Sponsor charity swim, get a complimentary coaching session

Need some help sticking to and achieving your New Year's resolutions? Want to set yourself up for success in 2012? Read on to find out how you can support a deserving charity and get a complimentary coaching session at the same time with this limited-time offer!

One week from today on February 5th I'll have another go at the Cole Classic, Australia's largest ocean swim event. In what's become an annual charity fundraising event for my company, I'll once again tackle the 1km course from Shelly Beach to Manly Beach.

I'm doing the swim to raise money for  the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), in support of their efforts to help protect animals around the world from cruelty.


THE ASK: I'm seeking sponsorships of my race-for-charity. Any amount is gratefully accepted - even $10 donations add up - and you can donate from wherever you are in the world at my everyday hero fundraising page.

THE OFFER: if you choose to donate AUD$50* or more, tmc will offer you a complimentary 1-hour coaching session. No further obligation is required - just make a donation and we'll book you a coaching session (live or by telephone) at your convenience. That's it!

*that's about £33 / €40 / SEK360 / HK$410 / SIN$65 / CAD$53 / US$53

So...with just one donation, you get four things at once:

1. A chance to try out coaching, if you've not done so before, at a knock-down rate
2. Feel-goods as you help a deserving global charity to improve animal welfare
3. The one-on-one attention of an experienced coach to address an issue that's real for you today - and walk away with practical actions to do right away
4. And as a charitable contribution, it's tax deductable.

Why coaching?
Coaching will benefit anyone who wants something and has not yet been able to get it. It is a structured way to renew your focus, better tackle your challenges and identify how you can make the best use of your efforts and resources to get sustained results over a period of time.

Todd asks great questions - pertinent and provocative. Then makes sure you work through to a good answer. ~ Paul Z. Jackson, Owner, The Solutions Focus

In the same way that top athletes have coaches to help them realize their full potential and improve their performance, coaching helps you to be your best. Far from being a remedial step or an admission of weakness, having a coach is a useful way to head off potential issues before they impede your performance, and draw on your existing strengths to get results.

At the outset of a new project, coaching is also invaluable in setting the right course so that when storms blow up along the way, you will already have the means in place to handle them and not get blown off course or overwhelmed.

GET THINGS DONE
Coaching...gave me real clarity and focus, which was just what I was needing at the time. After just one coaching conversation, I found that I was better organised, and managing my time much more effectively. Over time, I have found that the tools I gained have stayed with me, even if my method has changed. ~ Linnet Good, writer and entrepreneur, Goodscribble

How does coaching work?

You will draw on your own experiences as you “think out loud,” with the added benefit of an impartial outside point of view for fresh perspective. Through skilled work as both a sounding board and source of positive support, a coach can help uncover your own hidden insights and ideas. An ongoing coaching dialogue also makes it more likely that you will follow through on your commitment to do the actions you know need to be done.

BUILD ON EXISTING STRENGTHS
Being involved in many other coaching training sessions, the one with Todd has given me the most improvement and value. That’s because it’s not often that I can put theory into practice and have a seasoned expert sitting on the side-line who can objectively provide valuable pointers and guidance to improve my coaching style and technique. ~ Eric Wong, Manager, NRMA

A coaching session gives you that all-important pause to get clarity on a course of action, identify useful and practical ways forward, and follow up on those actions to get the maximum possible learning benefit from them.

ACHIEVE BREAKTHROUGH INSIGHTS
I've found Todd's coaching consistently excellent, in one session helping me reach a goal I'd been striving towards for 15 years...in a field with which he had no previous experience! He is very creative, and generous with his time, energy and ideas. He is both very professional and excellent company. Time spent with Todd is time very well spent. ~ Shakya Kumara, Training Manager and Coach, windhorse:evolution

Some practical examples

Coaching can help if you’d like to develop your skills in any of these areas:

• assertiveness in business and personal situations
• negotiation to get the outcomes you want
• having difficult conversations with co-workers or partners
• using effective persuasion and influencing skills
• leadership development
• becoming a better manager
• coaching others to help their performance/business focus
• time management and priority-setting to get things done
• business planning
• strategy execution to turn your plans into reality
• decisiveness in knowing what you want and how to get it
• cross-cultural (or other) communication challenges
• presentation skills to deliver your message with maximum effect

And if you want to:

• get “unstuck” from current dramas
• achieve breakthrough insights
• handle conflict in a no-dramas way
• interact more effectively with other people
• set a course that’s right for you and stick to it
• get your business in shape to achieve its full potential

FIND YOUR OWN WAY FORWARD
Todd has helped to build my awareness of my own behaviour and provided valuable models, frameworks, techniques and practical examples for how I can work through challenges. Overall I have really noticed the difference in how I approach my career in general and my day-to-day work interactions. ~ Manager, Aon-Hewitt

What to do next

Please make your donation at the fundraising page and then to contact me directly to schedule your coaching conversation. Also: encourage your friends, colleagues and anyone else you can think of who could put this offer to good use to make a donation as well.


**Remember, the donations support a worthy global charity, with a tax receipt issued directly to the donor.

Thanks - I hope I can count on your support of my efforts and look forward to speaking to donors very soon.


The fine print: one coaching session per donor, session to be booked within 1 month of donation date and delivered within 6 months' time. Coaching sessions are for the donor only and cannot be reassigned to others.

New Year, New Beginnings...

How was your 2010? In what ways did you finish strong, and what are you looking forward to in the New Year...? Here is a quick update and a preview of what's in store at tmc for 2011 - enjoy!

