John Mattone

Keynote Speaker on Leadership, Talent & Culture: John Mattone

How to Determine if a Leader Is Ready for Business Coaching

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Imagine having a child you envision becoming, say, a world-class tennis champion.

Successful coaching of any kind depends on the readiness of the person being coached. 

As they get older, they show signs of good athleticism, and equally important, they show interest in the game. Perhaps when the time is right, you show them how to swing a racquet, or explain how the matches shown on television are scored. Does that mean that it’s time to hire a tennis coach for them?

No, of course not. They may well turn into a talented player, but that doesn’t mean they’re ready for coaching at the first signs of promise. Even if they learn the game and maybe join their school’s team, they may not be ready for coaching. In fact, coaching someone who isn’t ready can be a colossal waste of time and money. Readiness is important when it comes to any type of coaching, including business coaching.

Risks of Premature Business Coaching

Let’s be honest. Business coaching can be a costly investment. When it’s done by an experienced, talented coach, along with a coaching client who is motivated and ready, it is an investment that can pay off swiftly and impressively.

But when business coaching is foisted upon someone who simply isn’t ready for it, it can be a waste of time and money, and it can actually set back the coaching client, who will probably wonder what is wrong with them that they couldn’t improve with the help of a coach.

Every organization should recognize and develop leadership talent because succession and legacy are important concepts. But that doesn’t mean that every potential leader who shows promise needs coaching right now.

Signs That a Leader Is Not Ready for Coaching

Certain levels of maturity and confidence are required for business coaching to be successful. If you have an emerging leader who shows these behaviors:

  • Consistently blaming others or external factors for problems
  • Insisting they don’t have the time for coaching
  • Exclusively focusing on short-term tips and tactics
  • Constantly putting off choosing a coach to find “the right one”

then they may in fact not be ready to work with a business coach.

Not every otherwise-competent employee has the maturity required for successful business coaching. 

Likewise, you should be aware of the emerging leader with exceptional luck, who has not had to cope with a huge, crashing failure, because that person may believe that they are in fact too good to even need coaching. Failure is humbling and great for helping people mature.

Signs of Leaders Who Are Ready for Coaching

The emerging leader who is ready for coaching is ready to listen, and they show this consistently in their day-to-day activities. Without great listening skills, coaching will fall on deaf ears. Likewise, those who are ready for coaching have strong communication skills and understand the importance of those skills.

People who are ready for business coaching are ready to take action to address one or more skills gaps or opportunities for improvement. They’re self-aware enough to know when they need to make changes and humble enough to ask for help with the task. They are committed to putting in the time required to work on skills and behaviors and to follow up with their coach regularly.

Finally, the person who is ready for business coaching isn’t afraid to display a certain level of vulnerability. After all, coaching will almost inevitably include constructive criticism, and it can be hard for anyone to open themselves up to that. But the clients with whom business coaches work best are those who aren’t afraid to share both their great successes and their worst failures.

Business coaching is a two-way street. Business coaches don’t have magic solutions they can apply topically to just anyone and get great results. While it will always be essential to thoroughly check the background, experience, and track record of business coaches before hiring one, don’t forget how important it is to know whether the potential coaching client is ready to be coached. I can tell you from experience that readiness on the part of the client is a key ingredient in a successful coaching relationship. If you’re interested, I encourage you to learn more about my leadership coaching services.

The Key Components of Leadership Training Programs That Work

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Leadership training programs can be a great investment, or they can be a colossal waste of time.

Why invest in leadership training programs that don’t produce ROI?

Poorly designed or executed leadership training programs may be largely ineffective in enabling the new, improved habits that leaders and emerging leaders should have. Participants in such programs need to learn new skills, learn why they need those skills, and practice those skills so that they eventually become ingrained. The following key components should be included in any leadership training program in which you choose to invest, so you’ll get the maximum return on your investment.

Training on Building your “Bench”

Leadership for today is important, of course, but equally important is leadership for tomorrow. Every organization must find and encourage the next generation of leaders so that it’s easier to anticipate and fill succession gaps. Identifying high-potential individuals and helping them align their individual work goals with organizational goals are two critical tasks for building a strong bench.

Learning about Goal-Setting

Goal-setting may seem so obvious as to not need teaching, but that’s not the case. It’s about determining what you want to achieve, and then committing to the process of achieving it. Simple, but hardly ever easy. Successful goal-setting requires identifying actionable objectives that naturally lead to the accomplishment of the goal, and few people are adept at doing that.

Improving Soft Skills

However brilliant or strong a leader is, they won’t realize their full potential (and hence, neither will the organization) if everyone hates them. Soft skills may seem “extra,” but they’re actually fundamental. Learning how to use common courtesy and how to be reasonably approachable while setting appropriate boundaries is both an art and a science.

Time Management Training

Few skills are as beneficial to the professional (at any level of the corporate ladder) as excellent time management. Leaders who manage their time well set a great example, they waste less time on trivial concerns, and they’re far less likely to end up with overwhelming stress or burnout. No single time management technique is “best,” but each individual must learn what works for them.

Time management training can benefit every professional at every corporate level.

