Coaching - A Devalued Currency?

I recently resigned after 5 years as a founder member and an Honorary VP of the Association for Coaching. Not because there was anything wrong with the association or the commitment of their members but because I want to move away from coaching and the things that it's become associated with. I believe that it's a currency that has become de-valued.

I still believe that coaching and mentoring are powerful interventions that bring unique insights and change to people who are engaged in these processes. I still believe that it has a place in collaborative management and leadership - and especially so in selling where there are unique opportunities to apply it - such as after field visits and appraisals.

However when you show up at a conference and a speaker asks 'to be saved from 23 -year old 'life coaches' who can't find their way to the bathroom' I have to agree. The influx of people into coaching in the last 7 years who manage no more 'than a cup of coffee and a staring match' - the lack of structure, format and measurement of outputs, the numbers who were trained by counsellors and can't differentiate between a business imperative and a personal issue is depressing - and they're everywhere.

I still intend to continue 'coaching' but I'm searching for a better name - one that represents the kind of value that can be brought to the client during the process (and long after the process).

I define coaching as 'a collaborative partnership between a coach and a client and a system that identifies perceived obstacles, generates solutions, sets objectives and implement actions based on personal accountability' (Weafer 2001) - but lately I've started to refer to it as 'structured conversations'. Conversations that facilitate joint-insights, create plans and measures the outcomes from those plans.

I'd love to have something more succinct.

The 6th C - Competence

The 6C's of Success - Competence

© Seán Weafer 2008 all rights reserved

The 6^th (and final) C in the model is Competence.

In the blogs to-date we have reviewed Context or environment, Clarity (or focus), Control (the specific actions that need to be addressed to make change), Confidence (which comes from Clarity and a sense of Control) and Communication (how we reach out to others to accomplish our objectives). Put all of the above together and we come up with top-level Competence or performance.

In challenging times everything must contribute to performance. First thing we do as business owners is reduce our costs, our organisation, our people - the initial impulse when times like these hit tends to be to cut, cut and cut. Of course it is appropriate to be rigorous in our approach to cost and financial outlay, cash flow is everything - however, too much cutting can negatively impact on performance.

The firing of colleagues, the removal of incentives and bonuses, reducing expense allowances and so forth can have a detrimental effect on the morale of the remaining people in the firm. Focus is affected, concerns and anxieties start to drain energy from people and fear causes performance to fall.

Just as in the market, trust can become a tenuous thing in the firm - and can only be re-built on a one-to-one basis. As business owners, in order to re-build that trust and the willingness of staff to engage and up their performance we can use the 6 C model in reverse.

If someone is not performing or their performance has dropped significantly, the first thing we can address is how well they are communicating with us.

Have they been keeping us clearly informed of the work that they have been doing, what have they been doing well and what has been working, have they kept us up-to-date on challenges with clients and colleagues or on their own professional concerns? A lack of Communication between owner and staff (the 5^th C) can lead to misunderstandings, anxiety and concerns that negatively impact on performance.  By creating the opportunity for two-way communication we can quickly identify the challenges and what we need to do to address them at an individual level.

So if they have not been communicating why not? Do they not feel sufficiently Confident (the 4^th C) to do so, are they clear about what they want to say, can they feel that they can approach us and discuss their concerns?

How well are they communicating with the market, are they clear on the message that we as a firm want to give our clients? Have they stopped communicating with clients or have they come to believe that nobody is doing business and as a result, no longer communicate with clients and so clients are no longer doing business with us (a self-fulfilling prophecy and a factor on performance).

So if they are not communicating, is their confidence affected? How confident are they with the future direction of the market or the firm? Are they edgy or nervous and if so are they projecting that to clients? Poor communication directly impacts on their confidence and the quality of the message they project to customers. If customers find that they are dealing with less than confident and convincing people - then they make look elsewhere for their suppliers. Recently, the Chinese premier said that in today's market ‘confidence is more valuable than gold' - this is why.

So what builds confidence - this is the 3^rd C - Control. A loss of sense of control directly impacts on confidence and in a market that is in constant flux, a sense of control is the first thing to disappear. Control is the understanding that we have power over the steps or actions that make change. A sense of powerlessness automatically leads to a lack of confidence.