The sands of time - Aussie style

My first tweet of the year (expanded here for readability):

"In 2011 I'll: build a community, ask for help, surf!!, write my book, start a company, care for family (&myself), help charities, travel, have more fun!"

As with most of us, I could easily expand that list to include many more New Year's resolutions...writing more regular blog posts being one that comes readily to mind. So I thought I'd knock that one over right away.

Planting the seeds for Positive Change

Build a community - this one's been a while in coming, largely because I've been too chicken to commit and get the ball rolling. Thing is...it's not about me, so I should get the hell outta the way. I reckon the world needs - and people want - more chances to bring good things into their lives. So while I've been talking about it for a while now and even blogging about the idea, watch for the Positive Change movement to become reality this year. All are welcome in what I hope will become a community much bigger than the sum of its parts and last a lot longer than any of us imagine, which leads to...

Ask for help - a hard-won insight gained this year is that I'm notoriously, shockingly bad at asking people to help me. There's no explanation or good reason for it. The net result is that I think I need to do it all myself; the harsh reality is...I can't. I've got so many terrific people in my world, it'd be stupid not to ask for their help, involvement, ideas and creativity. After all, if they asked and I was in the position to do so I'd happily help them out; this year it's time that I extend to them that same assumption of good intentions and be willing to accept the help of others.

Manly Beach surf break on a glorious January morning

Surf!! - Having grown up in landlocked dairy-farming country in Canada, I got a really late start on surfing. I only bought my first board on my birthday in March 2008. Since then I've done my best to make up for lost time and during this Xmas/New Year's break I've spent nearly every day surfing at my local break on Manly Beach. I always feel great after a surf, even if the swell is tiny or I've had a couple truly epic wipe-outs. 

Making a serious go of it this year means not just getting wet, but paying attention to my fitness, diet and managing the general aches and pains associated with being a 40-year-old surfer-dude. Beyond the purely physical component, as I wrote back in 2008, there's more to surfing than the sea, the sun and the stoke. Reading Shaun Tomson's excellent book The Surfer's Code on the beach this holiday reinforced that insight...and I will keep it alive this year by honouring the Code (see here for a summary) and getting more involved in my local surf community, especially the Sydney Surf Group (take note, Mark, Miki & co...see you in the lineup!).

Gaining inspiration...

Write my book - what this really means is do more writing in general. Business and personal matters took my focus away from this blog over the past two months and I've felt the absence. When I don't write my head fills up with an excess of unprocessed stuff. I don't know if this will make sense but in some ways I think it gums up the gears...and may even make me dumber!

When I write, I think things through, make connections and sharpen my perspective. I also love the act of crafting words to express ideas in ways that are both meaningful and memorable - and hopefully that are useful to my readers as well as giving needed focus to my work efforts (as I did with last year's white paper "It's not Business. It's Personal" - People Engagment that works). I want my book to be a longer version of that kind of work, to string together my thoughts, connections and ideas with a central theme and a practical focus. Rather than a book-as-vanity-project, an object to flog at work and speaking events, I want my book to make a difference in the world and to people's lives, helping them to realize their longstanding goals and dreams.

Today Austral-Asia...

Start a company - I've learned a lot over the past two years about what works and what doesn't in creating viable partnerships and joint-ventures. The greatest lesson from this informal MBA at the "school of hard knocks" has been two-fold: trust my gut and combine positive expectation with eyes-wide-open realism about what a given situation can and cannot offer. This year I'll apply that learning to launch a new international venture. I hope it affords new opportunities to collaborate with some of the talented people I've met over the past few years, and opens doors to work with new people in 2011 as well. More details to come, so watch this space...

Birthday dinner with my brother Trent

Care for family (& myself) - speaking of partnerships and good relationships, I was particularly fortunate during 2010 in (re)connecting with family. My brother Trent made the trek from Canada to Oz and I had a great time celebrating my milestone birthday together with him. I'm proud of the progress my brother Jim has made in successfully rebuilding lots of broken bridges and we've had many long and enjoyable conversations as a result. Other family connections have been more challenging and I continue to learn lessons from the work that goes into making them a success. Here I've discovered a paradox: it's never too late to reconcile, but it pays to take action sooner rather than later because life is too short to waste valuable time doing what you know doesn't work. I will extend more care both to family members and to myself this year, as I've been guilty of taking many things for granted that are in fact very fragile and require care and attention.

They need our help!

Help charities - In 2009 my company tmc made donations to several charities as part of a 1% for the planet commitment and I personally raised over $1,300 in support of the WSPA by participating in Sydney's annual City2Surf 14km race. In 2010 my activities were more modest in scale (primarily raising funds and awareness in support of the Save the Koala campaign). For 2011 I want to exceed 2009's contributions; besides my own efforts I want to kick things up a notch by reinstating my Save-the-world Sunday (STWS) series of posts to help raise awareness of what others can do to help out as well. Look for tomorrow's inaugural STWS post for more details of what I have in mind for 2011.

"Should I stay or should I go now...?"

Travel -This has been the easiest one to say and the hardest one to write about. Without doubt I'll travel a lot this year, as I have done in recent years. I love to travel and relish the variety and novelty of experience that each new journey offers; at the same time I long for constancy and the security that comes from a sense of belonging in a particular place. This tension of variety/constancy is common to many people and we must each find the balance that works for us. For my part this year I want to be intentional, not only about where my choices place me on the variety/constancy spectrum, but about fully enjoying what each experience has to offer. In the words of poet Percy Bysshe Shelley: "The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance. The wise man grows it under his feet." Which brings me to my final resolution...

