Leading in a complex and changing world

The work of Ralph Stacey and colleagues, on the challenges of leading organisations in an increasingly complex world, provides a number of practical insights which can help us as business leaders trying to navigate through increasingly difficult times.

 

Stacey views organisations as complex, self organising, adaptive systems that are never static, always in the process of evolution and change. He sees leadership largely as a process of human relating and he stresses both the importance of understanding power relationships and the act of evaluating options to make choices.

 

The range and breadth of the ideas set out in numerous books and articles by Stacey and his co-workers are too detailed to summarise here. There are, however, some clear implications for the role of leader that are well worth summarising. These are:

 

• A leader is only a leader to the extent that they are recognised as such. In other words, it is a social process. The leader is formed and shaped by the group as much, if not more, than he / she forms and shapes it.
• Leaders are sense makers. They are expected to identify and articulate emerging themes. However, whilst they need to be able to identify patterns and trends, they do not necessarily have to have all the answers.
• Effective leaders tend to become idealised and to be seen to stand for a set of values and an ethical code. This is what gives a leader influence. It is also what, without the necessary modesty and a realistic, grounded self image, frequently causes leaders to derail.
• Spontaneity is a key leadership characteristic. This is very different from impulsiveness. It combines the attributes of reflection and present moment awareness with the ability to act imaginatively.
• Awareness of power relationships, how to use and avoid abusing the use of power in managing the inclusion and exclusion of individuals and groups, is something that all good leaders share. Leadership is an act of dominance, but to be effective this must be achieved with sensitivity.

 

Finally,  according to Stacey: “One recognised as leader has a greater capacity to live with the anxiety of not knowing and not being in control”.

Ten More Top Tips for Professional Presentations

Most of us have now heard that only 7% of the impact of a powerful presentation comes from the content of what you say, whereas 38% comes from how you use your voice and a surprising 55% is credited to your posture, movement and physical presence. To put it another way, the music and the dance of your presentation is much more important than the words.

 

This is not to say that the words don’t count. You still have to get them right, because presentations conform to the computing maxim of “garbage in, garbage out”. However, excellent content will be completely undermined if the music and the dance do not fully support and enhance them.

 

Here then are my ten top tips for effectively projecting your voice in presentations:

 

o        Volume – quite simply, you need to speak much louder than you think you do. You have to project your voice and throw it to the back of the room.

o        Modulation – think of a presentation as a piece of music with varied tone and pitch. Sometimes the voice needs to be warm, rich and mellow, at other times confident, dramatic or enthusiastic. Remember to use the lower registers of your voice.

o        Variation in speed – continuing with the musical analogy, good speakers vary the speed of their presentation to match the mood they are trying to convey and to keep the audience engaged.

o        Slowing down – most of us speak too fast when we present. Speaking slowly, especially when there is variation in speed, tone and expression, will give you much greater authority and presence. Another great bonus is that your mind has to work less hard to keep up with what you are saying and to be sure it feeds you the right word at the right time. Observe some excellent speakers and notice how many of them speak in a slow but expressive manner.

o        Articulation and enunciation – when you are stressed, your jaw and tongue tighten and you will tend to express your words less clearly. When presenting, you need to over emphasize your words and to accentuate syllables.

o        Stress and emphasis – this is like verbal highlighter pen. Pick out key words and phrases by emphasizing them with a stronger tone and clearer articulation. Indicate in this way the words and points you want your audience to notice. Occasional alliteration helps here. That is, making the word sound like what it is. For example, saying the word “loud” loudly and the word “soft” softly.

o        Repetition – repeat key phrases with different vocal emphasis.

o        Put pauses in - the use of silence can be very effective. When you make a strong point, pause for a moment to give it time to fully sink in. Short, medium and long pauses scattered throughout a speech can transform it. If the speech is initially scripted, I will normally write the pauses in with “/” for a short pause at the end of a sentence, “//” for a medium pause and “///” for a long pause, when I especially want to emphasize a point.

o        Breathe – breathe deeply, from the diaphragm. Also, as you stand up to speak, take a few deep breaths and then remember to keep breathing. It will help control your nerves and improve the tonal quality of your voice.

• Resonance – if you have a good posture, standing upright and balanced, with your shoulders back and down, and if you breathe properly and diaphragmatically, this will significantly increase the richness, resonance and authority of your voice.

 

There is so much to say about the skills of giving effective presentations. In later articles I will talk about how to improve the “dance”. That is, the 55% credited to physical expression and posture. I will also write about preparing for presentations

Leadership with impact

The wisdom of the leadership gurus

Hundreds, indeed thousands of books and articles have been written on the subject of leaders and leadership. Most attempt, in frequently contradictory ways, to describe what it means to be a great leader. After absorbing all the theories, concepts and models, however, we are often left wondering of what practical use they are to us. As pragmatic would be leaders, we strive to give a sense of purpose and direction in situations that seem more pressured, messier and less predictable than those described by the gurus.

What we all already know about great leaders

Paradoxically, most of us are perfectly capable of recognising effective leaders when we see them. We instinctively sense the difference between those leaders who have “it”, who create a sense of vision, purpose and direction, and those who frankly have not got what it takes. Sadly, in most organisations, experience tells us that there are more of the latter than the former.

So what is it that we recognise in great leaders that we find so difficult to put into words?

I would argue that, although great leaders come in wide array of shapes and sizes, they all have the rare ability to inspire a strong positive reaction from those around them. When they enter a room, they draw everyone’s attention. They have a unique and positive impact on others, something that is perhaps best captured by the ambiguous term “presence”.

Leaders that have “presence” have a solidity about them, an inner stillness and a sense of personal authority. They appear alive and vital. Their behaviour is congruent. There is no sense of personal discomfort or contradiction in the way they hold themselves, nor in the unconscious messages transmitted by their nonverbal behaviour and posture. They are authentic and real in the way they connect with and relate to other people and are very aware of the environment around them and of the impact they make. There is an energy and a life force about them.

Have you got “it”?

Those of you who are perfectly described by the previous two paragraphs need read no further. For the rest of us mortals, the good new is that great leadership is not something that just happens by accident, rather it occurs as a result of specific behaviours that can be acquired and learned over time. Below are some practical tips on how to develop your presence and impact as a leader. All are based on sound research and there is a bibliography at the end for those who want to read further.

