Improving Performance Through Coaching (Part 2)

As we have discussed earlier, coaching is one of performance improvement tools that leaders can use to make positive changes in the workplace. However, not everybody can be can be a coach or coachee. As the coaching process involves long term commitment, patience and good interpersonal skills, selection of coach and coachee needs to be done carefully. 

Generally, characteristics of good and effective coach include;

1. Possess good communication skills especially listening and asking great questions.
2. Formally trained and well verse in the coaching principles and processes.
3. Patient and committed.
4. Believe in human potentials.
5. Strive on challenges.
6. Flexible but firm.
7. Able to feel empathy without personally attached to it.
8. Withhold judgments.
9. Not imposing his values, beliefs and knowledge on coachee.
10. Able to think on his feet and adapt.   

To select a coachee, we need to consider characteristics such as;

1. Committed in term of time and other resources.
2. Doer of planned actions.
3. Willingness to change and improve.
4. Curious.
5. Positive learning attitude.
6. Good listener
7. Humble.
8. Having an open mind.
9. Willing to share personal experiences.
10. Accepting own strength and weaknesses.

In the next article, we will discuss the step by step process of coaching.

Improving Performance Through Coaching (Part 1)

John C. Maxwell, an international expert in leadership once said that all successful people had others helping them along the way. I am sure you can recall your teachers, friends, colleagues and even parents that have supported you to become where you are now in life.

One of the best way to build others is through coaching. What is coaching? Coaching is a process used to guide others to achieve their objectives or goals in life and work. It is basically a performance improvement 'tool' to enhance productivity, increase motivation and improve job or life performance. 

The origin of coaching came from the sports world where a coach guide his 'coachee' to achive certain targets or performance benchmark. The idea was picked up by management about 3 decades ago. It has been proven to improve individual's performance. Many organizations nowadays include coaching as an important tool to grow new leaders, improve productivity and many others.

Coaching can be done in a 1 to 1 situation or in groups. It can be done formally or informally. In the next article, we will discuss what makes a good coach and coachee.  

The Right Way To Prioritize

When I am conducting time management workshop, one of the tools that I like to share with my learners are the Urgent Important Matrix. This tool is made famous in the classic book by Stephen R Covey titled "The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People". It is also known as the Eisenhower Matrix.

The main idea in the tool is that we can categorize our activities by urgency (needs to be done now or suffer serious consequences) or importance. By drawing each axis, we have four categories as shown below.

Next, we categorize our activities into each boxes and start tackling them one by one. Start with activities in the urgent-important category first. As for activities in the not-urgent-important box, we need to allocate time for them in our timetable. Activities in the other two boxes can be ignored, delegated or abandoned altogether.

Give it a try and see your productivity improve today.

  

Stories That Change Lives

We all love stories. They make us cry, laugh and reflect. Stories are powerful tools that can be used to teach life-changing lessons. Look at the great religious leaders of our time. All of them used stories to transfer key lessons and teachings.

Life-changing stories have certain structures that make them easy to follow, understand and remember. The next time you want to use stories to impart lessons to your team members, remember the acronym SEAL.

Short (in time and characters). Entertaining stories are short for obvious reasons as mentioned above. How short is a story? Personally, I prefer them not to exceed 5 minutes. We also need to limit the characters in the stories to not more than three. Why? If it is more than three, we will find it hard to tell the stories and worst still, our audience find it hard to understand.

Entertaining. Our stories need to be entertaining. How to achieve this? Tell them with passion and enthusiasm. Use dialogues to bring the characters to life. Tell of the struggles and how your heroes (or heroines) overcome them. Use your body language and vocal varieties to give your stories more impact.

Audience-appropriate. Avoid stories that may offend people. Sexist, racist and stories that ridicule certain segments of societies need to be avoided at all costs. Study and get to know your audience before you decide which story to tell them.

Learning-oriented. Good stories have learning points. Before ending your stories, make your audience reflect on them by mentioning key learning points. I love to ask my audience what their thoughts or lessons that they can learn after I tell my stories. This will make them reflect and when they reflect, change happens.
So the next time you want to tell stories to your teams, use the acronym SEAL above to ensure your stories have all the elements they need to inspire change.  

Trust Busters

It is always easy to destroy than to build. The same goes for trust. It takes years to build and seconds to loose. In our interpersonal relations with others, many at times we ignore the little things that can break that fragile trust we have with our colleagues.

Below are some of the trust busters habits that we need to be aware in our daily interactions with our colleagues and loved ones;

1. Failure to keep promises
2. Showing incompetence
3. Lack of respect towards others
4. Not listening enough
5. Untidy and poor hygiene
6. Not respecting time
7. Over promise
8. Withholding information
9. Talking bad about others
10. Cutting people in the middle of their sentence

I am sure you can list some other trust busting habits that you observe in the workplace or home. The idea here is to be aware of them and take some kind of action to manage or control the habits. Trust is important in teamwork environment. If we are not aware of these habits, we may end up destroying the one thing that makes our team effective.

21 Habits That Destroy Interpersonal Relationship.

I have just finished reading (twice) the classic book written by world renowned executive coach, Marshall Goldsmith titled 'What Get You Here Won't Get You There'. In the book he listed 21 habits that we might not be aware of that can potentially destroy our relationship with our colleagues and family members. As you go through the list below, try to reflect on yourself. As they say, awareness is the beginning of change.

The 21 habits are;

1. Winning too much - the need to win at all costs and at all situations.
2. Adding too much value - adding our 2 cents into every discussions
3. Passing judgement - the need to rate and judge others using our standard
4. Making destructive comments
5. Starting with 'No', 'But' or 'However'
6. Telling the world how smart we are
7. Speaking when angry
8. Negativity
9. Withholding information
10. Failing to give proper recognition
11. Claiming credit that we don't deserve.
12. Making excuses
13. Clinging to the past
14. Playing favorites
15. Refusing to express regret
16. Not listening
17. Punishing the messenger
18. Failing to express gratitude
19. Passing the buck
20. Excessive need to be 'me'.
21. Goal obsession - winning at all costs.

 

Tips For Effective Mentoring (Part 2)

Not all can be good mentors. Reasons for poor mentoring program sometimes lies partly because wrong people are chosen to mentor others.

What are the characteristics of good mentors? Below are some of them that we can use when we choose who to mentor others.

1. Has the right experience.
2. Willing and able to mentor.
3. Committed to help others.
4. Possess good listening skills.
5. Comfortable with people.
6. Able to ask great questions.
7. Willing to work the extra mile to serve others.
8. Believe in the potential of others.
9. Patient and kind.
10. Has basic mentoring skills.

The list above is not complete. When we choose a mentor, we need to remind ourselves that in the eyes of their mentees, mentors are leaders. Are we choosing the right person to lead others?