The key to successful leadership is within us

Developing People’s Managing Director Dave Marchant has a straight forward and pragmatic approach to leadership development. Dave explains: “It is all very well for someone to read the latest leadership theory and think that is how they need to think and act when they don’t fully understand their current behaviour and approach, and how they might be currently de-motivating their staff big time! In reality it is much more straight forward to do something about your current behaviour, rather than learning a totally new, radical or even “proven” approach. Indeed in our experience, many managers de-motivate their employees because they fail to understand even the fundamentals of human motivation”.

Dave’s approach is to help managers understand the behaviours that can quash people’s motivation and to help them change them. His ‘Top Ten’ management failings are:

1) Taking away person responsibility by over controlling peoples work.

2) Being too pushy, aggressive and task-orientated.

3) Disregarding employees’ right to a sensible work-life balance.

4) Making unfair decisions about work routines, pay and reward.

5) Failing to engage people creatively by asking them to do meaningless work.

6) Being incomplete or inconsistent in communications.

7) Applying work rules and policies in a rigid manner without the concern for individual needs.

8) Failing to get the involvement of staff over decisions that affect them.

9) Rewarding and/or promoting behaviours that are contrary to the direction/culture of the organisation.

10) Acting without integrity.

"If an organisation truly wishes to improve the performance of their leaders, they need to provide constructive feedback to them, and make room for a mix of formal leadership development supported by external coaching and possibly mentoring to help leaders change their behaviour," recommends Dave.

Developing a leadership team for business growth and performance.

Developing People were recently asked to help an established leadership team to assess and develop their management and leadership skills in order to help them step up to successfully take on the next stage of business growth.

The business is SE Electronics, a Global Distributor of high quality branded microphones and sound equipment. This UK based business has exclusive sourcing and distribution rights to market leading sound equipment. Manufacturing in China, SE Electronics is now broadening out its distribution network into the huge US, European and Far East markets.

The business was founded in 2002 and the senior leadership team comprises 3 young Directors, two of whom have been with the business right from the start. All three are passionate about music and have moved on from performing in bands and sound production to get deeply involved in the technical side of sound projection and production. They love the industry, they love the product and they are great friends. They have also been successful in growing the business to its current level, mainly through their passion, hard work and native intelligence but they recognise that this experience is probably not enough to ensure them success in achieving the business growth that they desire.

In approaching Developing People Ltd, SE Electronics were seeking help to achieve their aim of building their leadership and management skills and effectiveness as the executive team in order to achieve their business growth.
We did this through the process of:

• assessing the strengths, weaknesses and personal development areas of the 3 Directors
• reviewing and guiding them on any skill gaps, role, relationship and communication improvements.

In the early stages of this work, we interviewed each Director using a set of structured interview questions about their experience, background, motivations, approach and objectives for this work. This data was supplemented by completion of Psychometric Profiles such as 16pf and Myers Briggs should help them with their self-awareness and with their understanding of each others strengths, weaknesses and preferences.

The top team are keen to share this information with each other and to agree amongst themselves their roles and relationships in the business and the future vision, strategy, objectives and implementation plans to achieve their aim.

Further down the line the work we do with SE Electronics could also cover:

• business vision, strategy and plans
• implementation of this business strategy.
• development of an effective organisation structure and culture for the business.
• selection, development, motivation and building of an effective team and individuals to support business growth.

We have agreed measurement criteria with them, by which we jointly assessed the impact and value of the personal and team development work that we are doing and also use to monitor and guide the work as it progresses. If other new wants and needs emerge as we progress through each stage of this outline programme then we will make the necessary adjustments as they become clear.

What advice do I give to person who wants to become a coach? Part two

Clearly an aspiring coach needs to have the necessary communication and relationship skills required to be effective. These include obvious skills such as active listening, good observation, self-awareness, questioning, summarising, empathy and rapport building.

