Monday, August 15, 2011

Vital Conditions For Coaching Success

Establishing an open and honest conversation between the Coach and Manager is vital to their mutual success. If the Manager approaches a coaching conversation with fear, then that fear (and even more dangerous – the fear of retribution) will be interwoven into the fabric of the entire experience.
For coaching conversations to be successful, both parties need to see feedback as an opportunity to explore what elements will contribute to future success, and the basis of coaching will be strategies for successfully getting there. If fear erodes the conversations, trust and openness cannot be built – even when both parties have the best intentions in mind. This team effort must be focused on how to create environments that break from the past and allow connectivity and positive conversations to flow between the parties. Once this Coaching experience yields success between Manager and Coach, then the same experience can be replicated between the Manager and their Direct Reports – creating a positive ripple effect in the organization.

Suggested Questions for Coaching the Manager

1. How would you describe your accountability for coaching the people in your Department?

2. What percentage of your time do you think should ideally be spent coaching?

3. What percentage of your time do you actually spend coaching?

4. How would you characterize the link between development and performance?

5. How receptive to coaching are the people who report to you?

6. What are barriers or hindrances to coaching do you encounter?

7. What support would you need to enhance your coaching effectiveness?

8. How could the coaching you receive be improved?

9. What are the key questions we should explore in the session on coaching we are planning?

10. What other subject should we cover in the session?

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

HR Happiness Survey

How can you expect HR to serve as the company engagement leader responsible for initiating a plan of "engaging" the People, when even HR might not be engaged themselves?

How and why can I say that?
Five years ago I conducted a Human Resource Happiness Survey in Trinidad (of all places) and got some rather startling results. Of course, that reflects the culture of a place 15 miles from Venezuela but being curious, I collected additional responses from HR folks in Connecticut - wow, was I stunned! The scores were the same. It appears that HR, no matter what country, can be treated like the gum on the bottom of the corporate shoe.
In 2006, out of 131 HR professionals, training folks, managers, even officers surveyed, only 66% say the CEO consults with HR about employee issues. What's really startling was the perception that only 60% of managers felt that HR is a valuable resource in driving worker productivity. What's absolutely wild is that of the 131 surveyed, only 46% said those same managers are doing a good job in motivating their people. Who's poking the eyes out of who?
That was 5 years ago, but the Toolbox for HR and SurveyTelligence are interested to see if corporate USA, and the rest of the world, are finally beginning to appreciate the great contribution HR is making to profitability and business performance. So we built a another HR Happiness survey. From the results, we intend to create a discussion forum about your responses, feelings your career choice being HR (if you are in HR), your frustrations, experiences, aspirations and value to your employer and yourself and whatever else. It's time to sound off! Step up and be heard!

This survey is for everyone. Please click the link below and take the HR Happiness Survey...or will it be known as the "HR Miserable Survey"? You don't need to be just HR. Write whatever you wish in the open ended questions. If you give us an email address in the last open ended question, we will send you a report of our findings.

http://infotool-online.net/index.asp?u=hrhappiness&p=1234&l=en

Consultants Need More Than Just Focus Groups

For centuries advisors used the art of communication with Kings, Captains, Pharoes, Presidents, Dictators, Corporate Leaders to understand the basic underlying issues creating chaos in a culture, country, organization. How else would you learn? The art of conversation, the probing, twisting, turning over of ideas, and not to be jaded, but through the lens of one person. Ahh, lets get several people together and have more probing conversations. This new initiative was called a Focus Group. Oh boy, a new dilemma. How do you sort the most important response from the most common responses? How about conflicting opinions? Who is right and who is wrong? Do these opinions or perception really represent the cause of chaos? Who really hates who and who is telling the truth? Anyone who can actually sort, identify and cope with these issue can be my advisor!
For centuries, the belief was that oral communication between people had evolved as the best way for consultants to learn and advise clients on how to rebuild or form a new culture. Judith Glaser has written several best seller books on the art of communication to create a "WE culture". This communication stuff really works, but it's slow, impacts a small group at a time, not sure if it really changes inbred behaviors, and lasts only as long as your temper or patience lasts. Plus it's only a 1 to 1 relationship. This takes weeks, maybe months.
Maybe more is needed than just one-on-one conversation, or even a focus group of a dozen to really understand the "heartbeat' of the people, or the "pulse"of the business.

Technology, with advanced web based capabilities and powerful SQL back end databases have changed the entire science of learning through communication. Regardless of the survey questions asked- either designer or off the shelf- the survey engine that "spits out the results" can now give the analyst an instant x-ray picture, with analysis and action steps, for each individual workgroup. Imagine know key barriers and issues confronting each manager, each VP, each supervisor or even the CEO.
The output is precise and granular enough to see what's broken, in which department, workgroup or demographics, what action steps must be taken, and with statistical accuracy. These tools need to contain functions as: correlation analysis, automated reports, cross tab analysis, alignment measures by workgroup, performance variation gap analytics, etc. for instant analysis. These tools must be easy to use, graphic, and interactive, having the equivalency of a CAT scan. It must be able to view and analyze each organizational body part. Surveying a company is too expensive both in time and commitment to fail, and so is misdiagnosing actions for companies to take. To combine conversation and diagnostic data, you can now really create value.

