People make up teams. Every person on your team has different skills and every team member’s skill set brings something to the table. Team members also possess different behavioral styles, motivators, and different competencies. In addition, every team member has various levels of business acumen, and of course diverse levels of EQ. Is EQ more important than skill sets? Can an entire team have an EQ score?
Why was the First Time Managers Coaching Program Created?
As a former manager in human resources, witnessing the promotion of unqualified people to management was heartbreaking. And the failure rate was proving costly. As an executive coach, I can see these failures manifest when there is a lack of solid leadership training.
New managers rarely have the training they need, and certainly don’t have any of the experience an executive possesses. Indeed, most new managers are promoted primarily because they are doing a good job in their current position. That doesn’t necessarily make them management material.
The executive staff are the people who get the resources such as training, off-site retreats, and coaching. Of course, it is a good idea to put resources behind the executive staff because, after all, they are carrying a lot of risks for the success of the organization.
But think about this. New managers are the people who could one day fill the shoes of an executive in your organization. I dare say that any executive you speak with wishes he or she had more “care and feeding” about how to manage and lead as they started up and continued to climb the ladder into the executive suite.
That’s why I’ve created a coaching program specifically designed for managers with zero to three years’ experience. This program is affordable, so the organization can not only justify, but recoup the investment, and reap benefits the company will profit from for years to come.
How does the First Time Managers Program Work?
The new manager takes the TriMetrix HD Assessment, and receives a report consisting of:
Behavioral research suggests that the most effective people are those who understand themselves, both their strengths and weaknesses, so they can develop strategies to meet the demands of their environment. This report measures the four dimensions of normal behavior: dominance, influence, steadiness, and compliance.
TriMetrix HD tells how the new manager will perform.
*Source: HR.com
Knowledge of an individual’s driving forces helps tell us why a person behaves a certain way. 12 Driving Forces ™ measures an individual’s top four of driving forces to tell a story of how a person derives meaning from life and work.
TriMetrix HD illuminates what drives this individual’s behavior – the why behind their actions.
An individual’s hierarchy of competencies, including his/her leadership score, is key to their success. Knowing what they are is essential to reaching one’s goals. This report is designed to assist managing and developing a career. For many jobs, personal skills are as important as technical skills in producing superior performance.
TriMetrix HD describes what this individual “has done” in 25 research-based competencies related to the business environment.
Acumen Capacity Index:
The Acumen Indicators section is designed to help individuals truly understand themselves and how they analyze and interpret their experiences. A person’s acumen, keenness, and depth of perception or discernment is directly related to performance.
TriMetrix ACI explores both how a person’s judgment impacts interaction with the external world, and his or her own self-perception.
In addition, the assessment reports contain self-coaching strategies that will guide the new manager beyond the coaching initiatives of this program.
Program Structure
Online assessment administration
3 months or 12 hours of coaching (Bonus: 1 extra hour at no charge in the first session!)
Unlimited access to the coach via phone and email during the coaching program
Bonus I:
One complimentary extra hour of coaching in the first session, for a total of 14 hours of coaching.
Bonus II:
Diane’s eBook, How to Give Dull, Boring Meetings a Swift Kick in the Agenda. This book provides the new manager with insights on:
Bonus III:
A complimentary “check-in” call 3 months after our final session to help ensure the new manager is still on track. This brings the total number of coaching hours to 15!!
Let's get started to give your managers the leadership foundation they need to make it all the way to the Executive Suite!
The consummate leader is strong, stalwart, unbending, needs no help, and [OK insert sound of a needle scratching across a record here]. The leader above is a dinosaur if indeed such a leader ever did exist. A true leader is the opposite.
Let’s Exercise
A popular leadership training exercise is to have participants list the qualities of their favorite leader or boss and the qualities of their worst. This exercise is revealing to say the least. Today, leaders are more enlightened. Not! Recently, I had a coaching client whose manager kept a jar on his desk with a phrase printed on it. The phrase read, “Employee Ashes.” While many people might brush this off or even find it humorous, the sight of this jar with its message was having an adverse effect on my client. In addition, the manager had a management style befitting the phrase on his beloved jar. In fact, this jar and her boss’ management style evoked such feelings in my client that she and I were working to find her a new job as quickly as possible.
Recently a colleague suggested that he doesn’t bother reading cover letters from job applicants as he feels they hold no value. To him, communication may be a dead art, but cover letters can provide great insight into a candidate’s qualifications, skills, and attributes. If a job seeker is smart, the cover letter is a valuable tool to landing that next job. In fact, according to Career Quest “communication skills consistently rank at the top of the list of soft skills hiring managers are looking for in new hires.” How can candidates and employees use communication for success?
Many of you who read this will associate the term situational awareness (SA) with either military operations or security concerns. In terms of military, SA is knowing for example, the location, speed, direction, and fire power of hostiles. In terms of security, SA relates to being familiar with your surroundings, having a heightened sense of awareness of events unfolding around you and being at the ready to take any necessary actions. In today’s society we all need to take a certain amount of personal responsibility for our own safety. But what place does SA have in business?
A quote attributed to Ralph Nadar, consumer advocate, lawyer, and author, states: “I start with the premise, that the function of leadership is to produce more leaders, not more followers.” The leadership in small to mid-sized organizations often fail to see a need for leadership development. Considering two facts should make it obvious that leadership development is essential to the survival of such organizations. A White Paper by Center for Creative Leadership echoes this idea.
Fact One: An organization is either growing or dying
Fact Two: Leadership will be needed to guide growth, sustain growth, and take growth into the future.