Learning to Delegate Effectively

It’s amazing how many leaders fail at the task of effective delegation. Good delegation requires mutual trust, recognition, and follow-through. “Delegating” a task and then effectively doing it over crushes morale and makes the next instance of delegating that much less effective. Leaders who know how to delegate and how to give credit where it’s due are leaders who are respected and liked.

The Art of Giving and Receiving Feedback

Giving and receiving feedback may be considered a soft skill, but it is perhaps the most essential soft skill a strong leader needs. Offering constructive, yet honest feedback is a skill that requires practice, and learning how to accept feedback in the spirit in which it is given is equally as important. Good, back-and-forth feedback is a major building block of trust, and without trust, leadership doesn’t work.

Follow-Up and / or Coaching

Finally, learning decay is real. Coaching and / or follow-up after a leadership training program is essential to ensuring that new skills are practiced and improved. I offer a 2 ½-day immersive leadership retreat that not only works on all the essential elements of strong leadership but also includes post-retreat follow-up and feedback. Skills don’t matter much if they’re never used.

Leadership training programs can be a feel-good exercise that doesn’t accomplish much, or they can be life- and career-changing programs that produce a strong ROI. I have developed my leadership training programs, including the immersive retreat so that they address real concerns and leadership gaps that hold individuals and organizations back. And I am a true believer in the power of coaching and follow-up, as my executive coaching clients can tell you.

Investing in leadership training programs can move organizations forward if they’re chosen well and address real needs. Whether or not leadership training programs are in your organization’s future, I encourage you to check out my books, which go into detail on every leadership-related topic and help organizations like yours develop the leadership and culture that makes the future far brighter and more promising.

World Cup Winning Coach Didier Deschamps: Takeaways for Business Coaching

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Didier Deschamps is the head coach of France’s World Cup-winning football team, and his coaching style was met with some skepticism before the historic winning match against Croatia in Russia a few weeks ago.

France’s World Cup coach focused on results and commitment, and it worked.

Deschamps’ strategy depended upon a pragmatic, rather than showy approach, despite the team having a ferociously vibrant group of players, and not all fans were pleased. But in the end, they won, and to Deschamps, it’s the results that matter.

He isn’t a flashy coach and instills in his players the importance of their conduct. He expects them to be genuine, friendly, humble, and to never forget that their behaviors and attitudes shape how the entire team (and in some sense, all of France) is seen by the media. Here are a few takeaways for the business coaching profession from the coaching career of Didier Deschamps.

Commitment Is Foundational

Before the World Cup, there were some murmurings that Deschamps should step aside as coach, due to his more subdued coaching style and his star-powered team, but he says stepping down was never an option. The reasons, he said, were two-fold. First, he has always prioritized commitment and reaching goals, and second, French Football Federation president Noel Le Graet asked him to be the head coach until the year 2020, and he wanted to honor that commitment.

When a business coach values commitment, not just in words, but in deeds, that commitment can’t help but affect clients as well, just as Deschamps’ commitment to his team spilled over onto his players.

Experience Matters

The last time France won the World Cup, in 1998, Didier Deschamps was the team captain, so he knew the World Cup as both a player and a coach. While a business coach isn’t expected to have experience in every vertical their clients represent, having boots-on-the-ground business experience is important. The business coach should know what it’s like to work as a key member of a business team, how to work with others (including some that are challenging to work with), and what it feels like to want to succeed in an organization. Added to experience as a business coach, the combination can be nearly unbeatable. Coaching, after all, is a skill that is developed with practice and continued learning.

Outstanding business coaches often have extensive experience as part of great business teams.

Substance Beats Style, Always

During half-time of the championship game against Croatia, when France had a 2-1 lead, someone recorded Deschamps’ team talk in the locker room. It was remarkably subdued and focused on what he had observed during the first half. It essentially boiled down to telling his team, “Play as simple as possible. When you have the ball, if someone is on you, there’s another one coming. Give it as soon as you can to Kylian [Mbappe].” In other words, don’t make it harder than it needs to be. Even his final missive to the team was simple, yet filled with wisdom: “45 minutes! You know what’s next. Keep your heads up! Loosen up! When you get the ball, boom, give it forward.”

You Must Be Willing to Grow and Adapt

Finally, despite dependence on timeless qualities like commitment and building of experience, Didier Deschamps keenly understands the importance of knowing how to adapt. Over his 15 years of coaching at Monaco, Marseille, Juventus, and France, Deschamps learned that leadership is different today than it was when he was a player. Just because one strategy or technique worked at one time with one team does not mean it will work universally. Knowing the team, their strengths and weaknesses, outside influences, and adapting to all of these factors are absolutely necessary for success. “You have to live in your time, be of today,” he says.

Business coaching and sports coaching share many similarities. Qualities that underlie both include commitment, experience, substance, and adaptability. Whether you’re the coach or the client, it’s important to understand what makes a strong coach so that the experience will be maximally beneficial. If you’re interested in learning more about coaching, leadership, and organizational excellence, I invite you to check out my books, which deal with these topics and more, in greater detail.

Does Your Leadership Training Program Let Down Women and Minorities?

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Women and minorities are still underrepresented in leadership positions in corporate America.

If your leadership training programs only target the stereotypical businessman from central casting, you’re cheating yourself and the organization.