Where does this sense of control come from? Here we return to the 2^nd C - Clarity.

A clear set of goals and outcomes is critical in challenging times. Once we understand the What (what we need to focus on to make change) and the Why (what motivates us to commit to making that change) then all the other C's tend to flow.

We help people gain clarity by making time to allow them to reflect and consider the 1st C - the Context or the environment in which we are operating and defining the things that can make the most amount of change for us.

All of the 6C process comes from the willingness and ability of sales managers to create periods of active reflection for staff. A time to collaboratively reflect on the environment in which they work and together, to create goals and action steps for them to follow.

If you would like more information on how to apply this model to building a powerful sales organisation contact us at sean@seanweafer.com

Taking Control

Taking Control - the 3rd C

© Seán Weafer 2008 all rights reserved

In this blog I cover the third of my 6C model which is CONTROL. In a world that is continually speeding up - control is something many people fear they no longer have. The reality is that they do have control. However, what they do not do is regularly take some reflective time to decide what their priorities or what their needs are. In the first two C's - Context and Clarity - we have already discussed the importance of defining your own course and taking control of your own environment. One of the ways of doing so was by setting some specific goals to create the vision of an environment that can maximise your degree of success. Once we are clear about our objectives and how they will change our environment, we then have to break every goal down into its constituent parts. Every goal is made up of a series of actions or steps that can be taken to ensure that we invariably accomplish the goal. The Chinese say that ‘every journey begins with the first step' so consider that each action we take to accomplish a goal is a necessary step on the way to success. However what's important here is that an action is as simple as possible. An action can be defined as ‘something that you can do when you leave the room'. In other words, it is something that can be done and has an immediate outcome or result. Make a telephone call, draft a list, tidy a desk - it is something simple, highly specific and immediately has an outcome. An action is not something that can be broken down into something even smaller - for example ‘take a training course'. Taking a training course requires several actions to come into being - book a time, get approval, find the budget - so this might be called a sub-goal. When you have broken your objectives in to highly specific, small achievable actions you will suddenly realise that each action should fall into three categories. The categories are defined in a model which I call CIA: "Control - Influence - Accept for Now". "C" stand for Control - do we control this action, can we act on it now, immediately? This is the first order of change - what we control, we should act upon. "I" stands for Influence - if we do not control this action, can we reach out to someone who does, someone who might act on this for us, can we influence them? This is the second order of change, what might be called a "relationship" action and finally.... "A" stands for Accept for Now - if we do not control it and we cannot influence it, then walk away, for now. Focus on what we can control and influence and "park" what we have no control or influence over. Many of us tend to spend a great deal of our time worrying over things that we can neither influence nor control. By acting on what we control and influence, that which we have to "park" for now, may fall within our control and influence in time. Taking back control means that we have to realise that change is in our hands - and it's in small steps. Once we can start taking action on simple, highly defined steps, that fall under our ability to deliver on - then we take back control and decide the degree of success that we intend to enjoy in even the most turbulent of worlds.

Creating Focus

Creating Clarity or Focus

© Seán Weafer 2008 all rights reserved

In this blog I cover the second of those C's which is CLARITY. Another way of defining clarity is Focus or that which we pay close attention to.

It's interesting how so many people who come to me for coaching always raise the issue of ‘time management' as a problem for them. When they do I tend to quote my old mentor Dr. Denis Waitley who always said that ‘time management is a fallacy. An hour cannot be made longer than it is nor yesterday called back into today'. Time management is not the problem, he would say, but management of one's focus. When one learns to management one's focus - then time moves to aid you.

When we have taken the time to consider what sort of an environment we are operating in and are likely to operate in for the foreseeable future (see Context) the next step in the game of becoming proactive in business is to define what we are going to do about that and then why that is important to us.

Focus is composed of two things, not just one. It is composed first of the ‘What'; as in what specifically is it that I want to be doing here to make a difference. But there is a second part to that focus which is often overlooked and that is the ‘Why'.

The ‘Why' is the personal reason as to why it is important to accomplish the ‘What'. In coaching, I call it the emotional trigger behind the goal. It is often overlooked or assumed - it should be spelled out every time when defining a goal.

When the ‘what' and the why' are defined and then brought together we now have a very powerful goal and a focus for the future. We are now starting to shape in our minds the kind of ‘context' we want to be working in.

