SuccessCo

The Advantages to Leadership & Management “Coaching”

When you hear the word "coach", what comes first into your mind? Do you picture a basketball team with a man/woman shouting out directions? Or perhaps a football team with a man/woman pacing to and fro and calling out the names of the players?
Coaching is no longer reserved to sports teams; it is now one of the key concepts in leadership and management. Why is coaching popular?

Coaching levels the playing field

Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behavior or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organization. This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders need to align the staffs' personal values and goals with that of the organization so that long-term directions can be pursued.

Coaching builds up confidence and competence

Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual's level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new staffs. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence

Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individually excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instrument, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops high commitment to common goals

A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the members.

Coaching produces valuable leaders

Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he/she cannot practice what he/she preaches. This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent is his/her field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization's vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposive learning, members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, he/she is most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.

Notes: Coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team. Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially during times of crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team. Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.

SuccessCo

Success Book ~ Situational Selling

Excerpt from Situational Selling written by Dr. Paul Hersey

The Iceberg syndrome
When providing benefits, salespeople need to be careful of the “iceberg syndrome”. This phenomenon occurs when people rely on questioning skills alone to determine customer needs.

Responses to questions usually produce surface needs, which represent the “tip of the iceberg.” If the salesperson advocates a solution on only surface needs, stated benefits will be superficial as the needs that were expressed. This is the “iceberg syndrome.” – Missing critical in depth needs.

*Questions identify - Surface needs
*Encouraging and guiding responses tend to uncover - In depth needs and problems.

Consensus Building and Conflict Avoidance

Try not to create an adversarial climate when overcoming a prospects objection or while engaging someone that you are trying to influence – You will soon discover that although you may be right, the end result will only be a great resolution not buy or act upon your recommendations.

Try these verbal techniques to help your words be more harmonious during the interaction.

* Take the blame – “I am sorry that I failed to make my point clear . . .”

* Make a Concession – “You are quite right that it may seem to be ____________ at first. However, when you consider . . .”

* By saying that others feel the same way – “Joe Smith at Acme manufacturing said the same thing at first.”

* Paying tribute to their idea – “I know that you have the interests of your company at heart.”

The greatest ability in business is to get along with others and influence their actions. A chip on the shoulder is too heavy a piece of baggage to carry through life. John Hancock

-Jim
© 2008 SuccessCo.com

Success Quote

There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.

Peter F. Drucker

Business Humor ~ The Family Business

A very successful businessman had a meeting with his new son-in-law. "I love my daughter, and now I welcome you into the family," said the man. "To show you how much we care for you, I'm making you a 50-50 partner in my business. All you have to do is go to the factory every day and learn the operations."
The son-in-law interrupted, "I hate factories. I can't stand the noise."

"I see," replied the father-in-law. "Well, then you'll work in the office and take charge of some of the operations."

"I hate office work," said the son-on-law. "I can't stand being stuck behind a desk all day."

"Wait a minute," said the father-in-law. "I just made you half-owner of a money making company, but you don't like factories and won't work in a office. What am I going to do with you?"

"Easy," said the young man. "Buy me out."

Top Ten Habits of Lucky People

1. Lucky people know what they want, therefore it is easier to recognize when it crosses their path. This is also one of the basic laws of attraction.

2. Lucky people have a great sense of what they ‘don’t want”, so they don’t spend a lot of time focusing on or chasing low priority goals and aspirations.

3. Lucky people see the big picture and have the ability to see the forest through the trees.

4. Lucky people do not generalize. By not having preconceived ideas or generalizations, it allows them to see opportunities that are often closed off to others.

5. Lucky people are open to new things and ideas. The more experiences one has, the greater chance of “stumbling” across something new and exciting.

6. Lucky people consider themselves lucky! Have you ever know someone that is constantly talking about how ‘unlucky” they are? Well, it’s the same concept in reverse. If you tell yourself how lucky you are everyday, before long, it actually becomes your reality.

7. Lucky people work hard and are willing to “pay the price” for the things they want. Have you ever heard the quote, “the harder I work, the luckier I get”?

8. Lucky people are optimistic. Their glass is half full and they tend to see the upside and opportunities in the challenges that confront them.

9. Lucky people listen to their gut. While our instincts tend to be suppressed from non-use, the “lucky” people of the world not only follow their gut, but trust and rely on it every day.

10. Luck is a state of mind – so make your state the size of Texas!

-Jim

© 2008 SuccessCo.com

Finding a Prospects Hot Button & Uncovering the Objection

Here is an amazing technique to assist you in dealing with those stubborn prospects that just can’t seem to make up there minds. This technique is best used on a return call to a prospect that is on the verge of putting you off once again….

“Mr./Mrs. Prospect, if you were to make a list of the pros and cons of joining / buying, what would the top 3 items in each column be, starting with the con’s?”
Start with the cons to discover what the “real” objections are, however not yet addressing them. Now moving on to the pros to quickly discover what the prospects “real” hot buttons are, as they are frequently different from what you thought! 

Now you have obtained the most valuable information needed to address the prospects needs and overcome the obstacles standing between you and your objective.

Proceed by reviewing in much greater detail the pros mentioned by the prospect, thus raising the value. Now as briefly and concisely as possible, address the cons. Your goal is to add far more credence to the pros column, outweighing the cons and tilting the decision in your favor.

-Jim

© 2006 - 2008 SuccessCo.com

Success Quote

  "He who overcomes others has force;
he who overcomes himself is strong."

Lao Tzu (570-490bc)
Chinese Tao philosopher

Success Book ~ Million Dollar Habits

Excerpt from Million Dollar Habits written by Robert J. Ringer

Part Time Verses Full Time Self-Discipline
There’s a big difference being self-disciplined in a certain situation at a certain time and being a self-disciplined person. Being a self-disciplined person is what the self-discipline habit is all about. Anyone can display self-discipline on occasion, but to get consistently positive results takes consistency. It’s the day-in, day-out practice of self-discipline that determines where you’ll be at the end of the week, a month, a year, or a lifetime. Remember, a lifetime is nothing more than an accumulation of years, months, weeks and days, and what takes place in those smaller increments of time will determine whether or not your life, on a whole, is successful. If you aspire to play in the big leagues, you must be prepared to play every point as though it were match point. In other words, you have to be constantly focused. Dabblers are rarely, if ever, successful. It’s when you focus totally, intensely and consistently on one project – a project that has the potential to yield a worthwhile payoff – that you have the greatest chance for success.

Million Dollar Habits

Business Humor ~ A Story About Everybody!

A Story About Everybody!

This is a story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody, and Nobody.

There was an important job to be done and Everybody was asked to do it. Everybody was sure Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it.

Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it.

It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.