Get rid of your inner critic. We all of us have a sabotaging inner voice. It is somewhat like a parrot sat on our shoulder, continually criticising what we do, predicting failure and comparing us unfavourable to those around us. It is the part of us that tries so hard to do well. Once you become aware of it, you will notice that it runs a non-stop commentary that is characterised by fear, self doubt, self consciousness and self judgement. It desperately wants to impress others.

All of this noise going on in your head gets in the way gets in the way of your innate capacity to learn from experience and to grow.

Tim Gallwey, of “The Inner Game of Tennis” [1] fame, suggests that our performance in any given situation is equal to our potential minus the damage caused by our ongoing and incessant self talk. Only when the mind is still is peak performance reached, whether this be as a tennis player or as a leader. It requires less thinking, calculating, judging, worrying, fearing, hoping, trying, regretting, controlling, jittering, or distracting. A state that is best achieved by the engrossed attention and relaxed concentration of a mind that is focused and still.

Learn to focus your attention. Top athletes have long been aware of the power of focused attention. This means having a clear purpose and specific goals, and then immersing yourself totally in the activities required to achieve them. Some call this focus, others call it flow, yet others call it being in the zone. When we are absolutely clear about our intentions, focus follows naturally, like a cat following a fly with its eyes. Gallwey says that focus is what distracts us from what is distracting us.

Milhay Csikszentmihalyi [2], in his bestselling book on the subject of “Flow”, talks about a state in which “action follows upon action according to an internal logic that needs no unconscious intervention by the actor”. He argues that: “Flow is a state of self forgetfulness, the opposite of rumination and worry. People in flow exhibit a masterly control of what they are doing, their responses perfectly attuned to the changing demands of the task”.

Notice and be mindful of what you do. Given what has already been written about freeing yourself from your inner critic, this may seem like contradictory advice. However, a key part of being an effective leader is noticing precisely what you do. Noticing is the opposite of judging, it is a neutral curiosity and mindfulness that constitutes the not trying of thinking. Freed from inner commentary and criticism, you are able to take in a much broader band and quality of information. The simple act of noticing and being curious frequently leads to natural and effortless change. It is part of what Beisser (1970) [3] describes as “The paradoxical theory of change”.

Be fully connected to your senses and aware of what is going on around you. A recent four year research programme into leadership effectiveness, conducted by researchers from Ashridge Business School and the prestigious HEC in France [4], identified awareness as a key leadership capability. According to their findings, highly effective leaders, although differing from each other in most other regards, were all skilled at coming alive in the moment, using all their senses. They lived in the here and now, open to their intuitions and emotions.

There are no pat formulas you can apply to being an effective leader, no one way to success. You have to be there in the moment, bringing all your faculties to bear to work it out. The most effective leaders were those who were able to use all their intelligence, sense and experience to connect with others. They were able to tolerate uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity without the urge to rush to simple minded solutions.

Awareness is a form of experience that Joyce and Sills (2001) [5] defines as, “being in touch with one’s own existence, with what is … a person who is aware knows what he does, how he does it, that he has alternatives and that he chooses to be as he is”. At its best, awareness is a non-verbal sensing or knowing what is happening here and now. It is what Sills calls, “feeing fully alive, exquisitely aware of being in the moment with a sense of connection, spontaneity and freedom”. It sounds simple when put like that!

Don’t hold your breath. When under pressure or facing difficult challenges, we all have a tendency to hold our breath, or at least to breathe poorly. Athletes, actors and singers are all taught to control their breathing as a means of controlling their emotional state. It may at first seem inconsequential, but learning to breathe properly can greatly improve your presence and impact as a leader.

Learning to breathe diaphragmatically, like a singer, will put you in a state where applying all the other advice given in this article becomes much more natural. Try the following exercise prior to any challenging situation:

Focus attention: Fix vision on something ahead of you

Release body tension: Inhale through nose and out through mouth while simultaneously releasing tension in the body. Repeat 3 or 4 times.

Breathe with rhythm: Breathe in through the nose until the lungs are full. Hold breath for same count and then exhale, taking approximately twice as long as for the inhale cycle, then hold with lungs empty for half that amount of time

Continue with breathing pattern increasing exhale until it is twice as long as inhale

Walk tall, walk straight and look the world right in the eye. Impact is a physical thing. Effective leaders impact on us with their imposing physical presence, regardless of their stature. It is about bodily awareness, an upright and confident posture, and an ease and grace of movement. An upright posture and ease of movement suggests confidence. It also sends a message to your body that all is well.

Try the following:

Stand away from your desk, imagine a string attached to the top of your head pulling you firmly upwards, gently lengthening your spine up towards the ceiling.

Allow your feet to be firmly on the ground, hip-width apart, with your weight evenly balanced on both feet.

Increase the distance between your ears and shoulders as well as that between the sternum (breastbone) and pubic bone.

Bring your shoulders back and down, allowing your chest to open out and move forward. Done properly, this will simultaneously improve the timbre and quality of your voice as well as the ease of your breathing

Keep your weight based low in your body

Watch for “leaking” gestures and movements

Use open, fluid and relaxed gestures

The above six tips are all about the being side rather than the doing side of leadership. They require you to act differently, to change your habitual patterns of behaviour. It is easy to make a significant and lasting improvement to your impact as a leader. None of what is written above is difficult or complicated, but its successful application requires sustained and committed practice by yourself.

____________________________________________________

Written by Martin Gillespie, the UK based executive coach, facilitator, leadership development expert, trainer and speaker.

References

[1] Gallwey, W. T., (1974), “The Inner Game of Tennis”, Random House

[2] Csikszentmihalyi, M., (2002 rev.), “Flow”, Rider & Co.

[3] Beiser, A. R., (1970), “The paradoxical theory of change”, in J. Fagan and I. Sheperd (eds), Gestalt Therapy Now, Palo Alto, CA: Science and Behaviour

[4] Binney, G., Wilke, G. and Williams, C., (2005), “living Leadership”, Prentice Hall

[5] Joyce, P. and Sills C., (2001), “Skills in Gestalt Counselling and Psychotherapy”, Sage Publications

Coaching as a Critical Leadership Capability

Are your key people leaders or a managers?

