18 Jul
PeopleTek Coaching News

PeopleTek Coaching Announcement

Having the courage to document your goals is step 2 from our book 12 Steps For Courageous Leadership!

Do you struggle with putting your goals on paper? Do you encourage others to put their goals in writing?

If yes, we want to hear how easy or difficult it was for you, and then the success stories for achieving that written goal.

Step 2: The Courage To Document Your Goals

  • Have written goals moved you along?
  • How has your team or organization benefited?

For those of you with direct reports, does your staff understand how they personally contribute to team goals?

Do you help them document their supporting goals and regularly review the progress against them?

Does everyone understand the impact to the customer or client if they goal is NOT met? And more positively, how have relationships, job satisfaction levels, and the bottom line grown when the goals ARE met?

We look forward to hearing your success stories and the benefits derived from having documented (and shared) goals!

14 Jul
PeopleTek Coaching Leadership

Mid Year Check-In

Leaders must know where they are going if they expect others to willingly join them on the journey.
–Kouzes & Posner, The Leadership Challenge

Reviewing Your Goals

Can you believe we’re halfway through the year? They say as we get older time goes more quickly and we’re beginning to believe that!

It’s that time again; we’re half-way through the year and we need to take a checkpoint on our year to date successes, identify our struggles and what we’re losing sleep over, and prioritize our desired year-end results.

Hopefully, you’ve been reviewing your goals and development plan regularly. Have you missed or neglected any of them? Don’t let urgent issues derail you from “actioning” important issues.

While reviewing your goals do a mental check-in to determine if all of your behaviors are supporting the attainment of your goals. PeopleTek’s formula for success is VMGM=B  (Vision, Mission, Goals, Measures = Behaviors). Behaviors are the key to success!

While reviewing your goals validate that:

  • Achieved goals have been recognized and celebrated
  • Your organization has a talent retention plan
  • Leadership bench-strength exists
  • You are keeping abreast of changing times by developing and updating skill-sets (yours and others!)
  • Relationship enhancements have occurred as needed
  • Team members are intent on becoming more courageous leaders

How to Involve Your Team in Achieving Goals

  1. Conduct a review of how your organization is doing, and meet with direct reports to assess progress (or lack of). This includes having a formal one on one with each team member to review their goal accomplishments and update individual development plans. Address what training is necessary for individual career advancement, and what is required to create organizational bench strength.
  2. Provide feedback about how each employee can better help the company achieve its goals, and ensure all behaviors are aligned with realizing positive momentum.
  3. Make your one on one meetings a true dialogue; ask for opinions and advice for growth and how to attain goals. Discuss ideas for cost savings and waste elimination. Ask what they feel is working well, and why. Ask what is not working well, or what is impacting results and growth.

“A good objective of leadership is to help those who are doing poorly to do well and to help those who are doing well to do even better.”
–John QuincyAdams

Tips to Stay on Track With Your Goals

As a reminder, IMPORTANT issues contribute heavily to our goals and objectives and have high value. URGENT issues require immediate attention but may or may not contribute to the success of meeting our goals and objectives. Here are some tips to help you stay on track with goals during the second half of the year and beyond.

  • Invest the time to assess what’s important; you will almost always have sufficient time for these.
  • Start your day with the important tasks instead of the “fast, enjoyable and easy to accomplish” ones.
  • Distinguish between urgent and important; help your team and organization understand this and engage other leaders if in doubt.  (Or help them understand the difference!)
  • Don’t let the priorities of others replace your own top priorities; learn to say no firmly and tactfully.
  • Recognize that readiness levels and skill-sets may need to be developed and honed.
  • Be willing to invest the time and resources that will enable you to be a highly successful leader and have a high performing team.

Don’t wait! Now is the time to set realistic expectations for what you wish to accomplish in the second half of the year. Wishing you success!

07 Jul
PeopleTek Coaching Leadership

Commitment For Excellence

What does the word commitment mean to you? Reliable, trustworthy, dedicated, loyal, devoted, obligated, and responsible are some of the words that may come to mind.

Now think of “excellence.” Perhaps you think of superior, perfect, brilliant, distinct, and quality.

What about when you combine the two words: Commitment and Excellence? They’re pretty powerful words and before we can make them work for us we need to understand what we’re committed to, and then put a plan of excellence into place.

The quality of a person’s life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor.
–Vince Lombardi

We regularly talk about the need for having written vision, mission, and goals in order to achieve success.  In addition we need to consider how we can provide exceptional value to our customers, shareholders, and business partners (ex. optimal service or quality products and deliverables).