An example of a what and why might be ‘I want to drive sales targets to 110% this quarter so that I can take my kids to Disneyland with my bonus cheque' - the ‘what' benefits the business but the ‘why' benefits the self.

There are other guidelines when setting your focus or goals for the future:

1.     They should be written in the present tense - people often make the mistake of writing their goals with the future tense ‘I will'. This does not take into consideration the motivator behind goals which are the emotions. Emotions are based in the subconscious part of the mind which does not recognise a future tense - only the present tense. So, by writing goals and saying ‘I will' instead of ‘I want' - you have already sabotaged yourself.

2. They should be personal - written with the personal pronoun ‘I' - we have to take ownership of our own futures.

3. They should be particular - so the more specific you make the goal the more likely it is to happen. If you say ‘I want to make more money' then you will but without a specified amount it could be anything. Whereas if you say ‘I want to make an additional £100,000' that's the goal that the mind now sets out to achieve.

4. They should be passionate - in that they should have a powerful ‘Why' attached.

5. They should be positive - as in written with the positive outcome in mind. Words have power and we should ensure that the words we use when crafting the business future should be words that attract success. So choose your words carefully, for whatever you ask for shall be given.

Setting the goal - and defining clearly it's ‘what' and ‘why' components is the first stage of creating success. The next stage is taking ‘Control'.

Managing Your Business Environment

The 6C's of Success - a Road Map to Successful Business in Challenging Times

© Seán Weafer 2008 all rights reserved

As entrepreneurs and sales people, success is something we strive for everyday, so here is a simple model for business success that should help to serve as a ‘road map' in the current challenging times.

I call it the 6C Model and it is comprised of the following: CONTEXT, CLARITY, CONTROL, CONFIDENCE, COMMUNICATION AND COMPETENCE.

CONTEXT: The first part of the model deals with Context or, to be more specific, the environment in which we find ourselves working.

In recent months that environment has changed beyond recognition. Not only have world economies moved officially into recession but the global banking crisis has impacted on what liquidity there might have been in the markets - causing a credit squeeze on businesses looking to ‘gear up' while ‘scaling down' to face the worst of what is yet to come.

All of this we know from the constant bombardment of the media - a key factor of our context or environment. We have come to live in the ‘sound byte' world where sensationalism and instant gratification for news become the rules by which we are delivered information. Yet at what cost?

This form of information can cause many of us to react to our environment by making rash or wrong decisions. We quickly find ourselves working in constant fire-fighting mode, simply holding the line against the rapidly changing world and working at such a pace of change that we find ourselves reacting to the changes rather than being proactive.

Fear can start to take hold. We start to believe what others would have us believe. Nervousness dictates our decisions and eats at our confidence - at the precise time when we need to take very rational decisions in order to stay on top of the situation.

When pressurised we often tend to "Reflex", or simply unconsciously respond to stimuli, when we should "Reflect", or consciously choose the course of action that is most beneficial.

It is at times like these, more than at any other time, that we need to be creating the environment in which we work. We have to take control of our context by determining what we allow to colour our perceptions, who we choose to associate with or listen to, to take the time to review our needs and to define our objectives and our wants.

It is also at times like these when we need to review the other factors that make up our business environment.

The markets we are working in - are they too narrow or too broad, are we developing effective pricing strategies, effective cost reduction strategies, where do we shift our spend, do we decide to ‘hunker down' and ride out the storm or do we develop aggressive sales strategies now that everyone else is retrenching?

What about our staff and our teams? Do we have the right mix of people? Are we carrying people we know we should have let go long before this? What are the hard decisions that we need to be making? Are we investing in the skills that they will need to be productive or cutting back on that as an unnecessary expense?

Our business systems and our office environment - what are we doing here?

One final key area that we need to reflect upon is the future context that we may find ourselves operating in. Are we simply relying on what the media and market pundits are telling us or are we engaged in researching our customers and our markets? Are we asking the people who matter to our business the kinds of questions that allow us to start to build forecasting models and sales funnels as to what business is likely to be there in the next 3-6-9-12 months? Are we taking control of our own destiny?

Being aware of the dynamics of what creates the environment allows us to take control of that environment. A critical part of that taking control is making the time for effective reflection so that we do not simply respond on reflex.

