"Soft" skills & behaviour change: important lessons for leaders

A conversation this week reminded me that developing effective people managers takes more than soft skills, it requires consistent behaviours in the workplace. To that theme, below is an excerpt from my recent paper on employee engagement, "It's not Business. It's Personal: People Engagement that works."

Over dinner last night I had a conversation with a couple of senior leaders from a European multinational. Among various topics, what got us most animated was the question of how to develop great people managers while also keep the technical experts that are the backbone of the business. There was agreement on the need to strike a good balance between coaching and mentoring. The overall theme: soft skills are important, but not enough - organizations need to create lasting and positive behaviour change if strategy is going to get executed on a daily basis.

Skills-building & Behaviour development

Many respondents to the [McLeod employee engagement] review stressed the need for better training for managers in so-called soft or people skills […] Many felt that current skills training concentrated too heavily on qualifications and too little on how people skills were implemented within the workforce.

It’s worth making a distinction at this point: skills differ from behaviour. Skill is the ability to do something well and describes the knowledge gained when you learn a tool, process or concept on a course. Behaviour is the way in which one acts or conducts oneself, especially toward others; it’s about applying your skills in real business contexts, on an ongoing basis.

Developing people managers to better engage with people requires more than one-off skills-building workshops. It’s about helping them develop consistent, positive, productive behaviours. The addition of more and more technical “soft skills” doesn’t get you there. Rather it’s a matter of helping managers to develop the behaviours that are adaptive to the situation, so they know when and how to deploy their skills to best effect.

The challenge is that many managers who got promoted because of their technical expertise still relish and covet the role of technical expert. You can send them to one training course after another. But do those skills get applied in their work, or is it just another course binder that joins the others on the shelf, unused and swiftly forgotten?

It takes time to help people managers turn the corner and learn step back from doing the work in order to manage others to get the work done takes time. Developing adaptive people management behaviour also requires mentoring and coaching. So how’s your organization’s bench strength of mentors and coaches?

Dead fish in the room

[M]iddle managers who become convinced of the need for change can themselves run up against barriers […] the most formidable blocks to success were the behaviours and attitudes of the most senior managers. The […] top managers believed that their status in the organization was evidence enough that they ‘had what it took’ to be regarded as a leader, and regarded their development as therefore unnecessary. Nonetheless, they believed that the managers below them needed it. However, when the managers returned to the workplace with a clearer idea of what leadership should look like, they became much more aware of the poor quality of leadership role-modelled by their senior managers, and their frustrations increased. This was deepened by another major problem, which was that when the managers attempted to implement their learning, their suggestions for improvement were rejected or ignored by their somewhat defensive and/or reactionary bosses. The result was disenchantment, greater cynicism and lower morale among the manager group, who eventually stopped making any suggestions or trying new ways of leading.

Getting senior management sponsorship of people engagement and development programs is always listed as a must-have success factor. When you look at the dismal example provided by the “top managers” described above it’s clear why. (The old saying “a fish rots from the head down” comes to mind…) These chaps are certainly NOT mentors or role-models and you can imagine the frustration of the people managers test-driving their new leadership skills in those organizations!

While this situation is extreme in its dysfunction, it’s still true that mentoring of people managers by more senior managers can be complicated by reporting relationships. After all, it’s hard to admit to your boss that you sometimes feel like you don’t know what you’re doing!

Mentoring should be complemented by coaching, whether by internal people, an external coaching professional, or both in combination. An external coach offers an objective sounding board and helps people think through their challenges without being hampered by reporting lines and competing organizational priorities. 

Most of all, coaching enables “double-loop learning” (learn a skill, then go try it out, then talk to the coach about how it went, adjust course, go try it again) which helps your people turn otherwise mechanical skills into enduring, lived behaviours. And that, in turn, means you’re getting the full ROI out of those skills-building courses, along with practical business results.

Keep reading in the weeks to come for further excerpts on people managers, skills building and behaviour change from It's not Business. It's Personal: People Engagement that works.

And for more ideas on how to develop great people managers with the behaviour needed for success in your organization, remember you can get posts from the tmc blog sent to you automatically. Just go to the top-right side of this page and either click on the Get blog updates by RSS feed button or enter your email address under Get blog updates sent to your email.