Are you part of an organization that is committed to excellence? Assuming yes, how would you rate the work that is performed or the product or service that you deliver?  Do you take the time to review those results and take note of what has been done well (so it can be repeated) and identify any gaps (so they can be improved upon)?

What about you personally? Do you have short and long term goals? Are you as committed to excellence at home as you are at work?  Could your life improve and perhaps your levels of happiness and satisfaction grow if you took the time to assess what worked well and what caused friction?

We can all benefit by identifying the areas we excel in and understanding the reasons we excel, as well as knowing what causes resistance.  Having a commitment for excellence and allowing it to become a habit will serve us well!

30 Jun
PeopleTek Coaching Leadership

Empower Your Employees

“An empowered organization is one in which individuals have the knowledge, skill, desire, and opportunity to personally succeed in a way that leads to collective organizational success.”
—Stephen Covey

When you think of empowerment what comes to mind? Do you view it as something that can be given or do you view it as an opportunity or process to enable an individual or team to become better and stronger?

“ Empower Your Employees To Greatness. ”
—Al Goodman

Empowerment does not mean relinquishing control, but simply stated it’s utilizing the strengths of individuals and teams to make decisions, implement process improvements, improve results, and perform in an autonomous way.

Empowered employees have indicated they have increased loyalty to their organization, enjoy working hard, feel they contribute to the overall success of the company, and are happy in their position.

We are all familiar with the term return on investment (ROI), but what about “return on recognition” (ROR)Ô? (Al Goodman of Albert James Associates coined this term).

RORÔ is how we as leaders can improve the performance of our team and empower them to greatness.  To begin with, we need to define the behaviors we desire; Mr. Goodman has identified the following 6 areas:

  • Talent Management
  • Accountability
  • Collaboration
  • Efficiency
  • Strategy
  • Customer Focus

These dimensions may be replaced with some that may be more meaningful or useful to your organization but the intent is to make your staff aware of them, and the associated behaviors you view as critical for success.

The next step is for you as leader to provide feedback and encouragement for the behaviors exhibited, and to create a work environment conducive for employees to act in empowered ways.  The benefit will be higher performance, an increase in results, and lower attrition. Do you want to empower your employees to greatness?

23 Jun
PeopleTek Coaching Interpersonal Skills

Understanding Your Customer

“If we don’t take care of our customers, someone else will.”

Almost all of us have customers; they could be internal or external to our company, they could be within the public or private sector, or they could be investors and shareholders.

Regardless of who are customers are, we need to not only provide them with an excellent product or exceptional service, we must also understand their needs and expectations, and build a valued relationship.

Customer Service = Providing quality and value

How committed are you to providing customer service? Do you have a means of knowing if your customers are satisfied? Do you have a measurement system that rates how effective you are? What about a process for reporting and tracking issues and complaints, and for soliciting feedback?

Providing quality and value is huge. Most often we think in terms of a service, a deliverable, or a product, but what about cost saving recommendations, ideas for increasing revenue, or assisting with the attainment of goals? Or what about enhancements for how they service their customers?

We need to understand what’s expected of us and take the time to validate that we’re meeting (and hopefully exceeding) those expectations. We need to understand the critical roles and processes that best support each customer, and we need to anticipate the needs and expectations of our customers.

What Happens When You Don’t Deliver

Another key dimension that is sometimes overlooked is understanding the impact to our customers when we don’t deliver. Other than diminished satisfaction levels, there could be penalties assessed for non-delivery, expenses for non-productive workers, and of course losing the customer overall.

Last week a major airline had a 5-hour computer outage resulting in canceled flights and thousands of stranded passengers; the fall-out will be experienced for several more days and the true impact (loss of repeat business) may never be known.

We once saw a department of 500 individuals sitting idly for several hours because of non-delivery of a product. If we truly know our customer, we understand their dependencies on us, can equate our lack of service to their loss of revenue and other downstream impacts, and have an awareness that they could look elsewhere for service or product providers.

Knowing our customer, being customer focused, delivering what we commit to, and listening and responding to their needs will lend itself to a sustainable customer relationship  – isn’t that what we all aspire for?

16 Jun
PeopleTek Coaching Leadership

Leadership Key Cause For Attrition

“A Gallup poll of more than 1 million employed U.S. workers concluded that the No. 1 reason people quit their jobs is a bad boss or immediate supervisor.”

Key Cause For Attrition – Lack of Strong Leadership

The lack of strong leadership skills contributes significantly to attrition. Employee satisfaction levels become low, performance suffers, absenteeism is high, and the inspiration and motivation to be an achiever and obtain results becomes close to non-existent.

