


	August 2003 Leadership Coaching Newsletter This Month's Topic: Increasing Performance 2 Here are six suggestions that will provide you with the insight needed to successfully bring about behavioral change to increase the performance of your staff. Be a better listener. It's been said that listening is the key to the soul. Hearing what someone says is not the same thing as really listening, which requires you to use your ears and your heart. Slow down for a few moments so you can really hear what is going on with your staff.
FREE Leadership Coaching Session Why Hire an Executive Coach? Client Results Developing Corporate Leadership Talent (Audio Message)	Identify your staff's needs and wants professionally. People are more willing to make changes to behaviors that impact productivity if you give them an opportunity to express their needs and wants at work. Even if you are not able or willing to fulfill their requests, just having a chance to voice their thoughts will increase their performance. Be non-threatening. My father use to say, "you can catch more bees with honey than vinegar." If others perceive you as threatening, aggressive or temperamental, even if you don’t perceive yourself that way, people will go out of their way to avoid interacting with you. Conduct a 360 leadership assessment of yourself to look at gaps regarding how you perceive your leadership skills and how others in the organization perceive them. (A 360 leadership assessment is a rating tool that assesses your level of leadership skill and competency.) A 360 assessment is a fabulous way to open up a dialog with others about your strengths and areas for improvement. You’ll be amazed at what you’ll learn about yourself. To learn more about our tool visit Work with a coach to leverage strengths and improve weaknesses. After the assessment, working with a coach is a great way to leverage your strengths in ways you hadn’t considered before and to improve the weak spots that could be damaging your career. Some weak spots may be more of a problem than others so it’s important to pick out those that are most business-critical. Working with a coach during this process is important since most of us would have already 'fixed' our weaknesses if we knew how. A coach who has years of experience developing leadership talent is the right choice for this type of work and offers the quickest path to improvement. They will develop a course of action that's customized to meet your individual needs. Look for coaching moments when a staff member appears more open to suggestions and new ideas. Like communicating with a teenager, you need to recognize their signals or you may miss an opportunity! What are some common signals? If someone pokes their head in your office just to check in, this usually means they have a few extra moments and are emotionally available. Or if an employee asks you for feedback on something or suggests grabbing lunch it means they are open to hearing what you have to say. What can you do to help create those moments with your staff? Creating the right circumstances and conditions so that you can develop, mentor and coach your staff is very important. Having one-on-ones with each of your direct reports will go a long way toward creating opportunities to discuss important issues such as accomplishments, shortfalls, concerns and future plans. Also remember the golden rule in coaching, “Coach unto others only if they have an interest in being coached.” Coaching is only effective when: the coachee has a need or desire for something other than their current state; there is a gap between what currently is and a future state that's desired; and the person being coached is committed to having you as their coach. Leverage the employee's individual experiences. If you can help an employee identify the times when they were highly productive and felt successful, they will be able to remember what worked for them in the past and apply it to the present situation. All of us have found ourselves in a funk at work one time or another and we hate seeing what it does to our productivity. But if you're able to help an employee by leveraging a past experience, it can have a tremendous impact on turning the current situation around. Leadership Coaching Newsletter is written and produced by Wendy Capland. If you have any questions or comments, please send them to: wcapland@visionquestconsulting.com. We'd love to hear from you. To subscribe or unsubscribe, visit our website: Click Here. Feel free to forward this newsletter. Permission is granted to reproduce, copy, or distribute as long as copyright and full author contact information is included. Thank you. Copyright Wendy Capland 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003. All rights reserved.