Trying on a new look... :-)

Have more fun! - OK so, who doesn't want more fun, right? Well, for me this one means a couple of things: being present and enjoying the moment (rather than dwelling on what's coming up or regretting what's passed); being playful rather than serious; most of all, daring to be myself. I once heard (can't recall where) the saying, "If you want to be happy in life, learn to care a lot less what other people think." This is a tough one for me, but like a coach of mine said, "To succeed in life, do what you're most afraid of doing." 

So to sum up this year's biggest resolution in the words of the immortal entertainer Sammy Davis Jr., "I gotta be me...I can't be right for somebody else if I'm not right for me."

How Coaching Works - neat little video

Kudos to @Wellcoaches and "Coach Meg" for this little gem I found today. (It's more fun if your speakers are turned on!)

I like the way it briefly and cleverly highlights a couple key concepts about good coaching:

• the need to start by defining a solvable problem (one for which you can define a solution in crisp, everyday terms and is subject to your influence)
• for you to experience a "growth-promoting relationship" with a coach, you need to be in the driver's seat with the autonomy to feel like you are master of your own fate
• along the way, the coach provides different tools to help you explore your options and make choices as you begin to map your personal change journey 
• a good coach will also offer needed external perspective, reframing your experience and serving as a sounding board for you "think out loud" and test your ideas
• if at first you don't succeed...your coach is there to help you rebound and then try something different that's more likely to get you closer to your goals

Hope you enjoy it!
.

Highlights of EE conf in Sydney

"Culture eats strategy for lunch. You can have a good strategy but if you don't have the culture and enabling systems to implement that strategy you will fail." 

~Dick Clark, CEO Merck USA

The second in the series of Australian "National HR Solutions & Strategies Summits" on Employee Engagement takes us to Sydney and a surprise change of venue to the Grace Hotel with its neo-Gothic exterior and Art Deco interior. 

Like the previous week in Melbourne, this conference delivered the goods with a series of insightful case studies and useful lessons on the people side of business. My favourite quote of the day is listed above; in what follows are some further highlights.

The engagement journey continues…
 

Reporter: "What do you think of Western civilization?"
Gandhi: "I think it would be a good idea."
 

Sophie Crawford-Jones of PwC gave us an informative overview of how the concept of engagement has developed over the past four decades as well as her thoughts on where it’s going over the next few years. While I like with the theoretical construct Sophie offered, I also think it’s fair to say that, whatever the next big thing in engagement is likely to be in 2010 and beyond, organizations still have a great deal of work to do in the here-and-now. 

Or to paraphrase Gandhi: while many more people nowadays are familiar with the concept of people engagement, effective engagement practice is often still in its early days.
 

Who’s telling your story?
 

The good news is that, as organizations seek to create a culture that invites greater engagement with their people, there are some practices that have proven helpful. Several examples were given of how leaders and managers used compelling stories to link people’s proven resilience in the past in ways that help to get them through hard times today with a clear vision of the future. 

This narrative approach acknowledges the reality that every moment is an engagement opportunity. It's not just an "HR responsibility" but needs to involve senior leadership and happen at all levels of the organization. And it’s not one-off events or even CEO roadshows that do it - effective engagement lives and breathes in your culture and must be related to every single thing that people do in the business.
 

It’s great to have a CEO who "gets it" and even better to have one who can tell engaging stories. It’s also true that stories can only gain currency and influence people’s daily behaviour when they are told and retold. That requires leaders and managers throughout your organization who also "get it", who can spread the influence of those stories with equally motivating effect. In other words, it falls to your people managers to engage your people.
 

In this quest to develop people managers into effective engagement allies, I was heartened to hear how one organization is getting some good results. Josie Gosling gave NineMSN’s answer to making this happen, with what they call communication champions. The idea is as genius as it is simple: there are already a handful of people in your organization that everybody else asks to explain and clarify what’s going on. These people are "naturals" - they have a talent for communication and/or the status and influence within the organization’s social networks that make their voices stand out. 

Let me quickly note two useful principles at work here: 1) a use what works (or solution-focused) approach helps you get fast results by working with people’s strengths, in this case communication "naturals", and 2) the realization that these communication/influencing talents can be found anywhere in your organization and don’t necessarily have anything to do with role or positional power.
 

Once you’ve identified these people…make them your new best friends! Do everything you can to develop their natural abilities (through mentoring, coaching and skills-building) and have the courage to "give it to ‘em straight" by making them part of the inner circle of communication practice. Giving them the big-picture perspective behind the messages will help them communicate better and, in turn, model the kind of engaging communication behaviour you want happening in your organization.
 

Setting the Stage for Success
 

Once the story of your organization is captured and consciously promoted, it will start to become clear which actors may not have a part to play in future performance. In both Sydney and Melbourne, conference speakers repeatedly made the point that low turnover can actually be a bad thing. As much as you need to actively retain your best people, you also need a standard practice to move out poor contributors.
 

Doing so in a grown-up and dignified way not only shows your commitment to do right by the people who ultimately leave - it can have a powerfully positive effect on those who stay. What's more, when a difficult situation is finally addressed the relief is palpable ("Well thank god…we've been talking about this for ages, now it’s finally behind us!"). 

As Chris Disley of Mars Food Australia pointed out, managers who can effectively manage low performers and disengaged people out of the organization actually get higher engagement scores as a result.
 