Have you ever had a boss that made you feel demoralized? What about that “ruled by intimidation”? What about that made you want to quit?

People Quit Their Leaders, Not Their Jobs . . .

This same Gallup poll also discovered that poorly managed groups were 50 percent less productive than those with strong and respected leaders and that profits were reduced by 44 percent.

These numbers build a compelling case for ensuring your leadership team has the skills, behaviors, and respect to ensure your organization is successful.

Badbossology.com also conducted a leadership survey of 1,100+ individuals and found some very interesting results:

50 percent said they would fire their boss.

Almost 30 percent would have their boss seen by a workplace psychologist.

23 percent would send their boss for management training.

Do these numbers surprise you? They did us!

What Do Individuals Want in a Boss?

We’ve been told a good leader:

  • Appreciates them as an individual and as a professional
  • Wants to help them grow and succeed
  • Provides meaningful feedback
  • Rewards and recognizes results
  • Can be trusted
  • Is Authentic
  • Listens

Do you possess these skills?  Do you know others in leadership roles that could improve in these areas? We’d love to hear your thoughts and stories about “bad bosses”.  (Please do not provide names but do let us know the behaviors and skills that are lacking, and the associated impacts).

19 May
PeopleTek Coaching Leadership

Increase Your Effectiveness – Follow Up

“The follow-up factor correlates with improved leadership effectiveness among both U.S. and non-U.S. executives.”
– Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan

Do you consistently follow-up? As a leader this could entail many things. You could follow-up on project tasks, goal achievement, new hires, promoted individuals and delegated assignments.

You can also follow-up with business partners, vendors, and acquaintances from networking groups. And, follow up includes process improvement ideas, cost saving opportunities, and progress against development planning.

In a leadership study of eight major corporations, Marshall Goldsmith and Howard Morgan found that the top rated item by employees for leadership effectiveness was “the ongoing interaction and follow-up with colleagues. Leaders who discussed their own improvement priorities with their co-workers, and then regularly followed up” were also rated highly effective.

All eight companies had the common goal to determine the desired behaviors to ensure leadership effectiveness, and arrived at the same conclusion: leadership interaction and follow-up were essential for success. http://www.marshallgoldsmithlibrary.com/docs/articles/LeaderContactSport.pdf

Another perspective for follow-up is from a marketing and sales approach. How often do you meet someone new, exchange business cards, share business ideas and potential opportunities and then can’t recall their name or link the name to that “new opportunity”?

Keith Ferrazzi recommends following up within twelve to twenty-four hours after you meet someone new. If you meet somebody on a plane, send them an e-mail later that day. If you meet somebody over cocktails, send them an e-mail the next morning. He also provides the following tips for flawless follow-up:

  • Put the name and e-mail address of a new acquaintance in your database and program your calendar to remind you in a month’s time to drop the person another e-mail, just to keep in touch. Remember—and this is critical—your follow up shouldn’t remind them of what they can do for you. It’s about what you might be able to do for them. It’s about giving them a reason to want to follow up.
  • Always express your gratitude.
  • Be sure to include an item of interest from your meeting or conversation—a joke or a shared moment of humor.
  • Reaffirm whatever commitments you both made—going both ways.
  • Be brief and to the point.
  • Always address the thank-you note to the person by name.
  • Use e-mail and snail mail. The combination adds a personalized touch.
  • Timeliness is key. Send them as soon as possible after the meeting or interview. Many people wait until the holidays to say thank you or reach out. Why wait? Your follow-ups will be timelier, more appropriate, and certainly better remembered.
  • Don’t forget to follow up with those who have acted as the go between for you and someone else. Let the original referrer know how the conversation went, and express your appreciation for their help.
  • “Make follow-up a habit. Make it automatic. When you do, the days of struggling to remember people’s names—and of other people struggling to remember yours—will be a thing of the past”.  How effective are you with following up with your colleagues? With new acquaintances? Rate yourself now and make changes today!
12 May
PeopleTek Coaching Career

Managing Your Leader

Managing your boss isn’t a matter of “apple polishing” or playing politics. It involves working together to generate the best solutions for you, your boss and your company.
—

Can you really manage your boss? Probably not, but you can improve your relationship with your boss by effectively communicating, better understanding their preferred leadership style, and by building an open and trusting relationship.

Start by aligning expectations and having a clear understanding of your organization’s vision and mission statements, and supporting goals; we must know our responsibilities and how we support attaining shared goals, and hold one another accountable for our actions (or lack of actions).

That’s the relationship. You’re trying to live up to the boss’s view of your best self.
–Dale Dauten

8 Tips to Improve Your Relationship With Your Boss

Management experts, Joe Takash and Bahaudin Mujtaba, provide the following tips for fostering a better relationship with your boss.