I want you to challenge your key people to critically explore their own approach to leadership. Being totally honest with themselves for a minute, how much of their working week do they spend working as a leader and how much simply managing? Are you happy with this?

If you were to put them on the spot right now and ask what it means to be a leader, what would they answer? Do we really need leaders? Does it really matter that these critical individuals spend too much of their time just managing and that they sometimes struggle to know what exactly it means to be a leader and what is required of them?

What does it take to lead?

I would argue that strong leadership is critical in that it enables people to take the action required to deliver excellent business results.

To be a leader you need to have a clear view of the opportunities and challenges facing your business and to be able to articulate these constantly in terms of a vision, a purpose and goals. You also need to be able to build relationships and facilitate interactions that result in outstanding team performance. Essentially, however, leadership is about producing results, results that are obtained through the direct effort of others rather than your own.

Models of leadership

Do you know how to act as a leader? Do you know what you are required to do? Do you know what works and what does not? Where would you look for your inspiration?

Clearly, over the last 100 years or more, the most prevalent model of leadership has been the hierarchical military model of command and control. More recently, this has in some areas been replaced by the American lone hero model, with often equally damaging results. The drive to be a transformational hero often leads to the Russian peasant style reaction in those that are being led. That is: Sit back, let them get on with it, and wait for the next inevitable regime change because it will not be long in coming.

Leader as coach

Thankfully, there are now many other more useful models of leadership available to us and the one I would particularly like to commend to your attention is that of leader as coach.

A coach is someone who uses support, challenge, passion and energy to inspire people to achieve superior performance. I would like to explore with you how as a leader can and should do this, and what it could mean to your business when you successfully engage with your people in this way.

Lets be clear at the outset, this is not a soft, undemanding or potentially weak way to lead a business. If you are tempted to think of coaching in this way, hold the image of Alex Ferguson on your mind for a moment, and think again.

Three themes

In rigorously exploring together the value of coaching as an underpinning model for leadership, we need to:

• Rethink our assumptions of leadership by examining what we know about behaviours that deliver results in challenging situations
• Consider the leadership capabilities required to deliver sustainable business and cultural change in uncertain conditions, and
• Explore some of the practical skills required to make this happen.

 Theme one – rethinking leadership

 Why should people bring their brains to work?

 We have for a long time relied on the idea that power and knowledge hierarchy is the best way to structure and control organisations. What could be more straightforward or logical? The people at the top make the decisions and those below implement them, changing them as little as possible.

 Expecting a few at the top to do all the thinking and the rest to simply do as they are told is slow, expensive and wasteful. There is a clear inbuilt assumption that people can not be trusted, they must be closely monitored and bounded by procedure and process.

 The hero and transformational leader models challenge this notion, but still see the leaders as a loner, standing outside the organisation and doing things to it. They are like rodeo riders, seeking to impose their will on the organisation.

 What does the latest research tell us?

 There is probably more written about leadership than almost any other subject, and the volume of words is increasing all the time. The problem is that just about everything and its opposite is said. Equally, the robustness of thinking and validity of the research surrounding much of it is flimsy to say the least.

 So, given the vital role that leadership plays, the confusion about how it should be exercised and the desperate need from those at the front end for some clarity about what they need to do for the best to be effective custodians of a business, how do we navigate through this minefield of leadership formulas and hot tips.

 The first thing to say is that not all the research and writing of recent years is of equal quality. There are a handful of thinkers who stand either by the depth and rigour of their research, or through the application of a robust and objective methodology to find out what actually works on the ground. When we critically sift through the research in this way a clearer and more consistent pattern starts to emerge.

 I would like to briefly share with you what is of necessity a personal selection of some of the most genuinely useful illuminating and helpful findings about leadership in recent years.

 Ralph Stacey is one of the most challenging and original thinker on leadership and strategy to emerge in recent years. He describes leadership as, “Participating in interaction with others in reflective and imaginative ways” (Stacey 2007).

 In 2006 Goffee & Jones did a thorough review of leadership capabilities that was widely published. They observed that: “Effective leaders can empathise with those they lead, step in their shoes, get close to them. Yet they also seem to be able to communicate a sense of edge, to remind people of the job at hand and the overarching purpose of the collective endeavour” (Goffee & Jones 2006). They also argued that: “Those aspiring to leadership need to discover what it is about themselves that they can mobilise in a leadership context. They must identify and deploy their personal leadership assets and use them to build an effective system of relationships with followers”. (Goffee and Jones 2006)

 Ket de Vries has been an internationally respected thinker on leadership for the past two decades and more. His take on the subject is that: “Healthy leaders are able to live intensely. They are passionate about what they do. That’s because that are able to experience the full range of their feelings – without any colour blindness to any particular emotion.” (de Vries 2004).

 Towards a model of leader as coach – two defining studies

 There are two specific in depth studies, however, that stand out from all the others in terms of the rigour, breadth, robustness and objectivity of their research. The first is the “Living Leadership” research undertaken jointly between Ashridge Business School and the HEC Grande Ecole in Paris. A team of researchers spent 4 years observing 700 managers and leaders from day to day to discover what they actually did and how they delivered results. The second is “Good to Great” by Jim Collins and his research team. They researched all those US companies that had traded for 15 years bellow the stock market average, followed by 15 years of average returns at 3 times the market average. They also read and coded 6,000 research papers and articles.

 Living leadership

 The Ashridge and HEC researchers concluded that effective leadership can be reduced to three factors, the abilities to:

•  Connect with, relate to and energise those around you
• Work with and adapt to context
• Come alive in the moment, being authentic, spontaneous and human

They found that people were most effective when they brought themselves to leading. Effective leaders came across as real people. They were appreciated as being flesh and blood, not needing to wear some sort of mask or pretend. They drew on their humanity, their intelligence, their emotions and their intuition. Of particular importance was that they remembered what they knew from all their life experiences and made use of them in their work.

An important finding was that the success or failure of leaders is dependent on their ability to work with context. They approvingly quote Warren Buffet as saying: “When a management with a reputation for brilliance tackles a business with a reputation for poor fundamental economics, it is the reputation of the business that remains intact”.