Chris also shared a crucial conversations exercise in which team members are asked, "If you left the company today to start your own business, who would you take with you…?" Naturally you need to contextualize the conversation and make clear this is a though-exercise, not an invitation to jump ship! While potentially confronting, such a process of rank-ordering people’s contribution from greatest to least can be a vital step toward having the kind of open and honest conversations that need to happen in effective teams.
 

Skills + behaviours = great performance
 

Finally, besides offering the quote that heads this post, Jason Flanagan of BT Financial Group gave some ideas on how to engage with your talented up-and-comers. He described how "high-potential" staff are matched with internal projects that tackle real business problems (e.g. bureaucracy-busting, new product development, etc.). Here I’d like to introduce a distinction that helps make sense of why this is a great example of people development that’s engaging too.
 

A skill is defined as "the ability to do something well" and is essentially the knowledge gained when for example you learn a tool, process or concept on a course. A behaviour, however, is "the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially toward others" and manifests in the actual application of skills and knowledge - in real business contexts, on an ongoing basis.
 

So giving your top talent projects in the business is a great idea because it ticks many boxes:

• they get the recognition they deserve (often worth as much or more than money) and a chance to strut their stuff
• as they work on the project there’s a chance to identify skills gaps that may emerge and target them for further development (so you can send them on courses, e.g. effective communication skills, project management and the like)
• perhaps most importantly, projects offer a practical way to apply their skills in real-world business contexts; combined with an effective mentoring/coaching program this means they learn a skill, give it a go through "live" application, talk through the results, then make needed adjustments (a double-loop learning process crucial to embedding a skill as an ongoing behaviour)
• and all this development is not extra-curricular and in addition to their day-job, but sits within the organization and produces useful outcomes for the organization.

In sum, these were a couple of informative and useful conferences, filled with "war-stories" and good ideas from HR and Comms professionals. Their stories clearly made the point that your engagement strategy will stand or fall based on the ability of your people managers to make it real as they engage with people. The stories that are alive in your organization will grow and thrive to the degree that you’ve got talented managers breathing life into them - so it makes sense to set them up for success. 

And for those who don’t have a part to play in your story’s future, you need to actively do what’s right for them and your organization by applying the other basic use what works principle: if something’s not working, stop doing it!
 

Hope you found these ideas useful and they take you a few steps closer to good people engagement, increased contribution and better business results.

.

Apprentice week 4 analysis, RWA: Coaching for high performance

Summary: Today's post reviews episode 4 of The Apprentice Australia and offers a Real-World Application (RWA) on "Coaching individuals for high performance," in organizations and on their own.

To learn more about how tmc coaching can help you and your organization, read this 2-page overview on tmc coaching, learn about the Solution-Focused coaching style, or simply email Todd.


Review of episode 4: Pub Nights in Mudgee

The Boss: Mark Bouris
In the time between last week's episode and this one it seems Mark Bouris has reflected upon and/or received good counsel about his decision making in the Boardroom. I suspect this week we're starting to see more of the good judgment that's made him an Australian business success story.

This time in the Boardroom when both Heather and MaryAnn took full responsibility for aspects of their team's shortcomings - with MaryAnn even offering to forfeit Team Pinnacle's clear victory on ethical grounds - Mr Bouris praised rather than punished their displays of accountability. In addition he came down much harder on potentially misleading advertising and in so doing remedied the errors in judgement that I thought he made last week.

Another development in the Mark Bouris' style this week was what I think is a useful shift in perspective. Rather than pressing each team's Project Lead to talk about the "weakest link" in their team, Mr Bouris made several comments on the positive traits he saw in team members - which recalls the ideas offered in the analysis of episode 2 on giving feedback using the Affirm technique.

Offering someone positive feedback doesn't mean you close the door on pointing out his/her areas of development (which we've all got!). On the contrary, it's a highly effective way to help the person stay on top of his/her emotional reactions and win the Battle inside their Brain.

Neuroscience is beginning to offer hard evidence to help explain what we implicitly know from lived experience. In particular, it suggests that the "Command and Control" approach isn't an effective way to motivate, develop or lead people. When we feel threatened and get defensive our capacity to pay attention, take in new information and process it creatively essentially disappears.

In The Apprentice format, the people who get the most feedback in the Boardroom on their performance (and especially areas for development) are typically the three who are up for elimination. True, this ensures they will pay close attention to what's said, but for one of them the feedback will come too late to be effectively applied in further weeks. This week's trio on the hotseat were from Team Eventus.

This week in the Boardroom

As Team Eventus Project Lead, Heather again exhibited the sort of controlling behaviour that she did in episode 2 when she was put in charge of designing the cereal box graphics. This week did not use a consultative decision-making style and instead quickly arrived at what she thought was the "right" decision on the price for the evening. This was followed by a lot of positive talk (e.g. This is going to be great! It's going to be awesome! Why wouldn't anyone come to a night like this?! etc.) to convince herself and presumably her team that this was the right decision, but this positivity had the effect of making it hard for her team to tell her that they all thought the price was too high.

What ended up happening was the team fell victim to the psychological error of confirmation bias. They saw only the information that confirmed Heather's pre-existing decision about the price - information that ultimately proved inaccurate, since on the night people were unwilling to pay such a high price for the product on offer. Despite a last-minute inspiration to raise more money with a raffle in the bar, her team lost by over $1,000 ($2,814 vs. $3,930).

