When is the right time for a coach?

When was the last time you saw a football team without a coach?  Or a kid's soccer team?  Or really any kind of athlete (professional or not)?  Pretty much never, because all the time is the right time for a coach.

Coaches/teachers/mentors are invaluable (and often undervalued) influences in our lives that can help us become better versions of ourselves.  Sometimes that means picking us up when we fall down, and sometimes that means knocking us back down a few rungs on the ladder.  The point is, they are there to support us with what we need, not necessarily what we want.

Sports demonstrate some very visible examples of coaches, due to the highly competitive and highly public environment, but business is also highly competitive; so is life.  We all have these influences, from our friends, to colleagues and co-workers.  They help us out along the way.

Not everyone requires a professional coach, but once you find yourself in a more specialized environment (like leading a new team, or an organization, for example) it can be hard to find those supports around you.  That is the time when you need a professional coach, though you can, of course, enlist a professional coach at any time.  Professional coaches are not just there by chance, you can interview several and pick the one with the skills you need and a personality that can drive you to become your best self.

Just think, professional athletes use professional coaches in their hyper-competitive environments, maybe it's time you did too.

-Alexander Cook MEng, MBA, PEng, PMP

p.s. On that note, if you are looking for a professional coach, we can help!

What to Look for in a Coach

Coaching is very loosely defined in business.  What this means is that really anyone can call themselves a Coach, or maybe they'll spice it up with "Executive Coach," but that anyone could be some rando off the street, or the most experienced "Executive Coach" of them all.

How do you tell which one is the right one for you?

I've read a slough of articles on the Internet, looking for some kind of consensus on what makes a spectacular business coach, but the truth is, there doesn't seem to be consensus, because it comes down to individuals.  Individual coaches.  Individual coachees.  If we take the slough of articles, plus my own experience with teaching and being taught (I teach martial arts 1-2 times a week) I can whittle it down to these three points.

Experience/Expertise - Don't have a sculptor teach you how to be a CEO, and conversely, don't let a CEO teach you how to be a sculptor.  Recognized coaching credentials or not, make sure that their experiences are relevant to your needs, and if possible get references!  Different combinations of experience yield different results, so what you need might be very specific... just make sure that you feel that "click" when comparing their abilities and your specific challenges.

Compassion/Connection - A great coach will back you, not just during your successes, but also during your failures.  You need someone who can work with you through the tough times, and who can motivate you, instead of just listing the ways you're a failure.  That kind of support can get you back on the horse, and with close ties to your coach they can act as a confidante, and help you sort out all facets of your life, not just work.

Accountability/Responsibility - It's nice to have someone around to pat you on the back with a bunch of "attaboys," and who says "You'll get it next time!" when you didn't get it this time.  That can be nice, but you want a coach who can push your limits, and who can help you to be the best you can be.  Sure, you want them to say "You'll get it next time," but then you want them to say, "but you're responsible for your success, so let's work together so that next time you're ready.".

What other key attributes do you think are critical when selecting a coach, be it a life coach, or business coach?  Morality?  Ethics?  Light vs Dark side?

-Alexander C. Cook MEng, MBA, PEng, PMP

Image source: https://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/yoda-and-darth-vader-vs-bruce-almighty.345218/

Great Leadership is Not Just for the Workplace

“I am endlessly fascinated that playing football is considered a training ground for leadership, but raising children isn’t.” —Dee Dee Myers

There's a thought, especially given our culturally stereotypical use of football as a business metaphor.  Leadership is about growth, no, not our growth, but the growth of those we lead.  Certainly, we have a tendency to grow at the same time, but there are quotes upon quotes from great leaders expressing this point... “Before you are a leader, success is all about growing yourself.  When you become a leader, success is all about growing others.” —Jack Welch

That's the truth of it, you aren't a leader if you are just leading yourself... that's just walking around.  You are a leader if you are helping others do it.  Sure, that means mentoring junior colleagues, and helping guide teams through difficult situations, but that also means bandaging up skinned knees, and giving that final push to get back into the seat and to ride off into the distance.

We need to get back to the idea that leadership isn't about where you do it, it's about who you do it for.  It's about people.  A core attribute of a leader is the ability to inspire and motivate those to do not necessarily what they want to do, but what they need to do.  Have you ever convinced a judgy fourteen-year-old to do their homework instead of going out with their friends, or a four-year-old to go to bed instead of watch Paw Patrol?  That's leadership.

When dealing with your employees think about your kids, and when dealing with your kids, think about your employees, or friends, or extended family, or peers at the local place where you do that thing you do.  We're all people, and what you learn in one arena of leadership usually works in the others.

To really tie this into who we are at Leading in the Fast Lane, that is, people who believe that leadership belongs everywhere and that great leaders aren't isolated to the workplace, and aren't just leaders at work, I wanted to borrow a few quotes I found from Karen Caitlin's "The Best Quotes for Leadership AND Parenting."