In writing up their findings, they strongly urged that we consider leadership as a social process, it happens between people. You do not have to be a superhero to be a leader, indeed in their view this was more likely to damage the business. What works is to get connected to the real, to acknowledge your limits and value who you are, and that takes time.

Good to great

As with the Ashridge and HEC study, Collins’ team found that successfully leading a business is first and foremost about people. As a leader, they maintained, you must start by making sure you have the right people. This comes before strategising, operational planning or anything and it might mean you making some difficulty decisions.

Once you are sure you have the right people it is then essential to invest time and effort in constantly developing them. Also, a leader must above all learn to ask the right questions and then listen intently without prejudice. Effective leaders engage people in vigorous debate. They value and cherish people, but apply exacting standards. Leadership is about vision, persistence and sensemaking, but it is also importantly about putting people in the biggest opportunities and creating a climate where truth is heard, dialogue and debate are encouraged and the leader is constantly seen to be trying to understand.

All the qualities we are describing here, and which we would argue strongly deliver value to an organisations bottom line, are qualities closely associated with the role of coach.

In my second article on this important subject, I will go on to consider the leadership coaching capabilities required to deliver sustainable business and cultural change in today’s uncertain conditions.

Leading with passion and energy

As we slowly and falteringly emerge from recession, now more than ever organisations need leaders who, whilst living with the paradoxes and complexities of organisational life, can create a compelling sense of urgency and direction.

Those leaders who are capable of building the foundations for future growth understand that whilst they are in charge, they are no longer in control. Instead they must create the conditions which foster innovation and renewal by connecting with people and building relationships. Acting as a catalyst, they enable people to move when they were previously stuck. They promote collaboration by supporting shared goals and creating trust, coaching and developing skills, providing challenging tasks and effective support.

In our experience of working with very many leaders across a variety of sectors, we have identified two key areas of focus which if correctly address can massively leverage effective leadership performance. These are:

•  Business acumen
• Personal impact and presence

 The fine art of business acumen

Leaders with a high degree of business acumen apply intense mental activity and agility to frame and assess business situations. They know when to apply the handbrake and give themselves thinking time, using both quantitative and quantitative logic to spot patterns of convergence and divergence, linking insightful assessments and identifying tipping points. They are also shrewd in their assessments of what to adopt and what to drop, constantly on the lookout for where and how money can be made.

 It is less about tools than it is about experience, instinct and mind set. Such leaders are self aware, confident and authentic and they combine this with a sense of purpose, vision and direction. They understand power, its sources and how to use it, and they intuitively identify and manage risk. Rather than telling people what to do they rely on asking challenging questions, promote strategic conversations, and challenge norms, habits and routines.

 Managers and leaders, bring varying degrees of business acumen to the work they do. In our experience, an effective and experience coach can support a motivated individual in substantially increasing their capability and confidence in this area.

 Leading in the moment

 Even more critical than the capability of business acumen is that of personal presence and impact.

 Truly effective leaders have the rare ability to inspire a strong positive reaction from those around them. When they enter a room, they draw everyone’s attention. They have a unique and positive impact on others, something that is best captured by the ambiguous term “presence”. Leaders who have “presence” project solidity, an inner stillness and a sense of personal authority. They appear alive and vital. Their behaviour is congruent. There is no hint of personal discomfort or contradiction in the way they hold themselves, nor in the unconscious messages transmitted by their nonverbal behaviour and posture. They are authentic and real in the way they connect with and relate to other people and are very aware of the environment around them and of the impact they make. There is an energy and a life force about them.

 The role of leadership coaching

 An important purpose of leadership coaching, along with that of helping engender mature business acumen, is to help individuals build personal presence and impact as part of an empowering and engaging leadership style. The coach helps the individual leader become more consciously aware and so create a style of leadership that is both personally distinctive and organisationally attuned.

 To achieve this, the coach assists the leader in:

• Gaining awareness and insight into their current patterns of behaviour
• Learning and embedding the appropriate behavioural competencies

 Through the looking glass

 With the coach holding up a metaphorical reflecting glass, the individual becomes much more keenly aware of the impact they make on others and of when they get stuck in habitual patterns of feeling, thinking and doing. Through a process of support and challenge, they identify aspirations and goals, examine values beliefs and mindsets and develop self awareness and emotional intelligence.

 Performing under pressure

 The most important step, however, is that of building and embedding the necessary behavioural competence. An effective coach will make sure that the leader not only has the necessary toolkit of skills available to successfully navigate the day to day challenges they face, but also that they are able to manage critical and stressful incidents with a similar resourceful composure. It is, of course, in these moments of high stress and pressure that such competence is most required and most often found wanting.

 Although it will vary from person to person, key capabilities to be addressed here will include:

• Creating a compelling sense of urgency
• Exerting influence and authority
• Demonstrating assertiveness
• Fully accepting accountability for outcomes whilst delegating responsibility to others
• Handling conflict and coping with being disliked
• Asking challenging questions and then listening intently
• Challenging norms, habits and routines
• Linking direction with power and purpose
• Connecting with others – shining the spotlight on them
• Understanding, developing and motivating others – knowing what makes people tick
• Being present in the moment
• Generating excitement by expressing emotion
• Being open to unexpected outcomes
• Articulating clear leadership values
• Building networks – using coalitions and understanding the formal and informal organisation
• Recognising who knows, who cares and who can.

 Coaching superior performance

 The areas addressed will vary from individual to individual and all work must be intensively tailored. As can be seen from the above list, effective coaches work at the levels of knowledge, beliefs, capabilities and habits, getting people to try out new behaviours in safe situations before transferring these to the world of work.

 For many managers and leaders this is an uncomfortable process as it can involve exploring posture, body awareness, body language, gesture, handshake, and eye contact. Other areas frequently addressed also include: expressing emotions, voice work, breathing, visualisation, rehearsal, use of energy and improvisation.

 At first sight, these may appear to be strange areas to explore as building blocks of effective leadership. However, it is our belief that an effective leader is above all comfortable in his / her skin and inspires confidence in others by the way they hold and conduct themselves. Once this is paired with strong business acumen, it is an unstoppable combination.