McKinsey & Company’s 2017 Women in the Workplace Report, which reports on 70,000 employee responses in 222 companies, shows that women are still significantly underrepresented at all seniority levels in the corporate pipeline, and the disparities grow starker the higher the level of seniority. And non-white women are the rarest among corporate leadership. Furthermore, men perceive greater progress in gender diversity than women do.

While leadership training programs aren’t tasked with correcting diversity imbalances among corporate leadership, they certainly can play a role in what is perceived as “normal” at the upper organizational echelons and can preserve as well as upend conventional expectations of what leadership looks like.

What Is Unconscious Bias?

Many of our human biases are held at the subconscious level. In other words, we often don’t even know we have certain biases. They’re the result of a huge volume of messages from many different sources, and they’re introduced into our brains from the youngest ages. Many of our unconscious biases have to do with gender, ethnicity, profession, body size, and disability.

The consequences can be immense. Unconscious biases still frequently determine whether the best candidate gets the job, whether outstanding performance is accompanied by a monetary reward, who gets promotions, and even whether clients believe they have received good service.

Taking a Hard Look at Ourselves

No HR policy in the world can wipe out unconscious bias, and while non-discrimination laws can help ensure a certain level of diversity in leadership, ultimately it is up to each and every one of us to examine where our own biases lie and what is behind them. It’s not easy.

It’s not enough to say that you are committed to diverse leadership, but saying the words out loud, or writing them in a company-wide statement is a start. We must also hold up a metaphorical mirror to ourselves and be prepared for the reflection to be less than flattering. Do we interview men and women differently? Do certain employees have to do more to “prove” their value to the company than others?

The person you ignore may be entertaining plum job opportunities with your competitors.

And biases are not limited to people of a certain generation. A 2003 experiment by Columbia Business School known as the “Heidi and Howard” study made clear that even young students may hold strong unconscious biases.

Practice the Skill of Open-Mindedness

We have to treat open-mindedness as a skill. We’re bombarded with cues, images, and messages all the time, and our brains have several ways of trying to cut through and make sense of the “signal” in all the noise. Unfortunately, one of the ways our brains do that is by categorizing people. Being aware that we’re doing that is the first step to changing it, and it doesn’t require upending all our beliefs. We still want the best person for the job to be promoted; we just have to recognize that we may have a limited view of just who “the best person” is.

Learning to avoid giving different meanings to the same behavior based on a person’s color, gender, job title, or background may take practice, but it’s well worth the effort. Maybe we do that by evaluating “blind” resumes (where names aren’t listed), or maybe we simply develop our listening skills to where we always give our full attention to the messages we’re receiving, regardless of whom they come from. It’s easier said than done, but practicing it every day is the key.

Leadership training programs simply can’t do their best work when they’re built on top of years of unconscious bias. The good news is that upending our biases by practicing open-mindedness leads us to realizations and relationships we wouldn’t have experienced otherwise. When we learn to judge others by the content of their character and what they actually bring to the table, rather than what we assume they bring to the table, we make our own world, and the world at large a richer, brighter place.

If you are interested in leadership training programs and leadership coaching, I encourage you to learn more about my executive coaching services and leadership coaching programs.

2500 Words: The Comprehensive Guide to Career Coaching

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Many of us enter a profession by choosing a particular major in college, perhaps earning an advanced degree, and eventually searching for and finding a job relevant to our interests and qualifications.

Career aspirations may start at a young age, but things don’t always proceed as we imagined.

It sounds simple, but most people who have been there know that it’s anything but simple. Rarely does the ideal job opportunity that perfectly matches our qualifications, interests, and other preferences (like location, work hours, or working environment) show up at the exact time we need it.

Compromise is a common thread running through many people’s careers because they believe they will have to give up something in order to have the overall life quality they want. And while insisting that a job offer check every last box on a checklist of desirability is a sure path to long stretches of unemployment, it’s not always healthy to take a job just because it’s a paycheck.

Grappling with this balancing act is part of many professionals’ lives, in just about any stage of their career. Career coaches can be terrific resources for those at career crossroads. But they can also be great resources for people who are happy with their jobs and want to make the most of their advancement opportunities. Here is what you should know about career coaching, and how it has the potential to improve your career and your life, no matter what stage of your career you’re in now.

What Do Career Coaches Do?

Most of us naturally turn to friends and family as sounding boards for job issues, but their utility is limited at best. While it’s great to have someone to whom you can kvetch after a particularly grueling week, getting and keeping your career on track requires something more – something that can be provided by the right career coach.

Career coaches help guide their clients through many different kinds of milestones, like going back to school, adjusting career track, getting back into a career after taking time out to raise children, or suddenly being made into a team leader. Career coaches can also help clients prepare for situations like raise and promotion negotiations, and to know when it’s time to look to different employers for new opportunities.

What career coaches offer that no one else does is a perspective that is just removed enough from the client’s situation to see things clearly, while still retaining empathy for the client’s situation. Some of the most common reasons people seek the services of a career coach include:

  • They’re stuck in a career rut
  • They’ve sent out countless resumes, but haven’t heard back
  • They want to make some sort of career transition
  • They are worried about “interview paralysis”
  • They don’t feel confident networking

These aren’t the only reasons people enlist the services of career coaches, so career coaching may be appropriate for you whether or not your situation matches one of the ones listed.