1.  Learn your boss’ communication style.
What level of detail do they prefer? How often do they want to meet? Identify who seems to communicate best with them and try incorporating their style with yours.

2.  Be proactive.
Understand the strengths you bring to the organization and ensure your boss is aware of them. If you have ideas, share them and create an executable plan.

3.  Meet regularly.
Schedule monthly meetings (minimally); discuss your progress against goals, identify areas for improvement, and jointly update your development plan.

4.  Ask for your boss’ opinion.
Ask for their perspective on things.  State your idea and approach, and ask for their input. If you’re the boss, ask your team for their ideas and LISTEN.

5.  Go to your boss with solutions.
Most of us have heard “don’t come to me with problems, come to me with solutions.” That doesn’t mean we don’t ask for help or have questions, but rather that we have thought it through, have solutions (which may have failed), but would now like another opinion.

6.  Develop a power that makes you attractive.
Become an expert, stay apprised of changes in your industry, understand the competition, have the dream customer/business partner relationship.

7.  Address problems.
If you seem at odds with your boss, talk to him/her. Do it when you can have one another’s full attention, remain fact based as to why you feel uncomfortable,  and keep your emotions in check.

8.  Play devil’s advocate.
This doesn’t mean having open disagreements or making your boss look “wrong.”  Instead, say, “Let me play devil’s advocate” so you are viewed as stating an alternate opinion which may bring additional light to the situation.

Invest the time to build a relationship with your boss, understand how they prefer to be communicated with, and model your leadership behaviors to support those preferences.

Guaranteed to build a “win-win” relationship!

The glue that holds all relationships together — including the relationship between the leader and the led is trust, and trust is based on integrity.
–Brian Tracy

QwikTip and QwikCoach

QwikTips Powered by e-Coach – 5 Common Leadership Mistakes.

And for those with a QwikCoach license, refresh your existing skills and acquire new skills by visiting the QwikTips library for leadership ideas and techniques.

If you don’t have QwikCoach, it’s an excellent resource for growing your leadership skills remotely that you should consider.

Learn More About QwikCoach

Help turn your leadership knowledge into leadership action!

05 May
PeopleTek Coaching Leadership

Lessons In Leadership

“We are once again reminded that America can do whatever we set our mind to,” President Obama said. “That is the story of our history.”

Read more:

http://www.businessinsider.com/4-leadership-lessons-from-obamas-speech-2011-5

Dear Leaders,

Sunday, May 1st , 2011 is a day many rejoice in. Regardless of your political views, President Obama’s speech regarding the death of Osama bin Laden was inspiring and direct, and the actions and professionalism of members of SEAL Team 6 accomplished what they set out to do.

In the case of President Obama, the following leadership traits were exhibited:

He gave credit where credit was due (U.S. intelligence and military forces). Providing timely feedback and recognizing accomplishments is a leadership trait we frequently talk about.

He talked about the need to take action. Again, having clearly defined goals and tasks and completing them to perfection is what we strive for (for us and for our organization).

Tough decisions were made. We all know being a leader is not a popularity contest and what we do is not always pleasant and requires courage.

John Baldoni summarizes what all leaders can learn from when delivering a message:

  1. Deliver the headline first. This is the hook that captures our attention.
  2. Put the news in context. Explain the issues, the impacts, the consequences.
  3. Tell a story. Make it personal, paint a picture.
  4. Get to the point; brevity rules. This speaks for itself.

Additional leadership skills were displayed by the SEALs (Sea, Air, Land), specifically members of “Team 6”. This group of elite military professionals is considered to be the “best of best”. They had a vision, a mission, with critical deliverables defined, and they had very clear roles, responsibilities and timeframes in which to execute.

Not only are they well trained but they are also cross trained so everyone and every task has a back-up plan; they are motivated, dedicated, and understand what their priorities are.

These lessons in leadership can serve us well and will support us in achieving the motto that “We can do whatever we set our minds to . . .”

28 Apr
PeopleTek Coaching Leadership

Leadership and Talent Bench-Strength

“The key to sustained competitive advantage in any industry is not size, image, or technology. It’s talent, particularly at the leadership level. Your organization’s future depends on its ability to identify, retain, and prepare a dependable “bench” — its next generation of leaders – continuously.”
– Dr. Robert W. Barner

Dear Leaders,

Did you know that there were 76 million Americans born between 1946 and 1964? As more and more “baby boomers” retire or change jobs, is your organization prepared to lose their tenured, mature, and knowledgeable workforce? Are you?