Building Leadership Presence and Impact

Let’s start by asking some impertinent and personal questions:

o Is the impact you have on other people helping or hindering your career?

o Do you have an innate ability to connect with and inspire confidence in others?

o Do you have the air and authority of a natural leader?

o Is the persona that you project one that inspires others to readily follow?

If in considering these questions (both in the light of your personal qualities and those evidenced by your managers and leaders) you feel no pang of discomfort, then you need read no further. For the rest of us mortals, the good news is that leadership presence is not something that just happens by accident; rather it occurs as the result of specific behaviours and beliefs that can be acquired and learned over time. Read on …

In your day to day work is there a feeling of effortless spontaneity, of achieving without effort and trying? Is your mind quiet and focused with an air of relaxed concentration, enjoyment and trust? Does it often happen that there is nothing in your mind but an intense focus on what is happening to you and around you at this instant, as action follows upon action according to an internal logic that seems to need no conscious intervention by you? Do you exhibit a mastery and control of what you are doing, your responses perfectly attuned to the task?

o Do you recognise this in yourself?

o Do you recognise it in leaders you admire?

o Do you recognise it in successful leaders who consistently deliver outstanding business results?

o Do you recognise this in the managers and leaders who are responsible for the success and growth of your business?

Or … is there a ceaseless dialogue going on in your head, juggling priorities, commitments and concerns, constantly judging you and frequently finding you wanting? Do you often find yourself trying too hard, working too quickly, split between many tasks and priorities, and trying desperately to impress? Do you sometimes come across to others as anxious and distracted? When the pressure is really on do you experience fear, self doubt, self consciousness, self judgement, tension and stress? Do you find yourself struggling to find the right way?

o Do you recognise this in yourself?

o Do you recognise this in the managers and leaders who are responsible for the success and growth of your business?

We certainly doubt that this will be present to the same extent in leaders you admire, or in those that consistently deliver outstanding business results. The truth is that personal impact and presence, the state implied by the first of the two contrasting sets of questions above, is the key defining factor of effective leadership and thus of business success.

To develop this further, in our experience there are three distinguishing factors between those who experience successful, stimulating and enjoyable careers, and those others who either fail to reach their full potential, or completely derail. These factors are:

o Business acumen – that is: a strategic awareness, an ability to appropriately frame and assess situations, to apply a depth of perception, to notice patterns of convergence and divergence, to link insightful assessments and to know how money can be made.

o A strong ability to appropriately structure time and manage priorities.

o The facility to project oneself with authority and to inspire confidence in others.

In our work with managers and leaders we focus intensively on all three areas. Indeed, without the other two, leadership presence is in danger of being little more than style without substance.

The point we wish to emphasise, however, is that when these three elements are considered and worked on together, it is leadership presence that is the difference that makes the difference.

In the weeks and months to come we will be publishing here a host of articles on leadership with presence and impact, and specifically how this can help to unlock the potential of individuals and teams to deliver superior business results.

We will also publish a series of practical tips and guidelines to help you improve your leadership presence. For the first of these, click on the following link: http://www.personalbusinesscoach.co.uk/news1.html

The benefits of internal coaching

Having introduced a simple but rigorous internal coaching programme, organisations quickly find that it becomes the trigger and starting point of a broader “culture change” towards a more empowering and less directive management style. Indeed, if properly introduced, many unintended beneficial consequences arise through the growth of dialogue and communication around key themes. Much recent research has show that successful change initiatives almost always start by changing the nature, number and subject matter of both formal and informal conversations, and internal coaching is recognised as a key contributing factor to such a change.

Save cash

 On a more pragmatic level, coaching is quite simply one of the most cost effective development methodologies available. If undertaken correctly, real work is being carried out at the same time as learning is taking place. A hands-off coaching approach stimulates commitment, independence and innovation in staff at all levels. Equally, it provides instant feedback about the employee’s performance, and therefore accelerates the learning and improvement process.

 Compared to off the job training courses, coaching reduces both external costs (fees and expenses) and internal costs (a team member being absent): every leader and manager becomes a “learning provider” on the job.

Build confidence

 As well as the financial gains relative to training, those who benefit from coaching demonstrate greater independence, ownership of the process and self confidence. They also profit from learning tuned to their own needs and learning style, broader skills, help with real problems and a greater sense of achievement. Another common spin off is a growing respect for and trust of the manager.

 Once the process has been underway for some time, employees typically demonstrate increased motivation, greater job satisfaction and better self awareness. All of this results in faster learning and development, a sense of value within the organisation and improved knowledge of the formal and informal structure of the company.

Creating a working allaince

It is not just the learner who gains, coaching is a genuinely two way process, a working alliance. As such, the managers gains are considerable, including more motivated employees, better use of their time, more value from formal programmes, more flexibility and openness to change, more ideas and initiatives from “below”, less confrontation and fewer surprises.

 There are also more personal benefits. The coach learns to enhance their vital leadership skills of listening, attending, questioning and giving feedback. Coaching provides the leader with a chance to reflect on their own behaviour and practices, and to see everyday problems from a different perspective.

 Clients tell their story

In speaking recently to a senior executive who has been coaching three individuals in her organisation over a period of months, it was apparent she had gained confidence in the value of her accumulated expertise. She specifically highlighted the surprising benefit of being able to pick up new and current attitudes. Other very personal benefits that she acknowledged included the stimulation of new ideas and enthusiasm, an opportunity to question her own views and values and, for her perhaps most importantly, a way of “leaving a legacy” in the organisation.

 Talking to the HR Director of the same organisation, it was clear that he was convinced of the benefits to the organisation. Amongst those that he considered to be of real value he included: enhanced communication, reduced turnover and increased productivity. He is also convinced that it stimulated innovation and creativity, eased succession planning, helped culture change and provided a mechanism for sharing wisdom, knowledge and effective practices.

 For the chief executive, the benefits were that employees showed less inclination to expect to be micro managed, to be told what to do, to be given answers and solutions, to have an easy ride or receive favours. Instead they were proactive, engaged, passionate about what they did and more prone to productively challenge those above them in the organisational structure. Quite simply, the energy level and sense of urgency around the organisation had increased markedly.

Leadership for the 21st Century

 Above and before anything else, a leader needs to be interested in and committed to the learning, development and growth of others. They need to be curious about how people learn to behave and act more effectively, and what motivates them to do so. Equally, they need an optimistic view of people’s motivation and capabilities.