How Do Career Coaches Differ from CEO Coaches and Leadership Coaches?

CEO coaches and leadership coaches typically provide their services for a smaller subset of the professional population. CEO coaches tend to work with C-level executives: CEOs, CIOs, CMOs, and others at the very top of the organizational chart. Top-level executives have different priorities and pressures than even the highest-level journeyman engineers, accountants, or nurses.

Leadership coaches, similarly, work with clients who are taking on leadership responsibilities, often from having been “in the trenches” designing safety equipment, producing annual financial reports, or creating sales or marketing campaigns. While becoming a team leader in such a situation still requires in-depth knowledge of the various “how-tos” related to the job, it also requires leadership skills, which are skills just like any other, in that they need to be learned and practiced in order to be effective.

Career coaches, CEO coaches, and leadership coaches have some things in common.

A career coach may help a professional at any stage of their career. Someone three or five years into their career may wonder if the time is right to earn a post-graduate degree, and a career coach can help with that thought and planning process. The 40-year-old faced with relocating because of a spouse’s career wants to maximize their opportunities at the new location, and the career coach can help here too. Someone within a decade of retirement may want to plan the best way to wind down a career and develop a way to do consulting part-time after retirement. A career coach can help with this as well.

Early-Career Benefits of Career Coaching

Those first few years as a professional in a given field are unlike others. It’s an exciting time for sure, but it also requires learning far more than just how to do the job. People new to a profession are also busy learning who is responsible for what, how the career and promotion ladder works, which manager has which management style, and much more.

Sometimes, a person with a couple of years under their belt may wonder if they’ve chosen the right profession at all. In many cases, these types of career woes can be addressed with the right career plan, and the career coach can help their early-career clients develop one.

The early-career professional who loves what they do, but doesn’t feel like a good fit with a particular employer may wonder if looking elsewhere is a good idea. Or they may wonder if starting their own professional practice is worthwhile. While family and friends should certainly be ready to listen and respond to these issues, a career coach is ready to be realistic and frame the situation from a unique, more impartial perspective that can be amazingly valuable.

Mid-Career Benefits of Career Coaching

Many parts of life are typically in high gear for people who are in the middle phase of their career. They’ve established themselves and perhaps received promotions and raises, and they may have a lot going on outside the workplace as well, with children growing up and needing time and attention, and maybe a home that needs to be maintained, as well as friendships that may be harder to keep up as families go about their busy lives.

The career coach, of course, helps clients focus on the professional dimension of their lives, but this can often have positive effects that carry over into other, non-work environments too. A mid-career professional who is miserable at the prospect of being bypassed by others in their career trajectory will naturally carry some of that home with them at the end of the day.

Again, the career coach offers the removed, yet empathetic perspective that can help the mid-career professional develop a strategy to direct their career during this challenging phase. The strategy may involve making their existing work more visible to management or asking for new responsibilities (or a new job title), or it may involve looking for a new employer – a process that is different for the established professional than it is for someone just starting out.

Late-Career Benefits of Career Coaching

Changes in the American economy have affected professionals well into the latter years of their careers. The Great Recession of ten years ago had many people who were approaching the last phase of their careers lose their jobs, or lose their chances at plum promotions. Many older workers found themselves having to change careers altogether, or having to create their own careers in the new gig economy.

Career coaching for the person in the last decade or so of their professional life can make the difference between slogging on until retirement mercifully arrives while figuring out how to compete with workers half their age, and developing a professional plan that preserves what’s best about their existing career while being prepared for potential obstacles.

Perhaps more so than with CEO coaches or leadership coaches, the career coach has a keen understanding of a professional’s personality, dreams, and disappointments, and knows how to make use of all of these to create an actionable plan going forward. That’s valuable no matter what stage a person’s career is at.

Career coaching may be appropriate at any career stage.

Career Coaching Qualifications

Calling oneself a “career coach” and hanging out a shingle is something many people have tried, regardless of their qualifications or aspirations. There’s nothing stopping a person from doing it, and fortunately for people seeking career coaches, such fly-by-night coaching services usually don’t stick around long enough to snag very many vulnerable clients.

It’s not easy vetting the qualifications of someone calling themselves a career coach. When you hire a lawyer, you can make sure they are licensed to practice, and the same is true of contractors, hair stylists, and medical practitioners. The same isn’t true with career coaches, although there are career coach training programs available.

The good news is that it’s far easier now than it was a decade ago to learn about the qualifications of someone advertising themselves as a career coach because of the internet. In the old days, you may have to meet by phone or in person to determine whether a career coach was qualified, and then follow up with references they provided. This is still the smart thing to do, but you also have access to numerous online resources.

The best career coaches know of the power of content creation, and many of them have blogs, YouTube channels, podcasts, and strong social media presences. Exploring these channels helps you learn more about these coaches, as well as the types of issues they focus on, their style, and how they relate to clients. This information can be tremendously valuable in deciding whether you and a particular coach “click.”

Don’t compromise when it comes to the fundamental qualifications you expect from a career coach.

