must set high expectations for the people they lead and be willing to call out underperformance when necessary. But they must also know when someone needs understanding, care and support.

It may seem like a simple solution, but sometimes people need to know that it’s OK to feel whatever they’re feeling right now before they can start to feel good about the future.

Source: lhh.com

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Coaching

Coaching vs Training vs Mentoring

Coaching vs Training vs Mentoring

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Coaching, training and mentoring all have their own particular role to play when it comes to developing employees, but the differences between them – and the specific benefits of coaching as an exercise – are often poorly understood, which can lead to organizational “misfires” when something is introduced that is not ideally suited to deliver what a team needs to grow.

Most critically, coaching is a personal learning and development intervention that creates a goal-oriented relationship to reach outcomes that are valued by the coachee. However, the term is often confused and used interchangeably with activities like ‘training,’ and ‘mentoring.’ In order to better understand the value of coaching, it is first imperative to understand what it is and, more importantly, what it isn’t.

Defining The Difference

What Is Coaching?

Coaching in the workplace is a personal one-to-one intervention that uses a collaborative, goal-focused relationship to achieve outcomes. A coachee, therefore, enters the relationship for the purpose of intentionally and actively fulfilling personal objectives. Conceptually, this is a fundamentally different relationship than either a training or mentoring relationship.

What Is Training?

Training is about transferring knowledge from trainer to trainee and so it naturally has a hierarchical element to it. The core of training is: “I have a bunch of things I want you to get better at, and I’m going to teach you.” In a professional or workplace setting, training is normally structured, formal, used often in a group setting on new hires, and is dependent on telling rather than asking. It is a place for learning and for people to try and practice new skills. But the timeline is normally short and therefore, the benefits of training can also be short lived.

To use an analogy, let’s say an individual has very basic foundational culinary knowledge. In order to get better, they sign up for classes on the weekend for a month that provides them with general training as an add on to their foundational knowledge. Training programs like this are a great way to provide a vast amount of knowledge in a short amount of time. However, the skills taught in training programs are usually not consistently reinforced. After a training session, individuals are left to utilize their new skills on their own time which can result in the loss of that knowledge if not consistently put into practice. Research demonstrates that roughly 50% of the information received in a presentation is forgotten after 1 hour while “after 24 hours, on average, 70 percent is gone. And within a week a staggering 90 percent is nowhere to be found.” Therefore, training by itself might not be enough to cement new neural pathways, change behaviour, or help individuals remember and retain knowledge to apply in the real world.

What Is Mentoring?

Mentoring is more of a long-term relationship that is based on trust, respect, and a desire to gain wisdom that will hopefully lead the individual towards specific objectives. Mentoring, much like training, is a hierarchical relationship of knowledge. In a mentoring relationship, the mentor is assumed to be a highly experienced individual in the mentee’s field, and, in the workplace, the mentor provides guidance or career advice to the assumingly inexperienced mentee. An individual goes to a mentor because the mentor has a large amount of wisdom the individual would like to learn from. Mentors can also be ‘coach-like’ or use coaching skills within the mentoring relationship but knowledge is still being transferred and the relationship remains hierarchical.

Why Coaching Stands Out

The International Coaching Federation (ICF) defines the act of coaching as partnering with clients in a thought-provoking and creative process that inspires them to maximize their personal and professional potential. While training and mentoring are both about a transfer of knowledge from teacher to student or mentor to mentee, coaching is about enhancing, supporting and facilitating the individual to step in and be actively engaged in their own growth and knowledge.

The core of coaching is different from both training and mentoring. There is no hierarchy in this informal, safe and confidential space. The coachee has to want to do the work, step in, and challenge themselves, while the coach partners with the coachee to deepen their self-awareness in areas of growth or strength, working through “blind spots” along the way. The coach then helps the coachee design powerful, intentional actions to move them towards their goals.

In short, coaching is not about telling people what to do; it is giving them an opportunity to examine what they are doing in light of their intentions. Timothy Gallwey, an author and academic in coaching and coaching literature describes coaching as:

“…the art of creating an environment, through conversation and a way of being that facilitates the process by which a person can move towards desired results in a fulfilling manner. It requires an essential ingredient that cannot be taught; caring not only for external results but for the person being coached.” 