Once the environment has been assessed we now move to the next level which is Clarity which we will look at in next week's blog.

New Sales Coaching Podcast

A recent presentation to sales managers at the Sales Institute of Ireland has just been released on a podcast. Its a full seminar of about 70 plus minutes so feel free to listen at your leisure guys.

Sales Coaching Podcast by Seán Weafer

The Antidote to Fear

Fear is ever-present in the world of business today. Companies are closing, people are being laid off, where trust has been destroyed in so many essential relationships – in the market, in the banking system, in the government’s ability to deal effectively with the crisis.

Fear is a virus that spreads from person to person, it is fed by the ever present bad news from the media, in the language that people start to use – crisis, meltdown, closures, unemployment, market shrinkage, volatility.

In such an environment confidence acts as a powerful antidote. Why? Because confidence cannot stand still.

It drives people to take action, to move forward, to create innovation and to seek new ideas and new ventures. It encourages people to maintain a positive ‘state’ or feeling about things and thus make decisions and take risks for change – which others in the grip of the fear virus cannot do. It encourages and supports people when they choose not to take part in the herd mentality of the recession.

Yes, things are bad – confidence is not an unreality pill – but things can only change when one has the confidence to act. All our decisions are fundamentally emotionally-based – what we decide and how we decide is driven by our feelings. It stands to reason that someone who is confident (based on proper reflection and defined goals) will make the kinds of decisions that will identify and exploit the opportunities that remain in the market place – leading to their success.

If you'd like to drive greater success in your business or department contact us for the best business development and sales coaching available.

Fire Tempers Steel

Anyone else finding it tough out there recently? I'm finding it challenging getting people to make decisions around coaching and seminars. It seems like we are in the middle of a huge upheaval in business at the moment - a time of momentous change for all of us and nothing will quite be the same again. R'evolutionary.

A time of fear, nervousness and uncertainty. But also a time when ingenuity, flexbility and innovativeness will be rewarded.

When the news struck last week I was working with a group of bankers on the 7th floor of a hotel. Needless to say I made sure that the doors and windows were immediately locked! These guys did not want to be in my room learning how to coach their teams. My co-facilitator turned to me and said 'so how do we make this r'evolutionary Seán?'. Good questions..wished I'd thought of it.

So we turned the day into a practical exercise on how they were going to coach their reports on how to handle the crisis situation. By role playing they internalised the learnings - and learned from each other. Then we role played using their coaching skills to coach clients on remaining calm - I couldn't have asked for a better example of coaching the 'reluctant client'.

A friend once said to me that 'fire tempers steel' - we are being forged in the fires of chaos now. But the steel will shine through in the end. Innovate, adapt and triumph.

The 'Co' Factor

I was coaching a client on the values and benefits of 'soft power' as opposed to his more traditional 'hard power' directive approach. The client has made huge (and measured) changes in his leadership style - so much so that he is getting positive recognition and re-inforcement of his change from his own immediate boss and is able to influence and persuade his team to move to even higher levels of performance.

However in explaining what 'soft power' means, I was struck by the number of 'co's' that appear in its values.  Co-Leadership, Co-Operation, Co-mmuncations, Co-Creation and so forth. It seems that 'synergistic leadership' is a factor of 'Co'.

What is meant by 'Co' - simple - parity of esteem - shared understanding, ownership and commitment (another 'co'!).

Stop Imagining!

Most of my work as a coach involves helping clients change limiting perceptions and raise their expectations. It is true that expectations drive behaviour and then performance - I have seen it too many times over the last 11 years in this field not to believe it so. But what it is that drives our expectations?

My youngest son (he's only 6..) told me a joke today. He said: 'Imagine you were stuck in a box with chains on it and then they dumped the box in the water - how would you escape Dad' When I scratched my head and told him I didn't know he said: 'STOP IMAGINING!!' and fell over with laughter at how stupid a dad can be...

Stop Imagining....what are the problems we are creating for ourselves through overactive and undisciplined or externally manipulated imaginings. How long will the 'tough times' last in business or will wars continue or all the inadequacies of the world remain - as long as we imagine them or when we can start to imagine (and then act to create) a new and different future.