The role of an effective coach also requires some less obvious characteristics that I encourage an aspiring coach to consider such as:-

• An appropriate level of self-confidence
• Not needing to have an answer all of the time
• Suspending of judgement and the ability to let coachees go their own way
• The balance of support and encouragement
• Ability to handle and use emotionality
• Ability to be honest, clear and direct
• Understanding of complexity and organisational politics
• Ability to deal with the coachee’s “whole life”.
• Ability to deal with ambiguity and uncertainty
• Taking accurate notes whilst also actively listening

Being a coach can be a lonely and exposed place to be. You are usually face to face and alone with your coachee for up to 2 – 3 hours and there is no escape or obvious help at hand from anyone else. You are your own resource and you maker the best use of your skills, experience and personality. A coaching technique is important and helpful but it is only a guide to the flow of your coaching conversations. These attributes can only really be learned by experience and I explain this to potential coachees in order to help them to understand the reality that faces them as a coach. Not everyone is suited to doing this work and even fewer people are very good at it.

Going on a training course and practicing and learning with others is a good aid to understanding and getting started but it is not as important as getting the right experience and having access to an experienced coach to bounce any areas of difficulty off. Many of these training courses are based around telephone coaching which does have its value and place – but in my view it is only a supplement and nothing like the real thing – face to face sessions. If the person who has asked for my advice is still interested to pursue coaching after this explanation then they do so with my encouragement and I wish them every success with their learning. Hopefully they will progress forward with both eyes and ears open and with their one mouth mainly shut!

What advice do I give to person who wants to become a coach? Part one

By Claire Loving

There has been a significant increase in the number of people who are offering themselves as coaches to people in both the business world and in life in general. Over time, the public has become aware of coaching as a means of support in jobs that come with a great deal of stress. Many more training courses for coaches being advertised for people to train to become coaches and therefore there is much more availability and choice for people who want to ‘be coached’ or as I would say ‘receive coaching’.

I have been coaching people working in businesses and other organisations for the past 18 years and I am often asked by people that I meet how I got started as a coach – usually because they are hoping to become a coach themselves and they are interested in any advice that I have to give them. I originally learned about coaching from a person called Ben Cannon who had originally been a tennis player and tennis coach but who took what he had learned in the sports environment on into business and applied many of the same techniques and approaches to help people in business to improve their satisfaction and performance. The style that I learned from him was a ‘non-directive’ approach rather than a ‘tell’ style and it was and still is best explained and understood for me in the excellent book “Coaching for Performance” written by John Whitmore, now Sir John Whitmore a British ex-motor racing driver.

His seminal book and the GROW model coaching technique that he describes in it, is still, in my view, the best text for an aspiring coach to start with. This brings me to another key point about becoming a coach – it is something that you learn – largely by experience – and not something than can solely be taught or acquired through a training course. The other book that I found to be very instructive for me as an aspiring coach was the “Inner Game” series of books written by Timothy Gallwey about sports such as tennis, golf etc. His approach to coaching was also a non-directive one and also had its roots in tennis coaching in the U S.

The key learning for me from this text was about the self-awareness and responsibility of the coaching subject – the coachee – for the doing of their job. It is their job and life – not yours as a coach, that is important and therefore your focus of attention should be on them and what they are thinking, feeling and experiencing rather than on you as the coach.

So when asked about how I would advice a person to find out about coaching I would direct them towards reading some of these basics texts which explain the philosophy, approach and some techniques for non-directive coaching. Clearly there is another much more directive style of coaching around that is best embodied in many professional football coaches (and in some other sports) which relies on the “tell” or “push” approach to coaching. This can and does work effectively in some spheres of human endeavour and with some performers but it relies on the concepts of power, authority, expertise, knowledge of the “right way” to do things and on the coach taking part of the responsibility of how and what to do away from the performer. In my experience this is not the best way to approach coaching in business because invariably the coachees know so much more about their business situation than I do as their coach and they also expect to treated as responsible adults and don’t want to be told by me what to do and how to do it – they see this quite rightly as their choice and responsibility.

Look out for part two of this post next week