In the Boardroom Heather was credited with being "passionate and optimistic" but this loss caused her to "eat humble pie". Asked why she should stay, Heather could muster little more than, "I have so much more to give". She was advised by Mr Bouris to improve her management skills, which I'd suggest would among other things involve her learning to hear other people out rather than jumping prematurely to the one, "right" decision. This is a team member with great potential but as Mr Bouris suggested, could definitely benefit from some coaching to frankly assess her own strengths and weaknesses and clearly identify what she has to offer.

This week smooth-talking charmer Gavin missed a trick by failing to think of the table sponsorships idea - a financial blunder that cost his team the victory. Though in the Boardroom he made much of "putting his hand in" and actively participate in every project, and though he was credited with confidence and persuasiveness, he was faulted for seeming unwilling to take accountability when things fail to work out as planned.

As before, Gavin needs to do more than look good and speak well. Mr Bouris pointed out that he is "the guy the team looks toward" when they need leadership and stated, "You've been too measured...I want to see the real Gavin, I want to see the best come out of you from now on." While he is clearly strong at the intangible areas of relationship development and team building, a development area for Gavin continues to be producing tangible practical results - in this case, setting a course of action and sticking to it, not getting distracted by the dancing girls, costumes, making friends and doing deals. While clearly adept at playing to this strengths, Gavin could usefully be coached to become aware of his blindspots and formulate a course of action that addresses them.

It was hard not to feel for Blake this week, whose halting performance in the Boardroom exhibited a clear lack of confidence, even a bewilderment at what was happening around him, and a lack of energy to fight for his own survival. He was faulted by Mr Bouris for not stepping up on decisions and for flying under the radar, which Blake said he "does not do on purpose." Yet when asked why he should stay could only muster: "I don't have the background [in marketing]...I have skills but not experience. [...] I'm here to work for an organization I can build a career out of" - hardly a compelling case of value-add to Mr Bouris' organization.

Self-doubt of this sort is normal and we all experience it occasionally (otherwise we'd risk becoming thoughtless automatons or egomaniacs). The time and place to express it, however, is not the kill-or-be-killed Boardroom setting. This is a clear case of someone whose performance is slipping and could benefit from coaching. A coach could help Blake to a) identify what he wants and b) develop an practical action plan that plays to his strengths, to help him focus less on apologizing for what he can't do and get the best results from those things that he does well.


Real-World Application (RWA): Coaching for high performance

I liked the moment when Mark Bouris mused aloud, "there's some positives there, we've got to try to figure out how we get the best out of them." Above I've suggested some ways that coaching could help develop these three people. Similarly, in previous reviews I've highlighted personality and character traits that would be useful to explore and develop in a coaching conversation.

When I speak to people about coaching, however, I notice there's a lot of confusion about the subject. Since coaching came into vogue in the business world some years ago there's been an explosion in both the different kinds of coaching on offer (executive-, business-, skills-, team-, behavioural-, personal-, life-, sports-, health-, and even dating-coaching!) and the sheer number of people who now call what they do "coaching"...with widely varying degrees of expertise. There seem to be a lot of misconceptions these days about what a coach does and how the coaching process works.

Here are my views on coaching - what it is, what it isn't, and what it can do for you and your organization.

"Hey, I don't need therapy!!"
Some people shy away from coaching because they think it's going to get all soupy, emotional or just too personal...like some kind of therapy or counselling. Broadly speaking, while therapy tends to focus on feelings and experiences related to past events, coaching is oriented towards goal setting and encourages you to move forward. So you don't have to be sick to get better: while therapy aims at helping a dysfunctional person to become functional, coaching helps a functional person to achieve high performance and is action-oriented. The focus is on where your are right now, where you want to be, and how you can get yourself there.

"How's that different from having a mentor?"
Mentoring differs from coaching in both the type of expertise on offer and the nature of the relationship. A mentor typically has years of experience in the field, someone who is able to offer advice from the perspective of "been there, done that." The means the mentor is usually older and more experienced than the person being mentored and the relationship is more teacher-pupil. An important difference from coaching, then, is that a coach does not need any expertise in the client's field of work, while a mentor provides the perspective of "when I was in your shoes and facing the same situation, here's what I did...."

Coaching for high performance
A coach works in side-by-side with you to explore your current situation with the objective of identifying what you want to achieve and creating a plan of action to help you get there. In this process the coach does not have to be an expert in the client’s business - the client is the expert. The coach's expertise in this partnership is to serve as a sounding board and to occasionally reflect back certain information (like recurring themes or patterns).

Note, however, that the coach does not have the answers. The coach's role is to ask useful, thought-provoking questions - ones that encourage you to find your own answers and clarify your own thinking. The real value of a coach is to help you draw on your own wisdom and insight, arriving at your own conclusions and resolve to address the situation with practical action.

In this way a great coach is a little bit like Lao Tzu's definition of a great leader: "...he who the people barely know exists and, when his work is done and his aim fulfilled, people will say: we did it ourselves." Or as renowned psychologist Carl Rogers is credited with saying, "in order to truly help someone we must be able to enter their lives, help them resolve their issues and then exit their lives without them ever knowing we were there."