 The role of leader requires a strong set of interpersonal skills, including the ability to connect with other people and rapidly build effective rapport, the ability to fully listen and attend, questioning skills, the ability to give appropriate feedback and to suitably challenge, along with the ability to summarise and focus on key issues.

 These capabilities are, in many cases, the antithesis of the skill set developed by traditional command and control managers of the sort that are still all too prevalent in the UK workforce. They are, however, typical of the more connected and engaged style of leadership that is found in our most successful and vibrant organisations. Effective leaders in such organisations draw on all their humanity, their intelligence, their emotions and their intuitions. They know that building effective working relationships comes before running operations or shaping the future. It is for them the necessary foundation for delivering results.

 Such a leader has, by definition, strong interpersonal skills, they connect easily with people and can easily establish rapport. They are also very self aware and accepting of their own strengths and weaknesses, whilst being highly motivated to constantly develop and improve the way they relate to and influence others.

 An ability to live with ambiguity and a flexibility of approach are also the norm. They are adaptable and tend to approach problems and situations from a variety of directions simultaneously, always being open to novel approaches and solutions. They combine this with a willingness to invest a significant amount of time in engaging people in dialogue, asking appropriate questions and then listening intently.

 The leaders who are going to assure your future believe that they achieve most by enabling their staff to perform to their full potential and are quite comfortable in supporting people to do things that they cannot personally do. They prefer a hands-off approach wherever possible, encouraging people to think things through for themselves and take responsibility for their own learning and development within the context of a supportive but challenging relationship.

 Leaders help people who work for them to better appreciate their own strengths and weaknesses, encourage them to establish goals for further performance improvement and to monitor and review progress towards achieving their goals. In so doing, they identify tasks for their direct reports that are at the same time real, current and important, and which can act as relevant vehicles for learning. Finally, they focus on the learning needs of the individual and not exclusively on their need to communicate something.

 In our view, this means that helping your leaders develop these capabilities is a key strategic prerequisite for sustained competitive advantage and profitable growth, not a just a “nice to do”.

 Now read the above paragraphs again substituting the word coach for the word leader. Do you notice anything? An effective leader as coach and the sort of leader that is going to help grow and transform your business are one and the same person.

 If we accept this, it starts to raise some interesting and challenging questions about investing in the development a coaching culture and the associated leadership capabilities.

 Companies that embrace this challenge succeed in building an organisation that achieves:

•  A compelling sense of urgency
• A passion for growth based on business need and hard evidence
• Numerous role models of engaging leadership behaviour
• Strong accountability and results delivery – a shared business mindset and a keen awareness of how and where money can be made
• A greater understanding of and personal engagement with business development
• Enhanced customer focus – building long term mutually beneficial relationships at all levels
• A growing culture of innovation, learning and creativity
• Strategic development of critical capabilities
• Retention of key talent
• Increased revenue

 The purpose is to build capabilities that deliver strategic advantage. These capabilities will vary according to the individual and their level in the organisation. However, along with a greater external focus and an engagement with the business and its strategic objectives, we normally to see evidence of substantial growth in the following areas:

•  Business acumen
• Commercial and sales awareness
• An engaging leadership style
• Presence and impact
• Mental acuity
• Self awareness
• Strategic awareness
• Creativity and innovation
• Communication, teamworking and networking skills

When looked at with such an accute business and leadership focus, the development of a strong coaching culture and the associated capabilities becomes the difference that makes the difference.

Internal or external: when is it appropriate to employ an external coach?

The times when you should necessarily have recourse to an external coach are rare.

Effectively, in our view, the greatest benefits are instead to be gained from installing a coaching culture broadly across your business and equipping all those who manage others with the necessary skills.

The option of employing an external coach should only be considered for key individuals at critical stages in their career. If such coaching is then appropriately targeted and care is taken in selecting the right coach, the payback can be enormous.

So who is most likely to benefit from an external coach?

External executive coaching should be provided only for successful people from whom you are looking to leverage superior performance. Clearly, the expected financial return on the marginal performance improvement obtained through employing an external coach should be considerably greater than the sum invested.

In our experience, this normally means that executive coaching should be a development option considered for:

o Business leaders
o Those newly promoted to key roles
o Identified high potentials

This means that you should think about providing an external coach only for those individuals whose performance has a critical impact on the profitability or otherwise of the organisation and for key individuals going through a period of transition.

In such situations the more pertinent question to ask is often: What will be the cost to the organisation of not employing an external coach to provide critical support and challenge for this person?

Executive coaching will not give you the required return on investment unless it is part of a broader, strategic approach to people and organisation development

The employment of an executive coach must be part of a broader strategic development approach, involving the identification and development of key individuals and populations. A strategic development approach requires that you first identify the people resources and capabilities you require to deliver your organisation’s vision, and then invest in turning those people into a cadre of key individuals and teams who are capable of being the engine of the desired future growth.

For further information on the broad and important topic of strategic development consult the following articles:

o An introduction to strategic development: http://www.personalbusinesscoach.co.uk/news16.html
o Strategic development: delivering superior returns http://www.personalbusinesscoach.co.uk/news17.html
o Delivering superior business results through strategic development: http://www.personalbusinesscoach.co.uk/news19.html

What is the difference in nature between the support and challenge provided by an external coach relative to an internal coach?

At Inspire development and coaching, we identify three levels of coaching:

o Skills coaching – targeted one to one training in a critical knowledge skill of behaviour.
o Performance coaching – coaching for optimum performance in the current role.
o Development coaching – providing an environment for strategic thinking, reflection and challenge in order to deliver action and change.

There is no absolute division, but we would argue that the further down the list you go, the more likely you are to benefit from employing an external coach.

Development coaching is our distinctive area of competence and here the level of the coach’s experience, skills and credibility are essential. It is about working with key individuals to deliver both personal and organisational growth and this means being able to engage with executives on live business issues. The process helps clients develop a detailed understanding of their situation and roles, to articulate a personal business strategy, and to apply the actions arising from this over the next two to three years in the context of their overall career.

What does an external coach bring to such a situation that an internal coach can not deliver?