The key to the coaching relationship is that the change is ultimately owned, driven and done by the coachee. It is their desired change that matters. The space that is created during a coaching engagement is intentional, co-created and led by thought-provoking questions that allow the coachee to be active in their own learning. It takes time because coachees are working on forming new habits and are training their brains to create new neural pathways of behaviour. The coaching relationship helps the coachee create a powerful action > reflection > learning cycle, which repeats over time. Action is key to creating those new neutral pathways and instilling that change in behaviour while reflection is key for defining intentional and commitment-worthy actions.

In a workplace setting, coaching has been used as a long-term tool to create happier teams, develop employees, manage organizational change, create better managers, and improve the new-hire onboarding process. It has been demonstrated to support a variety of learning and performance objectives, including:

  • Affective Outcomes Attitudes and motivational outcomes (e.g. self-efficiency, well-being, and satisfaction)
  • Cognitive Outcomes – Declarative knowledge, procedural knowledge and cognitive strategies (e.g. problem-solving)
  • Skill-based Outcomes – Compilation and automaticity of new skills (e.g. learning skills, technical skills, and competencies

Additionally, if used to enhance the training process, the intentional, applied, informal and developmental nature of the coaching relationship could help individuals better cement learnings from trainings into real behaviors that drive actual organizational results.

While mentoring and training are useful learning and development tools, coaching is shown to change an individual’s behavior. Through the coaching process, as an individual learns to harness their own potential it instills and creates positive action, reflection and outcomes that ripple outwards and have people ultimately asking: can I be better with a coach, too? The answer always remains the same thanks to the unique properties of this development method: everyone can be better with a coach.

Categories
Coaching Organizational Development

How Coaching Shifts Organizational Culture

How Coaching Shifts Organizational Culture

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Coaching Shifts Organizational Culture

Coaching is increasingly being embraced by progressive organizations as an effective and highly personalized strategy for leadership and professional development. No longer sitting in the shadows and mistaken as a form of discipline, coaching is helping good leaders become even better, positioning emerging leaders for long-term success, and contributing to the retention of key employees who value the reward that it represents.

Defined as a partnership that engages an individual with a specially trained coach, those who have experienced coaching understand that it is vastly different from “being coached.” True coaches, who have a combination of coach-specific education, knowledge and skill, support their clients with insight-provoking inquiry, keen observation and creative energy that brings out the client’s best. “Being coached,” on the other hand, often refers to receiving well-intentioned advice, consulting  and delivering recommendations that may not be relevant or sustainable.

Coaching, in its true sense, has significant benefits for an individual, but it also brings substantial payoff for the organization. Those who experience coaching discover the power of inquiry-based versus telling conversations. They see firsthand the transformation that occurs when human interaction is free of assumptions and biases. People thrive when the focus of dialogue turns from Me to We and supports moves from directive and critical to partnering and encouraging.

As individuals across an organizational spectrum experience coaching, they naturally adopt some of coaching’s best attributes in their own interactions. For example, change conversations move from “Get on board!” to  “What are your fears?” Performance conversations evolve from “You’re on thin ice,” to “What do you need to succeed?”  When there is a positive shift in the way people work together, the organization begins a transformation to one that is characterized by more open communication, growing cross-functional partnerships and increasing psychological safety.

Fundamentally, every organization is a collection of people. When the environment in which those people operate is one that encourages and rewards candor, respect and mutual support, the entire business benefits. Coaching is the key to infuse those elements into the organization’s operations and ultimately, into its culture.

Source: International Coaching Federation

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Assessments & Analytics Career Transition, Outplacement and Mobility Change Management Coaching Organizational Development People Development Workforce Transformations

Workforce Transformations Insights June 2020

Workforce Transformations Insights – June 2020

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How The Pandemic Is Changing The Rules Of Talent Management

How The Pandemic Is Changing The Rules Of Talent Management

This is the moment to get your organization on the right side of that equation

What Does a Planful Approach Look Like?

The best executive transition plan will probably look a little bit different depending on the size and nature of the organization. However, the key best practices – transparency, collaboration, and support – will remain a constant. Organizations must engage with the executives in transition in an open and honest context. They must display a willingness to work together to come up with a transition plan that is fair to both the individual and the organization.

In the absence of crises, it’s easy to ignore things like succession planning and executive departure strategies. In our current environment, which is defined by volatility and uncertainty,

No organization has an excuse for not planning ahead.