It was once said that 'whatever the mind can imagine, mankind can create'.  We have demonstrated this simple yet profound fact many times through history. Perhaps it's time to start imagining and now creating a r'evolutionary personal, business and societal future.

Soft Power

We live in a new time - a time when 'soft power' will supercede 'hard power'. 'Hard Power' 'or do it because I'm the boss and I tell you to do it' is antiquated. It's 'suit thinking'.

'Soft Power' the ability to connect with someone at a deep level and have them willingly involve and engage with helping us accomplish our goals is the new power. This is 'rebel thinking'.

The ability to influence, persuade, connect, leverage, develop a credible brand, be tech-savvy and know how to project oneself in a world that has an increasing number of voices and opinions - will determine one's future success.

Where does this 'soft power' come from? From within. When we have a clear sense of ourselves and what we want out of our careers and our lives, then we can begin to learn how to project that'soft power' to get others to help us make those dreams come through. 'Soft Power' cannot be created until we make time to reflect on our environment or our context.

Ideally, that time should be during a period of 'enforced reflection' where we periodically sit with a coach who can bring an external perspective, a synergy and accountability to our quest to define, refine and deadline our dreams.

The constitutents of soft power - provocation (provided by your coach) passion (provided by you) and purpose (refined by you both) - inexorably lead to persuasion and collaboration.

The willing engagement of people to help you create a future that is greater than anything that could ever have been accomplished on your own. This is the power of the rebel in a business suit - this is 'soft power'.

Recession-Proof Attitude

Oil prices, sub-prime meltdown, banks in crisis, property crashes - things look tough.

There's no question that life in business is going to get tougher. But is that really a problem? Necessity is the mother of invention and when times are good there is very little innovation in business. Staff can charge high salaries and often deliver less results. In selling, less is required from sales people as the money just rolls-in from all the businesses flushed with cash.

Come the first winds of recession however and everyone starts to 'dig-in'. Businesses retrench, budgets are slashed (often reflexively) and people start to hoard their cash.

However to take an attitude of retrenchment in business and especially in selling is disastrous at a time like this. This is exactly the time to start ramping up your sales operations. Coach and train your people now in the best of relationship management techniques - how to find, engage and keep the customer. Many of your existing sales people probably have little skills in networking, influencing and closing business.

As others start to believe that there is less opportunity in the market place - this is the time when we train our sales teams in believing that there is more opportunity. The 'mind set' of the competitors removes them from the market as they fail to see opportunities that their 'attitude of loss' blinds them to.

Whatever we believe sufficiently in - we manifest. This is not  psycho-babble but real psychology. Our perceptions are created by our beliefs and expectations. When we expect things to happen they often do - because the brain and our perceptions re-aligns itself with what we expect to see  - thus if we see  opportunity, the brain will make what opportunity there is clearly stand-out from our everyday reality.

It still means targeted, effective, sales activity is required. But with more opportunities spotted, the competitors hiding in their recession 'bunkers ' and a greater expectation of success in the minds of our sales teams - we can recession-proof our businesses.

Rebel in a Business Suit

I spoke in Scotland recently at a conference entitled The Re-Birth of Leadership which examined some of the changes required of today's leaders to engage more effectively with the new world of work.

One of the great advantages of such conferences is the chance to engage with one's own peers in the speaking field and get some insights into other professionals' views of your message. Some of those insights have caused me to look yet again at the unfolding message in the ideas of Rebel in a Business Suit and R'evolution.

I guess the idea of the r'evolution that I'm talking about is the capacity to come to understand oneself - both the light and the dark side of oneself. To learn to be courageous in discovering who we truly are so that in doing so we bring a very authentic self into the new world of work - and when one is authentic one is powerful. When this happens the Rebel in the Business Suit becomes an idea of self-integration - the passion being the rebel and the purpose being the suit.

You might say it becomes the idea of the entrpreneur in the heart of the accountant or the artist at the heart of the engineer - the Ying and the Yang and the Heart and Head. An integration of opposites that creates a powerful being. Imagine that unique person as an asset as a leader or rainmaker.

Partnering

After you've been in this business of serving people in their quest for personal and professional decelopment, you eventually realise that there is only so far that you can go by doing it by yourself.