How can organizations and individuals benefit from coaching?
While it's tricky to put a precise ROI on an intangible service like coaching, here are a few stats that have been compiled over time:

• A study of Fortune 100 executives found that coaching resulted in an ROI of almost six times the program cost as well as a 77% improvement in relationships, 67% improvement in teamwork, 61% improvement in job satisfaction, 48% improvement in quality. (Manchester Consulting Group)
• Productivity increased by 88 percent when coaching was combined with training, as compared to a 22 percent increase with training alone. (International Personnel Management Association)
• A study of a Fortune 500 telecommunications company found that executive coaching resulted in a 529 percent ROI. (MetrixGlobal)
• Productivity among salespeople who had participated in an intensive coaching program rose by an average of 35 percent (Metropolitan Life Insurance Company)

Related previous posts:
Analysis of episode 1, RWA: Foundation & Force
Preview of episode 2, RWA: Conflict Management
Apprentice week 2 analysis, RWA: Giving/Receiving Feedback using Head & Heart
Apprentice week 3 analysis, RWAs: Team Leadership and Setting a Team Culture

Credits: I gained useful insight and the ROI stats, from Dutchcoach. Photo of Heather by Richard Polden.

Inspiration and insights in Oxford - Team Coaching and facilitation

Really happy with today's workshop at the IAF Europe conference in Oxford. My session The Facilitator as Coach was oversubscribed, which made for a cozy group of participants as well as five enthusiastic volunteers for the live coaching session that took place.

I've looked over the feedback I received from over 20 people who were there and am very grateful for the helpful insights and advice...not to mention the affirms! :)

A few highlights:

• Relaxed and warm approach. Love your humour!
• Very good, you allowed the process, as opposed to your agenda, run the session.
• Clear structure and explanations.
• Well demonstrated.
• Good simulation, easy to apply technique, good structure.
• The group [demonstration] worked exceptionally well, balancing between structured, to-do advice and empathy about difficulties faced.
• You are friendly and nice to listen to - very good!
• There was a clear flow of informationadvice between parties, which I am very keen on.
• The role play brought home how the dynamics of the group can work.

For people who wanted to attend the workshop and couldn't make it, here is a link to the handout: Team Coaching - Using the Reflecting Team Coaching format

If you'd like to discuss it further, catch me at the conference tomorrow morning. At 9AM I'll run a workshop (see below) and will be happy to chat with people afterwards before I leave at around noon.

Identify & Deliver on your Personal Brand
Sunday 20th September, 09h00
Room SR3
This session is for facilitators who want to better understand their brand in order to win work (for consultants) and/or influence key internal stakeholders (for employees). What difference does YOUR facilitation make? How are you presenting yourself and your services? And, crucially - are you able to consistently DELIVER on those promise?
Learn what questions to ask yourself, how to communicate your brand and how to align your work with your own personal gifts, talents and abilities in order to ensure consistent delivery.

Look forward to seeing friends new and old tomorrow for a hands-on session full of practical tools and takeaways. Align your pesonal facilitation brand with your own best abilities and you'll be delighting your clients in no time!
.

Story conference in Melbourne, 8-9 October

Celebrating Story: Approaching Change One Story at a Time

There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. ~ Ursula K. LeGuin

Have you a passion or curiosity around story? Are you a coach, facilitator, change consultant, qualitative researcher, narrative therapist, OD professional, manager or leader? Are you interested in celebrating and sharing ways that you have worked with story? Are you interested in learning more on how others have used story and narrative in their work? Are you seeking inspiration and new ways forward?

My friends at Babelfish Group have organized a two-day conference this 8-9 October in Melbourne to explore the use of story and narrative approaches to change across the areas of business, government and community.

I will be there to run an interactive session on the brain-based aspects of story, narrative and meaning-making (particularly the neuroscientific reasons why it's so challenging to shift people's narrative in organizations and why change programs often fall apart or fail to take hold as a result). Hope to see you there!

To find out more about presentations and other details, check out the conference brochure or contact conference organizer Andrew Rixon directly at +61 400 352 809.

And - tell him Todd sent you!




.

Support a worthwhile charity, get a complimentary coaching session

This week's Save-the-world Sunday post comes a day early, in order to bring you news of a special offer.

On August 9th I'll do my first City2Surf 14km race in Sydney, from Hyde Park to Bondi Beach. I want to raise as much money as I can for a cause that's dear to me, the World Society for the Protection of Animals (WSPA), in support of their efforts to help protect animals around the world from cruelty.

THE ASK: I'm seeking sponsorships of my race-for-charity. Any amount is gratefully accepted - even $10 donations add up - and you can donate from wherever you are in the world by credit card at the fundraising page.

THE OFFER: if you choose to donate AUD$50* or more, tmc will offer you a complimentary 1-hour coaching session. No further obligation is required - just make a donation and we'll book you a coaching session at your convenience. That's it!

*that's about £25 / €28 / SEK310 / HK$300 / S$57 / CAD$45 / US$40

So...with just one donation, you get four things at once:

1. A chance to try out coaching, if you've not done so before, at a knock-down rate
2. Feel-goods as you help a deserving global charity to improve animal welfare
3. The one-on-one attention of an experienced coach to address an issue that's real for you today - and walk away with practical actions to do right away
4. And as a charitable contribution, it's tax deductable!
   

Why coaching?

Coaching will benefit anyone who wants something and has not yet been able to get it. It is a structured way to renew your focus, better tackle your challenges and identify how you can make the best use of your efforts and resources to get sustained results over a period of time.

Todd asks great questions - pertinent and provocative. Then makes sure you work through to a good answer. ~ Paul Z. Jackson, Owner, The Solutions Focus

In the same way that top athletes have coaches to help them realize their full potential and improve their performance, coaching helps you to be your best. Far from being a remedial step or an admission of weakness, having a coach is a useful way to head off potential issues before they impede your performance, drawing on your existing strengths to get results.

At the outset of a new project it is also invaluable in setting the right course so that when storms blow up along the way, you will already have the means in place to handle them and not get blown off course or overwhelmed.