Let’s take a deeper look at fact one. Organizations must grow in some capacity, either more customers or more revenue. The leadership that brings the company to one level, may not necessarily have the skills to either sustain that level or take the company to the next level.
Leadership has certa
inly become a hot topic. Employee engagement is another hot topic. Some people might want to add to both of these…“or the lack thereof.” Some of you may be asking, “What has this got to do with the price of tea in China?” The topics of and solutions to both good leadership and positive employee engagement are joined at the hip and here’s how.
Poor leadership can lead to poor employee engagement. On the other hand, employees want to be more autonomous and want to be and recognized as leaders in organizations. So, is achieving effective leadership and employee engagement a wash? Not at all, in fact, one hand washes the other and here’s how.
“It’s lonely at the top” is a metaphor we often hear. Top echelon leaders need all the help they can get. Some leaders fear that giving everyone leadership status will cause utter chaos. However, we cannot expect our leaders to be all things to all people. In fact, one source suggests that organizations could use a good restructuring in that the pyramidal organization puts too much pressure on the few at the top. Ideas and accountability for an organization’s success needs to be spread throughout a company.
Leading is difficult enough in the best of times. Leading in chaotic times challenges even the most seasoned leaders. Now with a new year on the way, it’s time for planning. Some typical planning organizations engage in during these times involve strategic planning, establishing goals, addressing talent requirements, budgeting, and analyzing a plethora of other business needs. The one thing we know leaders can’t plan for is the perfect business scenario. So how do leaders plan in and for chaos?
Bogino Executive Coaching, Bogino Assessments, Bogino DISC Certification, Bogino Team building, Bogino Training, Bogino Speaking
First Things First: How do you build leaders for the future? First realize that middle managers do have the capacity and are in the position to be leaders. Now, provide the training, the coaching, and mentoring they need to carry them through to their next step on the organizational ladder. IN short, middle managers need role models. Performing these vital tasks lays a solid foundation for the future.
Awash in Fear
When in my early thirties, I took swimming lessons. One day I decided I wanted to dive off the diving board. I would sit on the end of the board, thinking courage would show up, give me a nudge, and I would just gently fall into the pool. It didn’t happen. Building up more courage, I would walk to the end of the board, but again courage was off doing something courageous elsewhere. Several times, I built up even more courage and would take off running to the end of the board, stop right at the edge, and my courage ran the other way. Courage drowned in a pool of fear and that fear engulfed my brain, body, and heart. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, I jumped – and obviously lived to tell about it. This scenario will not fit everyone’s idea of what courage is and isn’t, but it’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.
Many organizations implement leadership development programs. Often times these are part of a succession plan. This is one face of leadership. This is the “younger” face of leadership if you will. This is the face belonging to those who are ambitious and want to climb the corporate ladder, but who still need skill building training, activities, and additional experience. These programs often consist of topics such as:
OK, right off the bat, I’m in trouble for linking kissing and the workplace. But I’m pretty certain that blowing up HR is frowned upon as well. Lately there have been cries to dismember HR in some way, by splitting it up, blowing it up, redesigning it, or doing away with it altogether. In fact, in a report by Deloitte, there is a gap “between what business leaders want and the capabilities of HR to deliver.” The report goes on to state that even HR gives its teams a grade of C-. Business leaders rate HR with a D I would relate the relationship between HR and leadership as that of teenagers and their parents. Here’s why.
When HR or as it was called then, personnel, was first created, it more or less had the behaviors of a child – more play than substance. Personnel at that time was more about planning parties, making everyone happy, and staying in the background. A recent article on hronline.com suggests that changes in the personnel department began with the entrance of women (you knew it would be our fault) in the workforce during WWI. Because of this, a new level of people management became necessary along with more regimented training and better organization.
The 1930s brought a dip in employment, but when WW II broke out, history repeated itself with women filing back into the workforce. Now personnel began shedding its training wheels as the previous work to better employee management was beginning to pay off. After WW II, serious changes began to evolve in the workplace. This is when discrimination began to rear its ugly head or at least began to be noticed and reported. Later health and safety landed on personnel’s desk. In the 1980s organiztions began to see people as valuable assets and the term Human Resources now launched the department into the tween years. Now leadership wants HR to grow up and take some business responsibility and HR wants to be appreciated for its to date accomplishments. As with any family disputes, there is no doubt blame, responsibility, and changes that need to be made on both sides.
Management fads come and go and even the most “credentialed” management gurus latch onto some of them. One of those fads is the idea of having a “bossless” workplace. There are companies that tout that as their modus operandi. For example, the online retailer Zappos, the gaming company Valve, and Elon Musk’s little car company Tesla. Does the bossless model really work?
Finding a plethora of information on leadership is easy. The difficult part is that you can read about it, watch videos on it, study it, observe it and still not come away with a definitive definition of it. Further, a topic that often generates energetic discussions is whether a manager is a leader and the difference between the two. Have you ever been a party to one of these discussions?
Most days you simply need to look at our politicians, no matter what party you support, to see what a team is not. A group of ego centric, I am the expert, opinionated, we want everything our way, it is us vs them people is not a team. It is a group of people who create chaos, are non-productive, are in a constant state of conflict, and reside in the state of stalemate. Where is the accountability?
If you like to do research, leadership is one of those topics that can take you down as many rabbit holes as you care to pursue. Opinions about what leadership is, how to lead, what leadership looks like, and if you are leading correctly are no different. In ancient times, kings, monarchs, and rulers were in vogue with the term leader (for us common people) arriving in the 19th century. Today Organizational Leadership and its numerous facets are the focus. So why a sphere of leadership?