How to Choose a Career Coach

The first steps to choosing a career coach are knowing when you need to reach out to one and knowing what your goals are. “When to reach out” can be tricky. It’s best to reach out before you have reached critical mass and have either lost your job or are an inch away from quitting. Ideally, you should reach out as soon as you realize you’ve gone off-track, but it’s not always to tell whether you’ve gone off-track or have just had a couple of bad weeks. Persistent feelings of disappointment with work that you can’t tie to a specific event, like an end-of-year push, or an interaction with a particularly difficult customer, are indications that talking to a career coach could be a good idea.

Likewise, if you don’t have a clue where you want your career to go – you’re just miserable all the time the way things are – then you may not be in the best position to use a career coach’s services optimally. Think about your career goals and aspirations. If you could wave a magic wand that would put you in your dream career, what would that dream career look like? Maybe it looks just like your career does now, except you earn 50% more than what you do. If so, a career coach may be able to help you learn to negotiate a raise (or a new job elsewhere).

Results to Expect from Career Coaching

Many different types of career coaching “packages” are available, so it’s impossible to say exactly what you can expect. However, there are commonalities among strong career coaching relationships. First, you should expect an initial “intake” meeting where you talk about the services you will receive, what you can expect from your coach, and what your coach will expect from you. At this time, your coach will probably explain how much one-on-one time you’ll spend with your coach, and how and when it’s OK to contact them with questions or updates.

Even before your first phone or in-person contact with your coach, you may receive via email a list of questions, or perhaps an assessment of some kind to help your coach understand you better at the first meeting. When you have a scheduled meeting with your coach (whether by phone, in person, by video conference, chat, etc.), you should expect their full attention. After all, that’s what you’re paying for.

Expect regular one-on-one communication with your career coach.

Expect to have homework and to discuss that homework at your next meeting. You should also expect honest, constructive feedback. Your coach may have you set clear objectives, like meeting with a senior staff member to talk about your career aspirations and learn from their experience before your next coaching session. You would then talk about this experience and learn what you can from it.

As your coaching relationship comes to its conclusion, your coach will likely solicit feedback from you that will help both of you going forward. Your coach may ask which of your personality traits you had to draw on to complete your objectives, or what you wish you could tell your pre-coached self. And you may be asked for feedback on what specifically about the coaching setup worked well and what could have worked better. At this point, you may set up a follow-up call for a few months in the future, so your coach can check in with you on longer-term progress.

How to Make the Most of Career Coaching

Three keys to making the most of a career coaching relationship include knowing when it’s time to seek career coaching, choosing a career coach carefully, and committing to doing the homework and really listening to your coach.

As mentioned before, it’s not ideal to wait until your professional life has imploded before reaching out to a career coach. It’s best to recognize the signs of a career that could derail and reach out before that can happen. Choosing the right coach will probably require that you engage with several, probably starting online. From there, you can narrow down your search to the two or three that seem to have the best “fit” for your personality and the best qualifications. Then you can speak to each in more depth before making your decision.

Finally, if you’re committed to the process of career coaching, you’re halfway to success. Coaching is a two-way street, and your coach can’t magically make your career better without your active participation. For professionals in any career stage, career coaching can be a way to better manage and direct their future, and make sure their career works as well as possible within their overarching life goals.

While leadership coaching and CEO coaching tend to be more targeted than career coaching, the end results are similar: professionals who are more competent and confident, and who are more capable of fulfilling goals. Whatever your career stage or aspirations, I invite you to check out my executive coaching services. Whether or not you choose to follow up with me, you’ll find access to valuable career resources that can help you take charge of your bright future.

Glossary of Terms

Career coach – a coaching professional who helps people in many different career tracks and career stages to maximize their professional effectiveness and shape their professional futures

CEO coach – a coaching professional who works with top-level (C-level) executives to help them maximize their effectiveness as executives, identify blind spots, and understand their strengths and weaknesses

Early career – the first few years of a professional career, when a person is likely figuring out how they want their career trajectory to proceed, and what additional qualifications they may need

Late career – the last decade or so before retirement, when a professional considers their professional legacy, and how they envision their career winding down, whether they will continue working part-time after retirement, etc.

Leadership coach – a coach who, similarly to the CEO coach, works with people in leadership positions, helping them balance the leadership skills required with the standard, professional skills they must also demonstrate on the job

Mid career – the middle years of a professional career, often accompanied by a busy home life and life in a community

Vetting – the process of narrowing down career coaching candidates through online research, one-on-one contact and conversations, and evaluation of a candidate coach’s qualifications, track record, and references

How Technology Affects Leadership and Leadership Training Programs

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Office buildings may seem quieter these days than in the era when clattering typewriters, closing file cabinet drawers, and talking around the water cooler were standard.

Offices may not be as noisy, but more communication than ever is taking place there. 

Less auditory volume certainly doesn’t correspond to less communication going on. Intense, in-depth conversations take place all the time over text, email, and online chat, and the old office “bush telegraph” is now an electronic network that can transmit information to large numbers of people in real time.

Many CEOs reach their status after having many years in an industry, and all those years of hard work may not have allowed sufficient time to stay atop the technologies commonly used in business. That’s why today’s leadership training programs cannot ignore the role that technology plays in the day-to-day lives of top business leaders.

