Coaching For Leaders

Welcome to the sixth episode of Coaching Skills for Leaders! This week's topic: The Importance of Making Time to Coach. I begin the show by speaking about my first job out of school and revisiting our coaching definition from episode #2. If you want to know what is important to people, look at their calendar and in their checkbook. Why don't we make time to coach? People don't know the correct way. Perception that things take too much time. I cited some of Larry Bossidy's comments and lessons from the book Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. Coaching takes time. Are you investing time into coaching? Here are four ways to get started: Contract with the other party on development priorities Plan out the schedule of when to meet and what to do - book it Follow-through on your coaching commitments Be flexible and yet consistent You make life easier during review time as well if the above four things are done consistently. Make a commitment this week to do one of these things above. St

Welcome to the fourth episode of Coaching Skills for Leaders! Today's topic: What is coaching and why it's different from other development tools. Here's the link I promised to the EDS commercial on building a plane in the air. Visit CoachingforLeaders.com/feedback with questions, comments, or feedback. Socrates said, "The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms." (accidentally attributed to Plato in the audio of the show - apologies!) Let's look at: leading, managing, training/teaching, mentoring, consulting, counseling, and of course coaching. Leading: Creating environments that achieve a shared vision. Peter Senge describes a shared vision in The Fifth Discipline The rose windows at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris are a good analogy John F. Kennedy's shared vision to get us to the moon Managing: Establishing, monitoring, and controlling processes and procedures Communicating clear expectations Follow-up Feedback or consequences My work at SCORE! Educational Centers was an example of man

Welcome to the third episode of Coaching Skills for Leaders! Today's topic: Why teaching adults is different than teaching kids. Visit CoachingforLeaders.com/feedback with questions, comments, or feedback. A brief overview of how teaching fits into coaching. We're going to examine a few lessons from The Adult Learner by Malcolm Knowles, Elwood Holton, and Richard Swanson (7th edition). Pedagogy vs. Andragogy (art of teaching kids vs. self concept of being responsible for ourselves) (Greek: child-leading, man-leading). You can't teach adults the way you teach kids. Why talk about kids? As coaches, there's the tendency to fall back on what we've seen all our lives and what we remember from school - unfortunately, those same skills don't work with adults. 6 assumptions about andragogy: 1) The Need to Know (adults need to know why something is important before learning it) With kids: because the teacher said so I share my experience with stats in graduate school As a coach, you might need to help make this

Welcome to the second episode of Coaching Skills for Leaders! Special guest this week: Matt Ross from Liberty Mutual How did things go with the listening assessment from the first episode? If you missed it, download the PDF here. For questions, comments, or suggestions visit coachingforleaders.com/feedback How to start coaching someone: This is a huge missed opportunity for a lot of leaders. Leaders start teaching a new skill, and that's it…before getting to know someone and without connecting it to the other person's goals/desires. The model for how to start coaching someone: F - Future R - Reality O - Obstacles M - Meaning What to listen for in the interview with Matt Ross: 1) FROM model 2) This shouldn't be an interrogation...you can jump around 3) The importance of silence Interview with Matt Ross Contact Matt Ross at this link or: matt.ross@libertymutual.com / @MattRossLM What I would do if I was Matt's manager? I'd want to talk in terms of how the tasks he's working on connect with his

Why start this show? A bit of background about me How my doctoral dissertation got me thinking about the importance for leaders to focus on themselves One thing I've learned for sure: leaders can make a big difference in the lives of others if they take a little time to make a difference in themselves Why I care about this Lots of resources coming - articles/blogs/Q&A/guests/authors/books/my own perspective I want your perspective as well: To submit a comment, question or feedback, visit coachingforleaders.com/feedback Powerful Listening Audio exercise - part 1 What did you hear? It sounds a lot like a lot of our work lives. Audio exercise - part 2 Four Listening Levels: Pretend Partial Present Powerful You can't listen powerfully all the time - but you need to at least some of the time. Good listening is important work for a leader...just an important (if not more so) than "normal work" Download the Listening Skills Assessment Discover More Activate your free membership for f