Positive People Engagement - Australian workshop series

I'm happy to announce a series of practical 2-day workshops that will cover the "how-to" of Employee Engagement. If Positive People Engagement is a focus for you and your organization, this is the workshop to attend in 2010. Read on to find out how to claim your 10% discount off the registration cost!

The workshops are happening across Australia in the second half of August on the following dates and locations: Sydney on 16-17, Melbourne on 19-20, Perth on 23-24 and Brisbane on 26-27.

With the help of these informative and hands-on sessions you'll:

1.     Understand how to transform strategy into action and results
2.     Learn how to engage people before, during, after major change initiative
3.     Bring onboard and integrate new hires for faster and high productivity
4.     Gain the elusive "discretionary input" secret
5.     Outline what is "most critical" to engage and retain employees
6.     Link your brand with specific engagement objectives
7.     Use storytelling to engage your staff
8.     Energise and involve senior management in your engagement efforts

Check out the full course program.

Call 02 9085 7456 to register or click on the links for the city nearest you provided above.

And remember: to claim your 10% discount mention this blog post when you register.

Fun Friday: make a Wordle word-cloud!

Here's a bit of fun for your Friday (with a hat-tip to Lee and Louise for reminding me of this great tool). With wordle you can generate “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text. You can tweak your clouds with different fonts, layouts, and color schemes. Here's one I made from the RSS feed of the tmc blog.

It's interesting to see which words are more prominent. Try it out on text of your own!

As a way to keep things in perspective, I like this wordle. Called "Childs play" it's simple, to the point, and should remind us all that life used to be a lot less complicated...

Leadership lessons of World Cup football finalists

Getting top talent to play (and work) well together is a real challenge. Read on for ideas on how to build team dynamics and positive behaviours that lead to world-champion success

My support of Oranje (as the KNVB Koninklijke Nederlandse Voetbalbond or "Royal Netherlands Football Association" is more commonly called, a.k.a. the Flying Dutchmen or Clockwork Orange) has been both longstanding and long-suffering.

At each major tournament I would watch alongside other orange-clad fans as the Dutch national side - a team absolutely loaded with an absurd amount of football talent - would exhibit disjointed team play that, while marked with flashes of brilliance, too often stumbled toward the same grim ending: defeat and elimination.

The Dutch Dilemma - Overcome!

The 2010 FIFA World Cup has changed that. Yesterday was the high point of the Netherlands' successful campaign to return to the World Cup final for the first time in 32 years.

Coach Bert van Marwijk has overcome what I would call the "Dutch dilemma" (best described by former Ajax coach Henk ten Cate as: taking 23 top players with top egos and wishes and ideas and getting them play together as an effective team during several years of intermittent matches). It's a tough and unenviable task, one that's claimed many a coach's job and reputation in the past. Where Bert seems to have got it right is in building a team with depth.

Observes Leo Beenhakker (ex Real Madrid coach, ex Ajax coach, ex Oranje team manager and currently technical director of Feyenoord) "the way Bert works [is]: if back 1 is suspended, you use back 2. It’s logical. Van der Wiel is suspended, you use Boulah. I’d use De Zeeuw instead of De Jong. Don’t make a fuss. Get out there and play the best football you have."

I think this has sent the clear message to a team full of stars who could be forgiven for aspiring to primadonna status: "you are not irreplaceable; right behind you is another player who knows your job and can do it as least as well as you." Pretty swiftly it becomes clear that results are what counts, and in a team sport that means playing together as a effectively as a team.

Building your world-champion team

Here are some lessons from the Flying Dutchmen to put into effect with your team:

1) Everyone knows the game plan and what part they play in it. Any team is made up of interlinked roles and for the team to function, those interactions need to happen smoothly and according to an agreed plan.

2) While the coach ultimately makes the call on who starts, players are invited to give their views and input from their particular perspective and place on the field. It's a foolish coach who presumes that he's got perfect line-of-sight into everything that's happening in the game; smart coaches draw on the knowledge and experience of players to inform their decision-making.

3) Again, results are key and all eyes are firmly on the prize: "We have a mission," says assistant coach Frank de Boer. "That mission is to be champions of the world."