Let’s get more details in the 8 topics below.

  1. How the Pandemic is Changing the Rules of Talent Management – Greg Simpson
  2. Leadership Shake-ups on the Horizon: How Prepared is Your Organization? – William (Bill) Brown
  3. The Good, the Bad and the Awkward: Tips for Making Video Calls Better – Sharon Patterson
  4. How to Promote a Culture of Caring and Compassionate Leadership – Alex Vincent, Ph. D
  5. Culture: The Catalyst for Transformation – Dr. Mary Clare Race
  6. Now is the Time to Start Prospecting for Great Talent – Helene Cavalli
  7. What Lies Ahead: Three Fundamental Changes to How We’ll Work Post-Pandemic – Dan Lett
  8. Leadership – Pandemic Style – Steve Harrison
LHH-Transformation-Insights-June-2020-Web_V2

Source: lhh.com

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Assessments & Analytics Career Transition, Outplacement and Mobility Change Management Coaching Organizational Development People Development Workforce Transformations

Workforce Transformations Insights April 2020

Workforce Transformations Insights April 2020

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Workforce Transformations Insights April 2020

Think about workforce transformations in a whole new way.

Welcome to Transformation Insights, a publication devoted to the latest thinking on what it takes to transform organisations.

The coronavirus pandemic is transforming the world forever, forcing us to rethink and reshape our businesses and our lives. As the result, many companies are transforming to adapt the new situation, but are they successful?

COVID-19 is accelerating business transformation. Before the pandemic, all kinds of organizations were pursuing business or workforce transformations to meet future challenges and opportunities. Unfortunately, many of these companies were taking a very long time to enact change. And even when they did, they were reluctant to go all in, leaving them in limbo: neither the same as they were nor different enough to really move into the future. Many organizations had acknowledged the need to “transform” but just hadn’t gotten around to it.

After the pandemic, we will see many more businesses fully embrace rapid,
urgent transformation. They are learning how to do this purely as a matter of survival. We have already seen this in some industries like hospitality and healthcare. Social distancing meant that many restaurants went from being fully booked to completely empty. Undeterred, many began re-tooling their operations to focus solely on pick-up or delivery service. They were aided signifcantly in this transformation by companies that provide meal delivery on demand. In order to protect patients seeking medical advice or treatment, healthcare systems are pushing people to telemedicine options to limit human-to-human contact. Patient trafc to telehealth services is surging. Telemedicine app Amwell experienced a 158% increase since the virus hit. The shift to telemedicine is poised to dramatically impact the healthcare industry, creating new opportunities. Other organizations in other sectors of the economy are being forced to adopt similar changes, and it will change the world of work forever.

“In today’s marketplace, organizations are discovering the need to turn their attention inward to find their future talent. Let us help you turn your workforce into a true force.”

We combined research insights with our expert knowledge to home in on five key areas of focus to ensure workforce transformation success.

  • Put HR in the Driver’s Seat
  • Honest Evaluation Ensures Ongoing Success
  • Let Leaders Lead
  • Don’t Leave Career Development in the Dark
  • Culture is Crucial
LHH_Transformation-Insights_Issue-No-8

source: lhh.com

Categories
Assessments & Analytics Career Transition, Outplacement and Mobility Change Management Coaching Organizational Development People Development Workforce Transformations

Workforce Transformations Insights Jan 2020

Workforce Transformations Insights – Jan 2020

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Workforce Transformations Insights - Jan 2020

Stay informed with our perspective on workforce transformations trends, thought-provoking insights and expert analysis that help companies create opportunity.

Think about talent in a whole new way.

The new year will bring profound changes to the way we work. Companies who see change as an opportunity will need to adopt new approaches to talent management in order to actually seize the opportunities.

Ranjit de Sousa, LHH President

In this issue, we spoke to Ian Williamson, Dean of Victoria University Business School in New Zealand while we were at the World Business Forum in NYC. Ian talked about new ways to invest in and value employees. We also sat down with Simon Gibertoni, CEO at Clinique la Prairie, who shared the challenges he faces in exporting an experience vs. a product as his company expands globally. We dug into the strategies that successful companies employ to build the workforce of the future. What emerged were the top four trends in workforce transformation we expect to see in 2020.