You must expect an external coach to bring a great deal in terms of experience and expertise. If they are not evidently capable of adding considerable value to your business, you should not even consider employing them.

A top level external coach who is capable of delivering development coaching will have a depth of experience and expertise that they bring form a variety of other organisations and contexts. Along with this invaluable external view, they must also bring a strong business focus, energy and rigour, and a toolkit of coaching and consulting skills and techniques.

The coach needs credibility, presence, backbone and heart. An executive working with a coach needs answers to the following questions: “”How quickly can you get on board with me?”, “Do you get what I am talking about?”, “Are you practical, effective?”, “Do you have some depth to your experience?”

So what should you look for when choosing an executive coach?

This is a broad topic, worthy of an article in its own right.

For most commercial organisations, we would suggest that you consider at least the following criteria:

o Someone who has spent a number of years working in a commercial organisation at a senior executive level – they need to have been there and got the tee-shirt. Executives are very good at sniffing out and dismissing those that have not

o A track record of successfully working on organisation and people development within major organisations

o Appropriate training – just because you have the business experience does not mean you can coach. The skills, knowledge and appropriate behaviours required of a senior executive and a coach are different, and an effective executive coach must have both. This means, therefore, that they should have undertaken a significant period of study with a recognised and accredited organisation. For example, a major business school. Beware of those who have undertaken web based or distance learning programmes, coaching is an intensely practical interpersonal skill set.

o Accreditation – you do need to be a little careful here. It is often mediocre coaches who seek to improve their marketability by obtaining accreditation. There are numerous accreditation bodies and for many the entry level is not that high or rigorous. It is not unreasonable to expect that your coach should have gone through some sort of accreditation process, ideally recognised, by the EMCC or ICF, but you should not rely on this as a guarantee of quality.

o Undertaking regular supervision – any serious executive coach should be submitting their skills to regular scrutiny by appropriately experienced and trained peers. The minimum we would expect here is that the coach undertakes at least six full days of peer supervision an year. Our personal standard is twelve days a year.

Finally, there is an intangible but critical factor. When you first meet a prospective executive coach, you should take time to assure yourself that they are articulate and intellectually robust about their distinctive approach to coaching. You also need to ask yourself: What is it going to do for my personal credibility to put this person in front of one of our senior executives?

What is coaching?

A simple and clear definition of coaching is that it is a structured helping conversation. By helping in this context we mean enabling people to develop and perform to their full potential. There are some key words in this definition that would benefit from further development: o Structured – it is not just a comfortable, supportive chat. It is a purposeful discussion within an organising framework o Enabling – so that people address and solve their own issues and concerns o Develop – learning is a key element o People – they have ownership of the process o Perform – related to organisational goals o Potential – for present and future jobs Used correctly by a properly trained and experienced coach, it is a highly effective development tool that involves the coach in working closely with an individual to improve an aspect or aspects of their professional life. Essentially, it is about action and change and facilitates greater clarity, improved performance and organisational growth. It achieves this through channelling an individual’s creativity towards organisational goals. Coaching is done at the workplace and uses real work as the learning vehicle. It involves the learner in setting learning goals and methods, improving performance at work by turning things people do into learning situations, in a planned way, under guidance. The coach uses both support and challenge to help unblock potential and provide focus. The development activities which emerge from this dialogue are tailored to the individual’s needs, interests, style, ability, experience and pace, and the coach also ensures that the coachee receives immediate feedback about performance. All these points are well captured in the following definition by Max Landsberg: “Coaching aims to enhance the performance and learning ability of others. It involves providing feedback, but also uses other techniques such as motivation, effective questioning and consciously matching your management style to the coachee’s readiness to undertake a particular task. It is based on helping the coachee to help him / herself through dynamic interaction – it does not rely on a one way flow of telling and instructing.” An effective coaching process, therefore, helps people to: o Better appreciate their own strengths and weaknesses o Establish goals and targets for further performance improvement o Monitor and review progress in achieving their goals o Identify problems that may be adversely affecting progress o Generate alternatives and an action plan for dealing with problems o Improve their understanding of the work environment o Realise their full potential It is designed to produce autonomous learners who take responsibility for their own development. Learning is, therefore, grounded in the workplace in real business challenges and development is customised to the needs, experience and potential of each individual. Coaching is cost effective because real work is being carried out at the same time that learning is taking place. A hands-off coaching approach stimulates commitment, independence and innovation in staff at all levels and it provides instant feedback about the learner’s performance, and thereby accelerates the learning and performance improvement process. Compared to off-the-job training courses, coaching reduces both external costs (fees and expenses) and internal costs (a staff member being absent): every manager becomes a “learning provider” on the job. Ideally, this also becomes part of a boarder culture change towards a more empowering and less directive style of management.

Installing a coaching culture to deliver sustainable, profitable growth

At Inspire Development and coaching we are clear and perhaps even a little evangelical about the benefits of executive coaching. Numerous research projects have consistently shown ROI figures in excess of 600%. For example:

• A study by MetrixGLobal LLC showed an overall ROI of 788%
• Research undertaken by Joyce in 2005 showed an ROI of 689%
• Results published in 2005 by Mary Beth O’Neil showed ROI ranging from 6 to 10 times the initial outlay

 In our experience, however, it is the qualitative benefits of coaching, although harder to quantify in ROI terms, that really deliver superior business results. These benefits typically include:

• Improved productivity, quality, customer service and shareholder value
• Greater commitment from managers and leaders
• Retention of key people who feel valued
• Focused action / change around key business / individual issues
• An improved coaching culture
• Breakdown of any silo mentality
• Greater strategic awareness

There are times when such coaching absolutely needs to be delivered by an experienced, external executive coach. For each of these critical situations, however, there are scores of situations where the coaching support can be, and indeed should be, delivered internally by a suitably trained manager. Not only is this a cheaper option, it also embeds the skills in the organisation in a way that employing an external “expert” does not.

So why on earth should already overloaded leaders and managers taking on the additional responsibility of acting as a coach?

In our view, if coaching is not a core leadership and management capability, we do not know what is.

The popular model of leader as transformational hero simply encourages followers to sit aback and wait for the leader to deliver or derail, cynically aware of the rapid succession of failed hero leaders that they have been subjected to in the past and not expecting the new model to be any different.