4) How the coach connects with the team must help foster a sense of belonging for each team member. Superstar players aren't playing WC games for the money - in the best teams, they're playing for their country and for each other. Empathy, inclusion and relationships, create a personal connection so that internal competition does not tear the team apart. Build authentic relationships between team members and they'll go the extra mile for you, contribute to each other's achievement and performance, and rightfully share in the jubilation of success.

5) And...there's a game to be won! So now that everyone's internally connected, how do you put on your best game-face and beat the other guys? You need to drill the basics, get clear on the step-by-step actions, make resources available, allocate them efficiently and leverage them to move forward. Watch game tapes before upcoming matches, ensure good information flow, analyze data for patterns to apply and exploit.

6) Finally, having something bigger than oneself helps motivate extraordinary contribution. Putting on that orange jersey, each player becomes part of something bigger: an extension of the Orange Army in the stands, carrying the national colours onto the field of battle, carrying the hopes of so many fans and earning their cheers of delight when the prize is won.


On to World Cup victory!!! 


Oh, and remember: to get posts from the tmc blog sent to you automatically, go to the top-right side of this page and either click on the Get blog updates by RSS feed button or enter your email address under Get blog updates sent to your email.

Social media is good for you (when done well!)

Today as I set out to share some highlights from my past two days at the Melcrum Social Media conference in Sydney, I notice that I've still got a nice buzz...not from the networking cocktail session but from the interaction, both face-to-face and on twitter during the day. Read on to find out why social media is good for you, some ideas on how to do it well - and don't miss your TOP TIP at the end!


Social Media conference highlights

During the conference there was a particularly active tweetstream and there have already been a few great blog posts about the conference; I particularly like the insights of Emma McCleary:

Social media is about long-term engagement; creating things that people want to use and growing spaces online that encourage people to work communally.

We’re all a copy and paste away from inside to outside so there’s no reason to categorise social media as a risk to your organisation or check every post, status update or tweet happening if   you’re not also checking emails or USB sticks that carry files in and out of your workplace.

and Alison Pignon:

...if you don’t trust your workforce, then you have a management issue, not a communication issue. Meanwhile, encouraging free and open discussion (based on a good social media policy and user guidelines) can only help to demonstrate the trust you do have in them. 

Rather than feeling that it’s absolutely necessary to first build a social media strategy and get buy-in from the whole senior team before launching a new tool, sometimes it’s just best to go out there and try it.

Here are a few of the thought-provoking gems provided by Euan Semple's report of the state of social media (for now...):

• Social Media is about "Globally distributed, near instant, person to person conversations" from Cluetrain Manifesto
• Online the Customer really is King/Queen: “If you don't want me to criticize your product, don't have a shit product."~Dave Weinberger
• "In a knowledge economy there are no conscripts, only volunteers (but we train managers to manage conscripts!)"~Peter Drucker

CORPORATE CULTURES

• Paradox of corporate cultures: going to useless, time-wasting, pointless meetings = good, but having useful conversations with people via social media = bad(?!?)
• What's it say about corp culture that staff are unwilling to enter things about themselves on company databases/intranets that they will freely put on web via FB, etc? Dramatically low levels of trust...

HOW-TO

• "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it." ~Sinclair Lewis
• How to run social media at your organization: Just do it! "Keep moving, stay in touch, head for the high ground" (from US Marines)
• When confronted by resistance (see "fear of losing control" below) and asked to "prove" the "ROI of social media?" Simply reply "what's ROI of not doing it?" Or, better still, "what's the COI?" (cost of inaction) of continuing to do nothing to engage with our own people?
• Beware of trying to "manage" online communities - they will grow organically, or not at all
• If you build it, they might or might not come... "It's easier to build a tool for the community than a community for the tool."
• And always remember: "No matter what you are trying to achieve social media adoption happens one person at a time and for their reasons not yours."