GETTING THINGS DONE
Coaching...gave me real clarity and focus, which was just what I was needing at the time. After just one coaching conversation, I found that I was better organised, and managing my time much more effectively. Over time, I have found that the tools I gained have stayed with me, even if my method has changed. ~ Linnet Good, writer and entrepreneur, Goodscribble

How does coaching work?

You will draw on your own experiences as you “think out loud,” with the added benefit of an impartial outside point of view for fresh perspective. Through skilled work as both a sounding board and source of positive support, a coach can help uncover your own hidden insights and ideas. An ongoing coaching dialogue also makes it more likely that you will follow through on your commitment to do the actions you know need to be done.

A coaching session gives you that all-important pause to get clarity on a course of action, identify useful and practical ways forward, and follow up on those actions to get the maximum possible learning benefit from them.

ACHIEVING BREAKTHROUGH INSIGHTS
I've found Todd's coaching consistently excellent, in one session helping me reach a goal I'd been striving towards for 15 years...in a field with which he had no previous experience! He is very creative, and generous with his time, energy and ideas. He is both very professional and excellent company. Time spent with Todd is time very well spent. ~ Sakya Kumara, Training Manager and Coach, windhorse:evolution

Some practical examples

Coaching can help if you’d like to develop your skills in any of these areas:

• assertiveness in business and personal situations
• negotiation to get the outcomes you want
• having difficult conversations with co-workers or partners
• using effective persuasion and influencing skills
• leadership development
• becoming a better manager
• coaching others to help their performance/business focus
• time management and priority-setting to get things done
• business planning
• strategy execution to turn your plans into reality
• decisiveness in knowing what you want and how to get it
• cross-cultural (or other) communication challenges
• presentation skills to deliver your message with maximum effect

And if you want to:

• get “unstuck” from current dramas
• achieve breakthrough insights
• handle conflict in a no-dramas way
• interact more effectively with other people
• set a course that’s right for you and stick to it
• get your business in shape to achieve its full potential

For more details about how coaching works and who it's right for, read more about solution-focused coaching.

LEARN TO FIND YOUR OWN WAY FORWARD
I write to sincerely thank you for the coaching...invaluable help in that I've realised it is not what you can do for me, rather how you enable me to do it for myself. When I talked with you this afternoon, on more than one occasion I answered my own question. That fact alone speaks volumes for your skills. ~ Tom Pattinson, Operations Manager, British Nuclear Group

What to do next

Please make your donation at the fundraising page and then to contact me directly to schedule your coaching conversation. Also: encourage your friends, colleagues and anyone else you can think of who could put this offer to good use - to make a donation as well.

ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS
A talented communications professional who understands the importance of smart questions, thoughtful listening and flawless execution. Clever, focused and thorough, Todd is a pleasure to work with. ~ Andrew Cole, Manager, Bell Canada

**Remember, the donations support a worthy global charity, with a tax receipt issued directly to the donor.

Thanks - I hope I can count on your support of my efforts and look forward to speaking to donors very soon...or at least once I've recovered from the 14km race!
tm
.

Following tmconsultancy on twitter

Thanks for clicking! Here’s what’s on offer.

What you can expect as a tmconsultancy follower on twitter are posts with:

• links to practical and interesting articles and blog posts on (among others) the following topics:

• Positive Change
• human behaviour and interaction
• neuroscience & brain research
• limbic responses
• emotional reactivity
• psychology, philosophy, anthropology
• employee engagement
• negotiation, mediation, facilitation
• persuasion & influence
• creativity & innovation
• coaching
• strategy development & execution
• cross-cultural business
• marketing
• communications
• adult learning principles

• personal status/location updates – esp. while travelling to neat new places
• my own occasional musings, observations, insights or outbursts
• info about worthwhile causes – esp. animal welfare/rehabilitation, habitat protection and educational programs
• retweets, kudos and thanks – to show the love
• and, of course, questions to tap the collective knowledge/wisdom of the twitterverse

Who's Todd anyway?
I’m a Canadian living in Manly, Australia (part of Sydney’s “Northern Beaches”) and I divide my time among Australia, Hong Kong, Singapore, the UK and Canada.

Ich spreche sehr gerne Deutsch, je parle pas mal le français, ik spreek wel Nederlands, estoy aprendiendo lentamente español, och jag förstår lite svensk - so I enjoy connecting with people all over the world.

My non-work interests include surfing, scuba diving, sailing, wildlife, travel, photography, design, film, cooking and learning about wine (especially big Aussie reds...the "hard" way, glass by glass).

What I do
I consult, write and speak about the many aspects of human behaviour and interaction that can help (or hinder) organizations seeking practical business results. For my professional bio check out my LinkedIn profile and, if we share interests, send me an invitation to connect.

Thanks!
tm

Movement, meditation and "Conversion" of problems into nobility

Part of the richness of the English language is that we can have equally compelling sayings which advocate opposite forms of behaviour. Consider:

ACTION
Fortune favours the bold.
He who hesitates is lost.

CONSIDERATION
Look before you leap.
Measure twice, cut once.

A short article appeared recently on the Sydney Morning Herald's "Enterprise" blog that stated: "When it comes to making decisions in business, motion is better than meditation."

My take on the author's position is that, essentially, action is better than inaction and getting stuff done accomplishes more then procrastination - which seems quite straightforward and sensible, rather like the "Action" proverbs offered above.

I think, however, that meditation is here miscast in the role of inactivity or of simply putting things off.