The most successful companies will start viewing human capital as a renewable resource, rather than something that can be discarded and replaced on a whim, he said. Like an asset, Williamson said, labor is something that must be managed to be sustainable and to provide the greatest value possible.

Far too many employers are still trapped in a cycle of firing employees whose skills are no longer needed and then going out to hire people with new skills that will drive future growth, Williamson said.
The global skills shortage makes this traditional workforce strategy untenable, he added, because there just aren’t enough skilled workers to go
around. Williamson noted that by some estimates, global IT companies need more than 85 million skilled workers to fill immediate openings.

LHH_Transformation_Insights_JAN_2020

Source: lhh.com

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Coaching

How to Launch a Second Act Career as an Executive Coach

How to Launch a Second Act Career as an Executive Coach

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Launch a Second Act Career as an Executive Coach

Executive coach Simon Moody has always been able to find opportunity in adversity.

Like the time he planned to spend a year sailing his 42-foot sail boat from Gibraltar to the Arabian Gulf. It would have been a daunting adventure for an experienced sailor. For Moody, with only two days of sailing lessons under his belt from 20 years previous, it presented the challenge of a lifetime. “To say I learnt on the job is a gross understatement. I have never ever been so scared in my life nor so exhilarated.”

In addition to his 18 month sailing trip, Moody has lived and worked on four continents. After starting out in the music business, he developed an international career in brand and marketing. He would go on to serve as the President of a $300 million North American division of WPP, the world’s largest media, brand and communications agency.

After 16 years at WPP, both in the UK and the US, a new challenge came calling again, this time in the form of a major restructuring. In his work co-managing the restructuring, Moody quickly realized that he needed to eliminate his own position. He saw it as an opportunity to embrace the next step of his professional life, whatever that might be.

“At the time of the restructure, deep down I knew there was something else I needed to do that would harness all my years of experience around the world while propelling me forward into a  parallel career universe,” he said.

That something else turned out to be coaching senior business leaders.

Once I discovered the pure craft of coaching, I realized I had “come home.”

SIMON MOODY EXECUTIVE COACH, LEE HECHT HARRISON

Moody said that throughout his career, he had established a profile as a leader who was both approachable and supportive of those with whom he worked. Whenever he took leadership assessments or solicited feedback, it was coaching and mentoring that were consistently at the top of his most positive attributes.

When the restructuring door opened, he seized the moment to reinvent himself as a full-time professional coach. After doing considerable research, he eventually enrolled in LHH’s Coach the Coach ICF Certification Program, an intensive, six-month training regimen that provides participants with certification from the renowned International Coaching Federation.

Moody said he approached his formal coaching training with a fair bit of confidence; after all, he had been recognized for being a solid, intuitive coach during his time as an executive. However, the first 24 hours of the program revealed just how little he knew about formal coaching strategies.

“The toughest lesson I had to learn was that coaching is not about jumping in to fix things,” Moody said. “It is about exploring and enabling your client to find her or his own way forward. When you come out from a career in the Board room, where you have spent a lot of your time solving other people’s problems, your natural inclination as a novice coach is to step in and do just that. You soon learn the limitations of this approach.”

As much as he found the training to be invigorating, Moody said he was concerned about whether coaching could provide him with a full-time career. Many friends and colleagues cautioned him about pursuing coaching as more than just a part-time job.

“Pretty much everybody said to me, ‘Simon, don’t do this. Coaching is really just a part-time, semi-retirement gig and you can’t support yourself on that kind of salary.’” That was all he needed to hear to press ahead. “Once I discovered the pure craft of coaching, I realized I had ‘come home.’”

And his intuition was right—he quickly discovered that the business world has a voracious appetite for effective coaches, particularly those with high-level certification. Based now in New York, Moody said he has been able to build a successful coaching practice that focuses on work with executives in a broad array of industries and sectors, including health care, fashion and financial services.

On an average day, Moody will work with up to five clients. “Once you start to work out ways to scale while building a lean machine around scheduling and planning, coaching can be financially very rewarding.”

Coaching has also delivered a great deal of personal satisfaction for Moody. “My ex-colleagues, some who cautioned me about going in this direction, tell me that I’ve never been happier. Truly, I feel that I’m the luckiest person in the world, in that I’m doing what I totally love. In fact, I wish that I had done it years earlier.”
Written by SUSAN MARC LAWLEY, PH.D.

Source: lhh.com

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