Equally, the command and control model is no longer, if it ever was, appropriate. To Quote James Flaherty (2005):

“Command and control organisations are based on the premise that power and knowledge hierarchy is the most effective way of structuring an organisation. People at the top make the decisions and people further down implement those decisions, changing them as little as possible. The process is slow, expensive, and has at its core belief that people cannot be trusted and must be closely monitored. As long as these beliefs are in place any organisation will have tremendous difficulty flourishing in today’s world.”

Against these failed models, we would contrast that of leader / manager as coach. This model of leadership is based on the idea that a business is a shared and collective enterprise that gives people responsibility and accountability. In doing so, it must engage hearts and minds through dialogue and shared action. Organisations need many leaders rather than the few. If not, formal leaders get burdened and slowed down by the weight or responsibility, whilst others wait to be told what to do and what to think.

The research findings

These views were back up by a recent intensive review of the latest research on leadership development that we undertook and published earlier this year.

Two of our key findings are particularly relevant to our current exploration of the role and value of installing a coaching culture.

First, we found that the principle of transformational leadership is consistently criticised as being more about personal ego than business need. The picture on an effective leader painted here is that of a quiet, humble person acting with a calm and persistent determination. To quote Collins (2001): “Effective leaders manifest humility. They routinely credit others, external factors and good luck for their companies’ success. But when results are poor they blame themselves. They also act calmly, quietly and determinedly – relying on inspired standards, not inspiring charisma, to motivate.”

Secondly, the leader is now much more likely to be described as someone who delivers results through relationship and his / her ability to connect with others. It is this quality of relationships combined with the resultant collective sense of energy and urgency that delivers results. Prentice (2004) states: “Effective leaders take a personal interest in the long term development of their employees, they use tacit and other social skills to encourage employees to achieve their best. It isn’t about being “nice” or “understanding” – it’s about tapping into individual motivations in the interest of furthering an organisation wide goal.”

In other words, effective leadership and a coaching centred approach are seen as virtually synonymous.

In this view of the world the manager / leader is expected to develop people and to encourage self development, enhancing their self confidence, building their personal resourcefulness and tapping into their values. The picture painted is of someone who empowers others through devolving leadership. It means delivering bottom line results, leading innovation and change, and enhancing performance by working with their people rather than doing things to them. It means seeing themselves in the middle, connected to and engaged with their people, not just at the top.

All that you will need to know to get started

In this short series of articles on the subject of installing a coaching culture, we will focus on providing practical and pragmatic advice, information and guidance. In doing so, we will progressively cover the following topics:

• What is coaching?
• The difference between internal and external coaching
• The characteristics of a good coach
• The benefits of coaching
• Strengths and weaknesses relative to other developmental methodologies
• Different approaches to coaching
• Coaching and learning
• Coaching as stretch and challenge
• Elements of coaching
• The underlying skills of coaching
• Frameworks for coaching
• Developing a coaching culture

How to write knockout presentations

 We have all heard the oft repeated adage that in preparing effective presentations we need to think about: telling them what we are going to tell them, telling them and telling them what we have told them. This is good practical advice, but this must not be at the cost of making your presentation overly laboured and pedantic. After all, whatever else a presentation sets out to do, it must entertain and engage.

 Preparing and organising your material

 Before you start writing, you must be clear on your objective in giving the presentation. You should then distil this objective into a clear message. This message is the essence of what you are trying to communicate and it should be repeated several times throughout the presentation. The sooner you can finalise this critical part of your presentation the better, because your mind will then be able to gather material, both consciously and subconsciously, around this core.

 The next important step is to think clearly about your audience. Who are they? Where are they from? Do they know each other? Why are they attending, and what are they expecting to gain from being there? What do they already know about the subject? What do they feel about the subject? How many will be there? What is the nature of the event? Who else is presenting?

 As well as knowing your audience, you must also know your subject. If you have taken the time to research and fully understand the topic you are speaking on, it will show. Talk to people, read around the subject, search on the web, open a file on the speech in which to keep relevant articles and materials.

 Start with the middle

 Start by preparing the main body of your presentation. You should not write your introduction and conclusion until this is largely completed. Go back to your objective and key message and ask yourself: “what are the three main points I want to make to support the aim of my speech?” The main mistake people make is in putting too much into their presentations. The less you put in, the more your audience will remember.

 Three points are ideal, four are acceptable and five the absolute limit. If you make too many points, people will simply attack the weaker ones to undermine your whole argument.

 For each key point you can then brainstorm illustrations, sub points and quotations. The basic rule is, if you make a point, illustrate it. Stories in particular draw an audience in and capture their imagination. So do not be afraid to paint verbal pictures for the audience, illustrated with the names of people, places and companies, and with conversations. People will tend to remember the story and then be able to relate it back to the point.

 Being so prepared that it looks “off the cuff”

 The real joy of a simple structure is that it frees you from over reliance on a script and from fear of drying or losing your way. Research has found that people can hold seven, plus or minus two, chunks of information in their conscious mind at any one time, so even the most challenged of us can easily retain three points. If you are well read around your subject, and know the importance of illustrations and examples for each point you make, it is relatively simple to hold the whole presentation in your mind, knowing that if you miss bits out, nobody is going to notice. The freedom this gives you will make your presentations much more impactful and clear.

 Tell them what you are going to tell them and tell them what you told them

 Once you have completed your work on the main body, you can then turn your attention to the opening and conclusion.

 The opening needs to command the audiences attention and draw them into the world that you are about to paint for them. The purpose of a good opening is to break preoccupation and arrest attention. Ideas for effective openings include: a  significant quotation or idea; a challenging question; a statement that excites attention, arouses curiosity, surprises the audience or is particularly informative; a story of human interest; an outline of the benefits to be gained; a challenge to the audience; or, “a funny thing happened on the way here today”. In addition to these ideas, take time to look at how good journalists open their articles.

 And finally, the conclusion. The purpose of a good conclusion is to end on a strong note and to leave them thinking of your key message. Many of the ploys for a good opening also work for conclusions, In addition to these you could: simply summarise your main points and theme; call for action; point to the future; dramatise the conclusion; build to a climax; or simply and with an illustrative anecdote.

 Which reminds me about the story about ……….