Influence versus Direct Power

Gone with many of the earlier modes of communication is the concept of the CEO as “invisible and omnipotent.” Today’s leader is more of an influencer than a “boss” from the old days who issued one-way communications and expected them to be carried out without question. It’s no mystery why so many brands turn to “influencer marketing” as opposed to traditional advertisements: people naturally want to do what their preferred influencers do and recommend, rather than being told what to do.

The good news is that today’s CEO can be a strong influencer without always pressing the flesh or issuing directives from “on high.” In-house social networks and instant communication modalities allow leaders to influence others in ways that simply were not possible a generation ago. That’s why today’s leadership training programs must include learning modules about technology, communication, and how to put the two together responsibly and effectively.

Potential Dangers of Communication Technology

Along with unprecedented power, modern technologies also offer unprecedented risks. Strict vertical control of the distribution of information is still possible, and sometimes necessary. However, these channels can spring massive leaks as easily as someone clicking on “Reply All” rather than “Reply,” or inadvertently sending a communication to the wrong person.

Communication mistakes can spread further, faster due to technology.

A CEO may not need to master every type of technology used in the company, but they definitely need to master some of them. Particularly with group chats and business social networks, understanding how the technology works is essential to preventing mishaps that can ruffle feathers or cause grave misunderstandings.

Leaders more Accessible, and That’s Good

Technology has made top company leaders more accessible to frontline workers. Physical travel isn’t necessary for CEOs to have “face time” with their teams or customers. Technology is perhaps the most disruptive force facing today’s business world. And along with changing business, technology is changing the day-to-day work of today’s CEO.

It’s not always easy for a top leader to filter out the signal from all the digital noise, and leadership training programs must not ignore the many ways technology affects the way business is conducted. Helping leaders use technology to help set priorities, communicate more effectively, and be more accessible to employees are (or should be) key elements of leadership training programs. Technology is a genie that cannot be stuffed back into the bottle, and the leaders that learn to make technology work for them, rather than the other way around, are leaders that will be more effective and have better legacies.

I, for one, am thrilled with today’s technological possibilities, because it helps me offer leadership training programs and direct CEO coaching more effectively and efficiently. Many of my books on leadership can be accessed instantly as e-books, and I can share executive coaching tips by online video, so no interested person has to miss out.

I encourage you to check out my books and learn more about my executive coaching services. Leadership training cannot afford to be held back by fear of technology, because the world is going to move forward regardless. Let’s make the most of technology for CEOs as well as all leaders in the world of business.

 

What Companies and Executives Should Expect from C-Level Coaching

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“C-level” refers to the highest-ranking executives in an organization and gets its name because the letter “C” is often a first initial in such an executive’s job title (standing in for the word “chief”): CEO, CFO, CIO, CMO, etc.

With the big office and big salary at the C-level come big responsibilities.

It is the people at the C-level who set the strategy, make the important decisions, and ensure operations align with strategic goals and values. Leaders at the C-level have different leadership expectations than do other company leaders, and therefore, their coaching needs are not the same as those of other types of company leaders.

Just as other organizational leaders benefit from coaching, the top executives benefit from C-level coaching that is tailored to their unique position at the top of the company hierarchy.

How the Company Benefits and What It Should Expect

Failure rates for top executives are alarmingly high, and having to replace a C-level officer can be phenomenally expensive and disruptive. Ensuring a productive and long tenure in a C-level office is one of the reasons so many top companies invest in C-level coaching.

While a company cannot and should not expect a C-level coach to teach a new CEO, CIO, or CMO how to do their job, they should expect the coach to work with the C-level executive on key skills like conflict management, prioritization, communication, and negotiation within the often-conflicting agendas with which they’re surrounded. Likewise, they should expect coaching to result in better performance, elimination of executive “blind spots,” and better receptivity to feedback.

How Top Executives Benefit from C-Level Coaching

Likewise, a new C-level executive shouldn’t expect a coach to teach them how to do their job. They should, however, expect to use tools and assessments to learn their own strongest and weakest traits, and they should expect to develop an actionable plan to address them. They should expect honesty, candor, and confidentiality from the C-level coach, as well as regular communication with them and in some cases, follow-up after the coaching contract ends.

Follow-up is often part of the coaching contract.

Essentially, the C-level leader should expect coaching to help them use their strengths advantageously while working to overcome weaknesses in practical, measurable ways. After coaching, they should expect to perform better, handle stress better, and be better positioned to help take the organization in the direction it needs to go.

How C-Level Coaching Differs from Leadership and Career Coaching

Leadership coaching is appropriate for anyone in a leadership position, even if they’re not at the executive level. Department heads, team leaders, and line leaders can benefit from leadership coaching and learn how to effectively lead teams to accomplish goals with skill and harmony.

Career coaches may work with professionals at any career level, including people new to a field. Working with a career coach, a client learns to set short- and long-term goals, prioritize efforts, balance work and life, and lay out a plan to accomplish goals over the short and long term. People who enlist the efforts of leadership coaches or career coaches may or may not have their sights set on the C-level, but they know they can benefit from coaching (and benefit their organization) just the same.