Tuesday, August 9, 2011

What Causes Variablility In Workforce Performance?

What causes variability in workforce performance, within similar workgroups, has been the source of much study but the research that resonates is “among the many variables that discriminate between highly productive workplaces and those that are unproductive, is the quality of the local workplace manager and his or her ability to meet a core set of employees’ emotional requirements.” Primarily, emotional conditions are described as those that meet basic human needs. Buckingham,M & Coffman,C. (1999). First Break all the Rules: What the world’s greatest managers do differently. New York:Simon and Shuster. Coffman, C. & Gonzalas-Molina,G. (2002). Follow this path: How the world’s greatest organizations drive growth by unleashing human potential. New York: Warner.


Our 12 years of research  as a survey consulting firms supports the hard evidence that variability of performance is predominant in most every organization. Why does one department outperform another? The answer is quite simple!

Each department has their own leader that has created the culture for that department in their own image. Usually this local culture is not the same culture declared in the corporate “value proposition”. It’s that simple.
The solution is having a strong corporate leader that has the insights, tools, will, and strategy that will assist each of the local managers in eliminating performance variability in their respective departments. Easy to say, hard to do; until now.

Here’s the ultimate goal. Each department delivers the best output possible, with primary focus on the “critical success factors" consistent with the leader’s stated mission. That means high performance execution of each workgroup, strategically linked to profitability and organic growth. It means eliminate lop sided delivery in the “value chain”; get that HEMI engine working on all 8 cylinders!

Thus, building workforce engagement falls squarely on the shoulders of the local manager and manager engagement falls squarely on the shoulders of the leader. It not trying to regulate humanity, but to build a “we” culture with a purpose of bringing out the best in people. It’s a people to people skill in communication; the growth of Employee Engagement as an operating principle.

Employee Engagement is the most researched management tool to understanding how to build a high performance culture; that managers need as much help as leadership can provide to bring this thinking to the departmental level. In a study of 2,178 business units from 10 companies, research evidenced that workforce engagement predicted levels of performance. Harter,J.K., Schmidt (2005, August). Employee engagement and business unit performance: A longitudinal meta-analytic study of casual direction

This relationship of leader-manager-worker is known as vertical alignment, (Dr. George Labovitz, Power of Alignment, 1997, Wiley) and is managed with ease with precise information.

In summary, high performing workgroups, with willingness, commitment and ability to effectively execute the leader’s vision, need a communication avenue to senior leadership, who has a willingness to meet the need. It all starts by the capture of information with extremely powerful survey analysis tools.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Latest News From SurveyTelligence

http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Latest-News-from-SurveyTelligence.html?soid=1102643166220&aid=5KRh9OZivqw

What Makes a High Performance Organization?

Today’s normal is not the same as yesterday’s normal. With manufacturing being outsourced, Egypt and world instability, emerging markets, the subprime mortgage disaster, the unpopularity of the Iraq and Afghan war and the uncertainty of the next presidential race, with the size of unemployed Americans growing at staggering rates, renders a “same old, same old” business strategy obsolete.


How can leaders build organizations to create higher performing workforce cultures, coupled with a new competency of nimbleness, if they expect to continue creating value for their shareholders?

A ”high-performance organization” is one where all departments are in sync, working together, and aligned with each other so as to provide to their customers the very best, on time delivery of your services or products. Anything short of that state of excellence results in varying degrees of misalignment. In that reality, expect troubling impacts on issues of customer loyalty, profitability, process, people, culture and all those other states of being that create loss or create organic growth.

High performance is impossible to achieve so long as there are high degrees of variability’s in departmental work force performance. Simply stated, departments that are performing at different rates and levels of performance is a recipe for loss in profitability and /or growth. This is not a trivial matter, as the larger the variability of workforce performance, the larger the gap between the organizations delivery systems and its customer satisfaction.

Wednesday, August 3, 2011

What You Need From A Survey Vendor

Technology, with advanced web based capabilities using powerful SQL back end databases, has changed the entire science of survey taking. Regardless of the questions asked- either designer or off the shelf- the survey engine that "spits out the results" must be able to give the analyst an instant x-ray picture of each individual workgroup.
Every survey vendor collects data, inserts it into a database and gives output. It's this "output" that becomes the value proposition for the survey customer and their internal analyst. The output must be precise and granular enough to see what's broken, in which department, workgroup or demographic, what action steps must be taken, and with statistical accuracy. These tools need to contain correlation analysis, automated reports, cross tab analysis, alignment measures by workgroup, performance variation gap analytics, etc. These are the benchmarks for comparing survey products.
These tools must be easy to use, graphic, interactive and have the equivalency of a CAT scan to view and analyze each organizational body parts. This is another benchmark for comparing survey products. To contain costs, look for a vendor that will certify internal HR to manage the data, with coaching capability for continued improvement long after the high priced survey folks have left.
Surveying a company is too expensive both in time and commitment to fail. Shop wisely...there are great new products out there.
 
Stanley Labovitz

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