FEAR OF LOSING CONTROL (Hint: you never had it)

• People worry about "losing control". You don't have control anyway! What you DO have w. social media tools is the chance to influence
• "How do I control the msg?" - Try instead "management by being interested": seed existing conversations w. good questions (influence-not-control)
  
• These technologies surface what's going on in your organization (culture, behaviour, etc.) -->Agreed!:
• "Social media in organizations is great for surfacing morons"(!) - yes people will initially have a whinge, but they didn't start whingeing just because social media appeared; it's already happening around the watercoolers. Providing a forum surfaces problems that want fixing and (for those people who never stop whingeing) identify mis-matches in the organization that need addressing for everyone's benefit

BEING REAL

• Good tweets (that build trust & relationships), including those by staff on a corporate twitter account, need to be human and not corporate drone-speak; even inane tweets have a place if they are authentic and create connections
• Sadly, "Watching big corporations trying to get into 'this social media stuff' is a bit like watching your dad dancing at a disco" (LOL!)  
• The most tragic example lately: "BP's biggest failure wasn't only mechanical or engineering, it was in not actively building trusted social networks and not giving straight answers when given the chance

ONLINE EXPRESSION & LIVE INTERACTION

• "Even if no one read my blog, I'd still write it...makes me more thoughtful, more aware, notice more things" 
• Online media won't replace face-to-face interaction; a great use of online collaboration is to improve the quality of the face-to-face you DO have (e.g. by brainstorming ideas in an online forum before meeting face-to-face to arrive at a final decision, or getting a sense of someone's interests and areas of potential collaboration from their LinkedIn profile before meeting for a cafe-chat)

WHAT'S THE POINT OF SOCIAL MEDIA...?

• A few answers: it helps unlock the knowledge the exists in many people's heads throughout the organization/network, so people can find answers and information faster and easier - and get stuff done; it helps break down silos by encouraging interaction; it gives a place to have the conversations (they're already having) in a way that can be entered and influenced by managers and leaders - as equals and colleagues...

Finally, the thing I liked most about the conference was the sense that no one really has all the answers now. Like speaker Helene Bradley-Ritt put it, "implementing [social media] is a change journey" and on that journey we're all fellow travellers, so it was great to be a part of an event designed to help each other along the way to do great things!

Warm, twuzzy feelings...

What explains the need of our BlackBerry-bearing, Twitter-tweeting Facebook friends for constant connectivity? Are we biologically hardwired to do it? Do our brains react to tweeting just as they do to our physical engagement with people we trust and enjoy?

So how come I'm still buzzing today...? The answer to that question and the ones just above is found in this Fast Company article about research by Neuroeconomist Paul Zak (aka "Dr Love"), showing that social media can help spike oxytocin levels in the brain and reduce stress hormones cortisol and ACTH.

"Social networking might reduce cardiovascular risks, like heart attack and stroke, associated with lack of social support" because our brains interpret activities like tweeting as if we were directly interacting with people we have empathy for and care about: "E-connection is processed in the brain like an in-person connection."

Perhaps this is why so many Gen-Y's, whose lives are increasingly shaped by social media, expect to be able to maintain those important connections in the workplace - so much so that one source indicates "for 20 percent of Millennials, or Generation Y-ers (those born from 1980 onwards) a ban on social media in the workplace is often a deal breaker" when deciding whether or not to take a job. 

So here's your TOP TIP: don't just sit there - apply all these great ideas and get connected like your life depended on it...it just might! And please, allow me do my small part to promote your health: in just 10 seconds you can connect yourself with upcoming blog posts - enter your email address in the "Get blog updates sent to your email" box in the top-right side of this page or click on the "Get blog updates by RSS feed" button. (Wondering how RSS works? Watch this video.)

How to celebrate International Social Media day

Here are three things you can to celebrate International Social Media Day wherever you are. 

Since social media is, after all, "social" I've offered a few ideas to make you feel welcome and help you to get your bearings in the brave new world of social media.

Get on twitter - sign up for an account, follow @tmconsultancy and send me a tweet - I'll follow you back and put you in touch with some great free resources I've found that'll help you get the most out of twitter.

Create your LinkedIn profile (which is like Facebook for professionals) - then check out my profile and if it looks like we've got interests in common, send me an invitation to connect. (Another popular option is XING, same deal applies: here's my profile).

Start a blog - A more ambitious venture but if you're bursting with things to say you'd be surprised how many people want to hear about it, just tweet me (you are on twitter now, aren't you?) and I'll come check it out!

Until then, Happy International Social Media Day! Now go have some cake.

How to promote Positive CHANGE

In which your Author makes an impassioned Plea to help people to promote Positive CHANGE and end the trauma-inducing, ineffective practices of traditional "change management".