The exodus of “baby boomers” has begun and plans are needed to maintain leadership bench strength. Think about your current talent pool. Are they prepared to replace those that are leaving?

Develop Future Leaders

In order to have continued success, you need to identify and develop future leaders.

The best way to begin the development process is by having regular discussions with each employee about their successes, strengths, needs, and aspirations. The Gallup Organization recommends a 3 step process:

  • Start with individual career planning development
  • Next is succession planning analysis
  • Last is group discussion and review

Ensure each employee has a written development plan and meet regularly (we suggest monthly) with each team member to review the progress against the plan. If you have identified an individual as a future member of your leadership team, verify they have the interest in that position.

Assuming you are aligned, assess the unique talents of that individual and update their development plan with actions that include maintaining their strengths and closing the gaps.  Next, begin to identify key positions and match the talents of suitable candidates with those positions and determine any further areas to be developed.

Is cross training required?

Would having a mentor help?

Could having a coach speed up the development process?

You may also want to delegate additional responsibilities.

Lastly, meet with your organization’s leadership team and review one another’s succession planning analyses.  Agree on business strategies, directions, and critical positions, and identify actual names for those positions.  The positions may not need to be filled now, but you will be building your bench strength and be positioned to act quickly should you find the need.

Leadership talent is one of the most critical needs of any organization. Development must be ongoing with progress occurring over time. As a leader, commit to employee development, become a mentor, provide ongoing and timely feedback, and consider engaging a coach to ensure the success (and survival) of your organization. Are you ready?

21 Apr
PeopleTek Coaching Leadership

Respect and Leadership

Respect is the key determinant of high-performance leadership. How much people respect you determines how well they perform.
–Brian Tracey

Dear Leaders,

Would you consider yourself to be a respectful person and a respectful leader? Do you consider your co-workers, customers, and business partners respectful? There are arguments that levels of respect are diminishing; that we care less about others, and that we may even care less about ourselves.

Let’s define RESPECT. Wikipedia says: “Respect denotes a positive feeling of esteem . . . and it can be a specific feeling of regard for the actual qualities of the one respected (e.g., “I have great respect for her judgment”). . .”

It also says “Respect should not be confused with tolerance, since tolerance doesn’t necessarily imply any positive feeling, and is compatible with contempt, which is the opposite of respect”. Interesting distinction; respect MUST include positive feelings.

Some say respect must be earned; does this really serve us well? What if we begin all relationships on a basis of respect, where we look for desirable qualities and seek positive feelings? Let’s at least start on a level playing field and give others the benefit of the doubt that they are indeed respectful with a need to be respected.

Ways to Build Respect With Your Team

  • We need to be authentic, walk the talk, follow through with what we commit to, and support and reward the attainment of our goals.
  • We need to take time to build relationships with everyone we interact with.
  • We need to give (and receive) feedback in a constructive and honoring way.
  • We need to address unproductive behaviors and hold others accountable.
  • We need to expect that conflict will occur and realize that it is healthy and promotes growth. (Remember, conflict is a difference of desires or opinions, where your concerns or the concerns of someone else are not shared).
  • We need to respect and admire who we are and what we have achieved and ensure team members to do the same.

Increasing levels of respect not only fosters success but also improves morale, decreases attrition, and enhances job satisfaction. As a leader do you inspire respect?

14 Apr
PeopleTek Coaching Leadership

Great Leaders Leave A Legacy

“Men make history and not the other way around. In periods where there is no leadership, society stands still. Progress occurs when courageous, skillful leaders seize the opportunity to change things for the better.”
–Harry Truman

Dear Leaders,

We’ve all read and heard about great leaders of the world. We may have even studied some in great detail.  Some of the famous include: Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, John F. Kennedy, and Nelson Mandela.

What was their legacy? Why were they so popular, or in some cases notorious?

The great leaders listed above created dramatic change and altered the face of society; most are held in high regard and are known for how they inspired others.

Let’s bring it down a notch. Which leaders in current times would you consider popular, notorious, or inspirational? What about within your own organization?

Jim Kouzes and Barry Posner conducted research and identified these to be the top 5 leadership traits/qualities that successful leaders possess:

Honest
Forward-Looking
Competent
Inspiring
Intelligent

This is a great place to start with a self assessment.  Rate yourself between 1 and 5 for each element. Which trait did you rate highest? Which is your lowest?

Here are some other top rated leadership traits:

Integrity
Great communication skills
Wisdom
Empathy and compassion
Commitment and confidence
Strategic thinking
Focus and attention to details

Rate these as well.  What measures can you take to increase your scores? As a leader what can you change for the better?

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