In my career as an executive coach, I have worked with leaders at all levels, including many at the C-level. The important thing about coaching is that it is personalized to the needs of the client, whether they lead a small team, or a huge, global corporation. C-level coaching is a wise investment for any organization, because of the costs and risks associated with appointing a new C-level leader. Coaching helps businesses maximize the chances of great success for their top leadership so that the company will face minimal internal obstacles when pursuing overarching goals. If the concept of C-level coaching interests you, I invite you to learn more about my executive coaching services.

5 Elements Great Leadership Speakers Bring to their Presentations

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Words are only one element of communication.

Words matter, of course, but how they’re presented can make or break their effectiveness.

Communication is effective when there is trust between speaker and listener. If there’s no trust, the words won’t register. That’s why the most effective communicators know the value of eye contact, facial expression, the tone of voice, body language, and rate of speech to communicating effectively.

The best leadership speakers know this and realize the importance of establishing trust with an audience full of people they don’t even know. For leadership speakers to make the most impact, they need to bring several key elements to their presentation, including these five.

1. Passion for the Subject Matter

When someone is passionate about a “boring” topic, they can take it from dull to fascinating. Likewise, someone with little passion for a subject can turn even the most exciting topic tedious. Leadership speakers are often called upon to inspire an audience that faces a new and exciting challenge, or that is coping with a daunting setback. Without passion, the audience embarking on an exciting new project will gain little in the way of inspiration, and the audience trying to overcome adversity will likely stay mired there. Passion is essential to the strong leadership speech and is conveyed through word choice, tone, and body language.

2. Engagement with the Audience

Perhaps you have witnessed a speaker giving a speech, seemingly unaware of the audience before them. They may continue headlong into a complex topic, not noticing the confused looks on listeners’ faces, or plod along in a sleepy monotone despite people occasionally nodding off in their seats. Engagement doesn’t require props or special effects (though those can sometimes be appropriate) but requires leadership speakers to learn about their audience before the speech, to look at audience members during the speech to gauge their reaction, and often, to answer their questions immediately following the presentation.

3. Relevance

The best speakers know how to make their narratives relevant to the audience in front of them.

A leadership presentation doesn’t have to be about the exact topic that binds the audience together, such as an industry practice. But it does have to be relevant to them in some way. It could be about overcoming obstacles similar to the ones the audience faces, or it could be about how a person or group of people brainstormed a creative and innovative way to meet a new goal. The audience members must feel like the speaker’s content has some relevance for them, personally, professionally, or both. Otherwise, it’s just a story that may or may not be remembered or learned from.

4. Memorability

Not all leadership presentations stick with the audience forever, but they should make enough of an impression that audience members are still thinking about the presentation afterward, as they go back to their regular routine. Lessons learned should be communicated clearly, in terms that people can grasp and apply to their own situations. Passion and relevance should combine to strike an emotional chord in audience members since emotion is closely tied to the formation of new memories.

5. Great Storytelling

You don’t always notice great storytelling while it’s happening, but its effects last long after the event is over. The human brain is wired for extracting valuable information from stories. Facts presented in a dry list don’t “stick” nearly as well in people’s minds as those same facts presented in a compelling narrative. Great storytelling builds logically to a conclusion and helps the audience understand why that conclusion is important. It requires good flow, clear speaking, and appropriate body language as well as the information contained in the narrative itself.

Leadership coaches know that in order to reach people, they have to bring far more than just a slide deck to an event. More importantly, they must bring their passion for a topic, their ability to engage with people, and their skill at making information relevant to their audience. When inspiration is encompassed by a great story that’s delivered effectively, it makes an impact that lasts long after the event itself has concluded. If a leadership event is in your organization’s future, I invite you to check out my speaking availability. I would be delighted to hear from you.

4 Examples of Leadership Training Programs That Work

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Most of us have had experience with bad supervisors at one point or another, and we know that a bad supervisor can be worse than no supervisor at all!

Sometimes a bad supervisor is worse than no supervisor.

Good supervisors, on the other hand, are good because they enable, empower, and facilitate rather than control, micromanage, and constrain. Leadership development programs largely aim to help those in positions of leadership to lead well, and to further their own career as well as the health and well-being of the business overall.

People tend to think of “leaders” in far more positive terms than they do “managers.” And when managers complete solid leadership development programs, they can transform themselves into leaders and go from demanding and micromanaging to empowering and facilitating. As you may imagine, it makes the workplace better for everyone. Here are 4 examples of leadership development programs that have produced great results.

1. Nurse Managers Fulfill Potential, Elevate Goals

Nurse managers must not only possess great clinical expertise, they must take responsibility for unit or departmental outcomes, patient outcomes, and human resource outcomes. And they must do this in an environment that is thick with regulations and girded on all sides by cost concerns. Saying it’s a tough job is an understatement.

The American Organization of Nurse Executives offers several leadership development programs for nursing managers, including brief, three-day programs up to one-year fellowships. The literature covering such programs indicates that they empower nurse managers to:

  • Make the most of their education and training
  • Further their education and training
  • Work as partners with physicians and other healthcare professionals in the ongoing redesign of healthcare in the United States

2. Safety Officers Increase Safety and Efficiency

Businesses without a strong culture of safety are prone to any number of devastating consequences, including injury or death of employees, serious reputational damage, and difficulty in recruiting. Safety officers must lead by example and set the tone for safety. Furthermore, they must incorporate practical training, like training people for whom English is not their native language to render first aid in an emergency.