Change is a funny thing

It's happening all the time, all around us.

The desire to change things for the better awakens creativity and innovation. It inspires and dazzles and delights and stimulates progress, evolution, learning and development.

So how did change become such a traumatic experience for so many people?

In many organizations, "change management" practices often do far more harm than good as they:

• cause chaos and reduce productivity without getting the desired results
• provoke powerful emotions ("resistance") that are not channeled into useful outcomes
• get only short-term compliance and lip-service but not enduring meaningful change
• use jargon-filled, confusing messages that aren't matched by real action
• concentrate on what's wrong, broken, deficient and the obstacles, barriers, problems
• rely on grand change plans that look great on paper but don't account for real people

So what if, instead of these unrealistic and trauma-inducing change practices, there was another way?

Positive CHANGE

In order to make constructive progress towards an outcome that you have identified and want to achieve, it makes good sense to follow the path of least resistance and greatest efficacy. That involves thinking about change in a different way.

Choose positive over negative
Highlight what's better, use what's working
Appreciate differences
Nothing happens 'til the ball is in play
Generate possibilities
Everyday language

Choose positive over negative 
Quite simply: given a certain amount of time available, you are much likely to move closer to your desired outcome if you spend more time discussing what you want than what you don’t want. You have a choice where you put your focus, so focus on what's working (instead of what isn’t) progress (not blame), influence (not control), collaboration (not expert input), resources (not deficits), simplicity (not complication) and practical actions (not problem-definitions).

Highlight what's better, use what's working
Often solutions are right there in front of you, if you only have eyes to see them. Notice the times when things had happened a little better - after all, it makes no sense to focus on what’s absent! Having a “use what's working” attitude means finding what's working well and doing more of it. By default, that gives less energy to the things that aren't working well and moves you more quickly toward positive outcomes.

Appreciate differences 
Every new situation is different - beware of ill-fitting theory, don’t come to the party with preconceived notions, instead ask about things that helped in this case and encourage people to do more of that. Also, when tracking progress use the questions “What’s better? What do you notice that's different from last time?" and help make needed course-corrections by asking "What will you do differently next time to get closer to your goal?”

Nothing happens 'til the ball is in play
Whenever people come together to effect change, the real action is in the interaction. It's like a game of tennis - each player has a game-plan in mind, but nothing interesting happens ‘til the ball’s in play - and no one could have predicted what direction things take from there. By addressing the interaction, we avoid focus on which side is the cause, or who is to blame, and instead make good use of the change that's already taking place. People are co-constructing their experience, all day, every day. They are creating all kinds of great things between them - how can you help by collaborating and drawing attention to the ways they do it?

Generate possibilities (past, present and future) 
We often think of possibilities only in terms of the future, what about possibilities based on the best of what’s happened in the past and right now, today?

Everyday language
Notice what words are used and how, prefer simple words to avoid misunderstanding

The difference that makes a difference

When you adopt a Positive CHANGE mentality, lots of great things happen.

You find yourself interacting better with other people and can often influence situations more effectively. Conversations lead to progress instead of awkward dead-ends. You're able to have difficult conversations with confidence and resolve differences more successfully. Things that used to trigger your knee-jerk emotional reactions can be put into perspective when you simply ask yourself, "if my objective is positive change, what's the smart move here...?"


So, what's your next smart move? To be sure you hear about the next post in this series on change, click on the "Get blog updates by RSS feed" button or enter your email address in the "Get blog updates sent to your email" box in the top-right side of this page. (Wondering how RSS works? Watch this video.)

Technology as a loudspeaker - what are you broadcasting?

Technology is a terrific enabler and accelerator of organizational processes, but it's not a cure-all. Read on to explore the nexus where technology overlaps human behaviour and interaction; learn why it's important to know what message your technology is broadcasting - both to your employees and to your clients!


In April I was invited to a seminar in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on the uses of technology in higher education and corporate training.

Among other tech companies and educational institutions, Microsoft was on hand to showcase Surface, its "social way of computing," as envisioned for university campuses and business meetings of the future.

In this idealized future, businesspeople easily find and exchange information with world-wide colleagues and their road-warrior lives are made easier with access to timely information on hand-held devices that speeds them along to fruitful and interactive meetings.