Leadership Version: “Management is about arranging and telling. Leadership is about nurturing and enhancing.” — Tom Peters

Parenting Version: “Household management is about arranging and telling. Parenting is about nurturing and enhancing.”

Parenting Version: "Don’t yell at your kids. Lean in real close and whisper, it’s much scarier." — Unknown

Leadership Version: "Don’t yell at your employees. Lean in real close and whisper, it’s much more effective."

Leadership isn't about where you lead.  It's about people.  Little people.  Big people.  People.

“When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down ‘happy.’ They told me I didn’t understand the assignment, and I told them they didn’t understand life.” —John Lennon

For the crowds.  Have you ever had one of those leadership epiphanies when you realized you just told your colleague at the work the same thing you told your six-year-old the night before, or vice versa?  Feel free to share.

-Alexander C. Cook MEng, MBA, PEng, PMP

Tough Times Leadership

I'm hearing whispers from all fronts that the economy is starting to turn around, but it won't happen overnight, and the tough times aren't over yet.  So, how can you keep your teams engaged and inspired as they continue to weather this adverse environment?

I've recently been working with our assessment tool, the LFL Leadership Checkride, and I would like to share a few of the criteria that directly relate to leading in tough times.  For those of you who aren't familiar with our Checkride assessment, it was developed by Colonel (ret'd) Ron Guidinger, our Lead Consultant, who was a leader in both the military and business worlds.  He took his experiences with life or death leadership and transformed them into a tool to help businesspeople to become the best leaders possible.

BT1: Communicate Openly, Transparently, and with Conviction

Trust is one of the staples of effective leadership, and to lead your teams through difficult times, you need their trust.  One way to foster that trust is through communication.  A lack of communication leads to rumours of layoffs and plummeting morale, but this can be combatted with open, transparent, communication.  Maybe layoffs are coming, maybe not, but at the very least you can be open enough with your teams to let them know what to expect, and that though there are challenges ahead, they can pull through as a team.

BT5: Be Human

Fear is not a logical state.  As a leader, it can be exceptionally difficult to combat fear through logical analysis and reasoning.  Your teams don't need a robot leading them, they need a human!  It is important to show that side of yourself, to let your teams know that you have fears and concerns, but that you can also transform those fears and concerns into resolve.  Showing your own vulnerability will help to build trust, and makes the difference between telling your teams how to navigate these tough times, and leading them through.

BC7: Technical Skill

Trust will help people to follow you, but Confidence helps people to know that you will lead them where they need to go.  By developing your own technical skills your teams will be re-assured that by following you, you will do the best for them that you can.  This kind of confidence can replace the paralysis of fear, with inspiration.

These are but a few of the criteria we look at, but if you can communicate openly, demonstrate your humanity, and your technical proficiency, people will follow you through the darkest recessions.

Question to the crowds: What other characteristics should a leader have, or what actions can they take to help lead their people through tough times?

-Alexander C. Cook MEng, MBA, PEng, PMP

Photo Source: https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5179/5426040081_480d891bcf_o.jpg

Let them Lead

I know that somewhere on this site I wrote that "we are all leaders."  The skeptics out there might be saying that we aren't, but I'm not talking about managers, or bosses, I'm talking about leaders.  We are all leaders, and for that matter, we are all followers too.  We all alternate between leading, and following, based on our skills and circumstance.

The question is, how can we foster leadership?  Not everyone can be the boss, so what does it take to make everyone a leader?  We have a generation of Baby-Boomers sitting on the tops of organizations, ready to retire.  They are the bosses, but they had better have leaders under them ready to take over.  So, we need to foster that leadership, and one easy way is just to provide a little space, and flexibility.  We all have core duties, which we need to complete, but if there is a little bit of wiggle room, then there is enough room to innovate.  Look at the Google's of the world, Google leaves a lot more than a little wiggle room, and there is innovation everywhere.  I'm not saying we all need to do it like Google, but if we give people room to imagine, and take initiative, we are giving them room to become leaders.

Its not just ideas, and innovation, but practice.  Weeks of intensive offsite leadership training often cannot replicate a little practical experience*.  Let them take their initiative, and when their idea becomes bigger than themselves, let them lead — give them some resources, and let them run with it.

You don't need to be the boss to lead a project, you don't even need formal authority.  All you need, is a little wiggle room, and a team to back you up — a team for you to back up.

Question for the crowds:  What would help you to lead, or to become a better leader in your organization?  Or your life?

-Alexander Cook MEng, MBA, PEng, PMP

*Through the use of the Leadership Check Ride assessment, Leading in the Fast Lane creates conditions that closely mimic practical experience, while providing a safe environment for learning.