To this I would have to argue, in line with the "Consideration" sayings also listed above, that without reflection one risks action for action's sake and going off half-cocked all the time with a trail of destruction left in one's wake.

Then again...self-indulgent navel-gazing doesn't get you any closer to where you want to be either.

So, how to strike the balance?


Conversion

One possible answer is provided by the process of Conversion (as detailed in Section Four of the NeuroPower handbook, written by author and strategist Peter Burow).

The process, briefly stated, is a powerful yet elegant means of converting problems into opportunities for growth, development, insight and even nobility.

It's something that you can learn to do for yourself and which also works very effectively as part of a coaching process to help resolve thorny issues and get past deadlocked situations.

Here's how it works.

When confronted with problems, there are various tensions at play which serve to keep us stuck and temporarily unable to see the solution.

(Note that this approach presumes that a solution exists, that we already know it in some form, and are simply unable to access that knowledge and wisdom in our current "stuck" state.)

Confronted with these tensions, we have a choice. We can hold the tension and use it to resolve the problem, or we can collapse into one of the fight-flight-freeze modes of our Core Belief Types as a means of avoiding the issue. Some signs that we have collapsed are when we:

• continue to be stuck in the problem (that is, remain unable to access the solution)
• experience strong, sometimes overwhelming sensations of anger, hurt or fear
• tend to blame other people or external circumstances for our plight, unwilling to take responsibility ourselves
• over-identify ourselves with the problem, merging with it so that it is an integral part of our self-understanding; this ensures the problem will remain unsolvable because to solve the problem would be to give up a part of our own identity
  

Problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. - Albert Einstein


Find the level of thinking

Once we are aware that the problem exists externally to ourselves but is producing internal tensions, and that these tensions are subject to our influence, we then need to know in what level of thinking the problem sits so that we can rise above it to find the solution.

To begin, we identify whether the problem has to do with either:

personal agency (the drive towards autonomy, desire for independence and the will to preserve oneself in the face of a hostile environment), or
communion (the drive to be part of a larger whole, for interdependence, bonding to or relating with another).

Examples of agency include personal identity and self-expression, or personal success.

Examples of communion include collective survival of one's own family/tribe/community, finding a sense of purpose/destiny located in the greater good, or gaining a sense of communal connection and egalitarianism.

Find the internal tensions

The level of the problem thus established, we return to the internal tensions to determine the nature of the problem. To effectively triangulate the nature of the problem we need to know the following:

1) Is this something that has to do with me as an individual and what I want to do/have/be (my own performance, priorities, achievement, success, values, beliefs and the results I want), or with my place in relation to the group/collective/system (family, colleagues, sequential processes)

2) Does this problem concern subjective reality (interior dimensions of intuition, feelings, emotions), or has it more to do with objective reality (exterior data and facts)?

With one answer for each of these, we know in which quadrant* the problems falls, giving us insight into its nature. The tensions thus identified, we are one step closer to finding our solution.


Apply creativity

Carl Jung tells us that creativity gives the opportunity for the individual to reach a new level of consciousness - which is a way of saying: we rise above the problem to a higher level than the one that produced the problem, thereby addressing Einstein's dilemma.

Once these dimensions are clarified, it then becomes a question of what form of creative thinking (visionary or spontaneous) we need to apply in order to find a resolution to the tensions at play:

Is it something that we want to think through and come up with a solution on our own (meditation, in a sense) or do we want to talk it through with others and find a solution interactively (motion and activity)?

And so we've come full circle to our original debate of whether motion really is better then meditation when making business (or any other) decisions. The answer is: it depends on the nature of the problem that the decision seeks to address.

To recap the Conversion process:

1. Find the (external) problem's level of thinking
2. Identify the internal tensions being produced by the problem: individual vs collective, interior vs exterior
3. Apply creativity (visionary or spontaneous) to the problem
4. Identify the noble quality needed to rise above the problem and access its solution
   

Noble qualities are portals of insight into our own knowledge and wisdom

"So what's this noble quality business?!" I can hear you exclaim.

Well once we've effectively triangulated the level and nature of the problem and decided which creativity is required, we now have the coordinates we need. Using the NeuroPower framework, we can now locate the exact noble quality that will dissolve the tension and solve the problem. A few examples of noble qualities that can be usefully applied to problems (there are 54 in all) include integrity, inspiration, diplomacy, courage, discernment, responsibility, objectivity and drive.

Once we can see beyond the tension of the polarities that are pulling us back and forth (a duel of dualism, if you will) and have gotten above and outside it, we are then able to delve deep into our own character and access a deeper wisdom than what's available in our everyday life.

From this vantage point, it's like viewing the problem through a portal of wisdom and insight - one that rewards us with both a set of actions to take and the energy to carry those actions through, without procrastination or prolonged inactivity.

So while all this talk of nobility, character and wisdom and the like might seem quite esoteric and mystical...the fact is that in my experience and that of the people I've worked with, the Conversion process produces real, practical solutions to really thorny and seemingly intractable problems.

That's because, although noble qualities like integrity, inspiration, diplomacy, courage, discernment, responsibility and others may seem at first glance to be too generic to be helpful, the Conversion process is about finding the exact noble quality that will make sense to the person stuck in the problem and help them get above it, to a place where its solution becomes apparent.

And when it comes to making business decisions - that's what it's all about.
TM



*-Note that this lines up with the four quadrants of Ken Wilber's Four Faces of Truth, defined by the polarities "individual vs collective" and "interior vs exterior".