It was pretty slick stuff: technology enabling a whole new way of doing business and, as you'd expect given the theme of the conference, there was a lot of enthusiasm and buzz in the room.

As human behaviour specialist, I was left wondering how these admittedly snazzy tech-tools would help you to deal more effectively with colleague who's just off a red-eye flight filled with screaming kids and has spilled coffee on herself in the taxi ride from the airport.

Or how those gizmos would help to effectively manage interpersonal conflict that might arise in one of these tech-enabled meetings...quite possibly with the frazzled and overtired colleague just described!

Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...

The more (and faster) technology changes, the more human behaviour remains stubbournly the same - complex, unpredictable and non-linear.

Now don't get me wrong: I love my gadgets as much as the next guy and technology is a great aid to our working lives. It's in the nexus where technology overlaps human behaviour and interaction, however, where we can clearly see that technology's role as an enabler and accelerator of what's already happening in the organization (you can even say it's also an amplifier) is not as straightforward as some tech-enthusiasts may believe.

For example, if you've been in meetings that look a bit like this unfortunate group - where people aren't engaged, there's an atmosphere of negative interaction and conflict, and a people manager who fundamentally can't manage people - then it's probably clear to you that no amount of technology is going to improve the situation.

Putting touch-screen computers into this meeting will not magically transform it into a smoothly-functioning team. Quite the opposite, in fact: in dysfunctional organizational cultures, technology is more likely to give people more tools to extend unhelpful behaviours and disengagement to a much wider audience, even faster (email flame wars, anyone...? or text messages that read: "PLEASE get me outta here! :-( MeetingFAIL!!!").

Technology as enable/accelerator/amplifier (or, behavioural loudspeaker) 

If you remember the classic technology equation (Garbage In = Garbage Out) and then factor in technology's role as enabler/accelerator/amplifier, it's clear that technology most often functions as a loudspeaker to surface dodgy behaviours in an organization. Technology therefore cannot be the quick-fix panacea to address unhelpful behaviours, because they aren't technology problems - they're management problems, and they need management solutions.

This fact about technology helps explain why some leaders are so resistant to introducing social media tools - because amplifying the kind of talk that happens in a toxic corporate culture will most likely serve to  increase dissastisfaction (and staff turnover), to undermine the command-and-control structure typical of such organizations...or quite possibly a combination of both.

So I would argue that our awareness of the kinds of behaviour being enabled/accelerated/amplified with technology (social media or otherwise) needs to at least keep up with the pace of technological change. And in many organizations that's going to be a pretty steep learning curve.

When it comes to awareness of human behaviour dynamics and taking practical action to create Positive Change, we can't release a new patch or upgrade each year, it's an ongoing effort. Thankfully it's the same complexity and unpredictability of people that also makes us hugely creative and adaptable - and that's very good news indeed for those looking to create Positive Change.

Some questions remain - what do you think?

My next post will tell you more about what Positive CHANGE looks like and how it can help shape behaviour and interactions in your organization. The end result is certainly worth the effort: effective teams that can take adversity in stride and maintain a positive focus on contribution and results.

Other interesting questions remain: in what ways could technology actually expand and deepen our perspectives on human behaviour so we interact and engage with each other more effectively? Beyond being simply an enabler and accelerator, can technology serve to positively shape human behaviour and interactions...?

I look forward to discussing these questions and more at next week's instance of another technology-in-business conference: Melcrum's Social Media conference in North Sydney. See you there!

Social Media in Sydney - see you next week!

Still need convincing about the reach and relevance of social media? 

Check out this short video and then come along to Melcrum Australia's Social Media conference next week in North Sydney. The format is one day of workshops on the 29th followed by a day of speakers  on the 30th (for which I'll be acting as Chair). 

You'll hear lots of ways to integrate social media within your internal communication strategy from speakers representing Deloitte, Unilever, NAB, Suncorp, Ericsson, as well as Melcrum's own Robin Crumby. In addition, UK-based Social Media Consultant Euan Semple will offer a 1/2 day workshop on day one followed by a keynote on Day Two entitled Social Media: The communication revolution.

There's just a couple of spots left - so grab the conference brochure today and I'll see you there!

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!
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