The construction market, in particular, is highly competitive, and companies that invest in leadership development programs for those responsible for jobsite safety tend to see lower incident rates, cost reductions, and higher revenues. Leadership techniques, communication skills, and team building are skills that such programs often focus upon, and tangible results tend to come in the form of lower insurance premiums and stronger reputation, which is something you can’t put a price tag on.

Investing in the training and leadership development of safety officers carries a strong, positive ROI.

3. Food Executives Reduce Turnover

Consulting firm Korn Ferry has worked with leaders in a North American food company to develop a customized leadership development program with a three-pronged approach:

  • Leading the self
  • Leading others
  • Leading the enterprise

By training leaders on simplification, accountability, and collaboration, the program was able to reduce turnover in executive-level positions and has had the side benefit of empowering collaboration across departments that once had more “siloed” structure.

4. South African Business Leaders Move Beyond Apartheid

It’s been nearly a quarter-century since apartheid ended in South Africa. During that time, business leaders realized they had to re-democratize to embrace social change while at the same time encouraging business growth. It certainly hasn’t been easy, but leadership development programs that emphasize intercultural awareness and empathy have effected change.

Furthermore, much of the development of a “new” South Africa coincided with the digital revolution, offering both opportunity and challenge. Business leaders have worked on all levels, including at the level of higher education to encourage students to consider a business role in a globalized economy. As a result, small businesses, women-owned businesses, and creative means of raising capital have all gained traction in this dynamic and diverse nation.

Leadership development programs must be tailored to the client and is not a one-size-fits-all proposition. In my career in business coaching and keynote speaking, I’ve seen for myself the results of leadership training programs in action. If you are interested in learning more, I encourage you to check out my books, which deal with all aspects of business leadership, talent management, and cultural change.

How a Life Coach Could Help Your Career

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In general, the coach-client partnership is designed to inspire the client to maximize their potential, whether in their personal or professional life.

Life coaching, like executive coaching, is concerned with helping people fulfill their potential.

Coaching is not therapy, and should not be sought out as a substitute for therapy. Therapy often requires focus on exploring the client’s past and getting to the deepest roots of psychological problems that hold people back.

Coaching, however, is future-oriented and is about defining goals and creating an action plan within the reality of life as it currently is for the client. Life coaches and career coaches share some commonalities, but they’re certainly not interchangeable. Career coaches focus on your professional life, while life coaches focus on your personal life. Things like career choice, or choosing to change employers or careers may be covered by a life coach, but the life coach is mostly about non-work life.

Getting Your Non-Work Life Together Benefits Your Career

The good news is, working with a life coach can produce a side benefit of improving your career. Bad days at work often stem from problems at home, and while a life coach won’t magically make all your personal problems disappear, they can teach you how to manage your non-work life better so that when you’re at work, you can focus on work.

We have all heard of or read about the high-powered executive whose home life is an absolute disaster. Are they what you would consider “successful?” For most people, career success is less important than having a meaningful life where they give and receive love and can feel like they’re making the world (or at least their small corner of the world) a better place.

Life Coaching May Lead You to Seek Career Coaching

Working with a life coach and experiencing the positive results can cultivate greater confidence professionally. It can help a person feel ready to tackle career goals, change employers, or otherwise step up their professional life. It’s not uncommon for someone who has worked with a life coach to work with a career coach later on (or vice versa) because once you see the power of defining, setting, and achieving goals, you realize how it can benefit many facets of your life.

The career coach may use some of the same tools and techniques that the life coach does, but the context will be different because the goal will be to develop the career you have always wanted. But working with a career coach can produce similar positive results as can working with a talented life coach.

A good life coaching experience may prompt you to work with a career coach too.

Finding a Legitimate Life Coach

You can find “life coaches” just about anywhere. That doesn’t mean they know what they’re doing, however. There is no singular regulating entity that oversees the life coaching industry, and there are many life coaches who are entirely self-appointed, with little to no training. There are, however, accrediting bodies like the International Coach Foundation that grants or withholds accreditation from candidate coaching programs based on specific standards they have developed.

If you seek a life coach, ask to see some evidence. They should be able to show you documented results, and ideally, they should have some past clients who are willing to give references. A great website or an expensive advertising campaign is not the same as a true reference, so don’t skip this step. And if you can have a free, no-obligation conversation with a life coach, whether by phone or email or in person, you should do so. Your inner wisdom can tell you a lot about whether a particular coach is going to be worth your investment.

Having worked as an executive coach for decades, I can tell you that “fixing” a high-level leader’s career is only a temporary fix if that person’s non-work life is in disarray. Sometimes even the most successful-appearing business leaders could benefit from the services of a life coach or a therapist so that they can focus on work while they’re at work, and not the mess they left behind at home.

Whether you’re interested in life coaching or career coaching, I invite you to check out my books. While geared toward the business audience, they’re based on solid research into people’s personalities, strengths, and weaknesses, and they offer plenty of food for thought for the person who is determined to get their life – professional or otherwise – on the right track.

 

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