Many businesses in this field tend to be one-man/woman bands and they get along just fine. However, there comes a time when, if you really care about making a significant difference, you have to synergise your work with those of other firms.

For me that time has come recently and I am currently working on projects with two other firms in order to deliver new and scalable solutions for clients.

In the first I am introducing a new sales due diligence service which offers a comprehensive assessment for the skills of sales people within organisations - and having done this, can provide the exact type of professional development to help them become true 'rainmakers'. I'm quite excited by this one as it provides, for the first time for me, an independent evaluation of selling skills so that we can deliver quantified change. Originally developed for the technology sector it is applicable to all sales professionals in all industries. For more details drop me a line at sean.weafer@firstcoach.com

The second involves a unique arrangement where, despite having the skills required for the firm, I just don't have the scalability to meet their needs. Having come through an exhaustive tendering process a major bank now wants to work with two vendors - myself and one other to deliver the solution. Initially, I had a challenge with this - what with different philosophies of coaching, approaches and so forth - as did the other firm. However, with patience and a willingness to engage we have found a way of moving forward and trust that, together, we can provide the best possible solution for the client.

Synergy, communication, collaboration. Key values for the new age - and one's that will increasingly determine our futures in work and service.

Result!

I've been a professional executive coach since 1997 and a trainer of executive coaches in my own unique G2S (Global to Specific) coaching system since 1999. At this stage I've trained hundreds of people as coaches within organisations.

I don't use GROW or T-GROW or variations of any such models, as I find them far to general. I like specific, practical results - and having been an engineer, I like systems that guarantee a measured outcome for clients who come to me for results. I also like to ensure that the coaches I train are not just good - but excellent.

That requires a unique system and as my coaching 'graduates' would say, my most used phrase is 'work the system - the system works!' Not that its restrictive in any way - more a proven path along which a client can be led to discover and accomplish her or her own specific objectives within a shortened time frame.

The training is intensive - I set a high standard and it requires commitment to complete - and I do fail people that don't make the grade. One of the most nerve wracking elements of the training (I am told !!) is the final assessment of a practical skills session where I sit in to review process and fluency.

The purpose of all this? Well just to tell a little story of the value of preparation. I recently assessed a candidate in their final assesment. I had reviewed their written work and was fully expecting that I was going to fail them on the practice side of things. Instead, I was greeted with a practically flawless demonstration of how a first session should be handled by a coach.

When I had expressed my pleasure at the result and my initial concern, they said that they had rehearsed the session several times over the last few days - late the night before and again that morning before the session itself. They were a real example of how practice pays and they received the right result. Here's what they emailed to me later:

'My expectations from the course were well and truly met in that I am now qualified in the use of an internationally recognised, highly credible, practical coaching system which will help to build my competence in this very important area of people management and leadership development.

I found all parts of the programme interesting and engaging and I also found the "graduation" requirements to be appropriately challenging without, on the one hand, being overly academic or on the other, being too simplistic or irrelevant.

In particular I found the gradual increase in effort needed to progress through the qualification from classroom discussion to role plays and finally evidence of client work and of course the final observed session with yourself to be very effective in preparing me for going live with clients of my own in the organisation.

The system, and your instruction and training techniques, are very well designed and have provided an excellent base to build on for future coaching practice. It has provided me with a significantly increased level of confidence when engaging with clients and I now feel I can bring real value and support to clients in coaching interventions which, up to now, were based on what could best be described as unstructured and unfocussed conversations.

Many thanks again and best regards for now.'

Result!

The Power of Words

Recent events have caused me to reflect on the power of words to connect or disrupt.

Have you ever had a situation where someone completely misunderstood you because of the words that were used in the communication?

Communication is general accepted to be composed of the words we use, the tone in which we say them and the way our body language appears when we say them. Two other things are also important however - the context in which and the medium with which we provide the words.

Words are a limited means of communication - they are very often incapable of communicating the meaning behind them - especially if they exist in isolation of a page.

A 'tongue-in-cheek' event that makes perfect sense if you are physically present and able to explain can have an entirely different meaning when read simply as words on a page - often with disastrous consequences.

Something that gets a great response when people are present can fall completely flat when read by others who are not present.

Words can be both friends or covert enemies - guard your words and use them with careful intent. Remember that others preceive the world differently from you.