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!

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

Improving Team Performance Through Connection

Leading others is not without risk, nor is it for the faint of heart. As important as it is for you as a Leader to set the goal to be achieved, it is more important to sense how things change as your Followers begin to align their efforts to support you. In some cases, this alignment among Team Members generates a momentum towards successful achievement of the goal that is unstoppable. Other times, factors of mis-alignment, significant changes in the environment, and unforeseen constraints pop up that are signals for you to review your approach. The key to any such review is to connect with your Followers.

Staying closely and personally connected to those who follow your lead will provide the early warning signs of emerging problem areas. Taking a moment to embrace the points of view expressed by your Followers will arm you, as their leader, with rich and immediate understanding of root causes for mis-alignments in the Team, surprises in the surrounding situation and shortages in resources or other constraints that will affect goal achievement. Not only will this close connection to your Followers enable you to act early but, also, to act in a manner informed by the collective experience and expertise of your Team.

Experience has taught me that my best and most immediate source of validation for any Leadership approach I take, is my Team. When I have embraced them, sought their feedback about what is working and what is not working, I have been able to accelerate performance. When I have relied on my own counsel, without a close personal connection to my Team, I have floundered and lost my way. A Team needs a good Leader. Leaders need to embrace their Team to be good.

-Lieutenant Colonel (ret'd) Ron Guidinger BEng, MBA, PEng, PMP

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.

Followership: leadership can't happen without it!

Many volumes have been written about great Leaders and how to become a better Leader. Very little has been written about Followers and how to be a better Follower. Followership seem to be a neglected area in the many studies of Human Interaction. My experience has repeatedly demonstrated that there are two things that are essential to willing and eager Followership: Trust and Confidence.

Trust between the Follower and the Leader is fostered differently for each individual, yet there are questions common to most Followers that must be answered affirmatively before they are willing to follow a Leader: Do I know what the Leader stands for? Do I believe in the Leader's integrity? Do I believe that the Leader will do the next right thing?

Confidence between the Follower and the Leader rests upon beliefs in each other's skills, reliability, and judgement. Again, the levels of confidence stem from perceptions that vary from one individual to the next but some questions common to most followers must be answered affirmatively before they are willing to follow a Leader: Does the Leader have a vision that I can share? Does the Leader have the skills, support and energy to effectively lead me to the achievement of the stated goal? If things start going wrong, does the Leader have the ability to help make them right?

If Trust and Confidence between the Leader and the Followers is the minimum requirement for willing and eager Followership, where do you stand? Do you enjoy a high level of Trust and Confidence with your Followers? With your Leaders? What can you do to strengthen these two vital elements of Followership?

-Lieutenant Colonel (ret'd) Ron Guidinger BEng, MBA, PEng, PMP