On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees

Please be my guest for a free webinar on Wednesday, August 17. That’s when I  will be conducting a complimentary, online seminar that teaches leaders how to help new employees (or existing ones) ramp-up more quickly for new roles within their organization.

 On-Boarding: How to Shorten Ramp-up Times for Employees

Wednesday, August 17, 2011

9:00–10:00 a.m. Pacific Time, 12:00–1:00 p.m. Eastern Time

5:00–6:00 p.m. UK Time, 4:00–5:00 p.m. GMT

 Presenter: Madeleine Homan-Blanchard, Co-founder of Coaching Services, The Ken Blanchard Companies

Co-Creator: Blanchard Certified, an online leadership development system.

 On-boarding has traditionally been seen as an HR responsibility and it’s easy to let the company’s training department make sure that new employees get off on the right foot.  This is a good start, but research shows that when managers also get involved the process moves along that much faster.

 In this webinar, I  will share three strategies managers can use to get their people off to a fast start including:

1. Painting the Picture: Learn how to create a picture of what a good job looks like and how to monitor that your employee has “gotten” it.
2. Sharing your Leadership Point of View: Take the mystery out of what you expect by spelling out your beliefs and expectations.
3. Mapping Relationships: Help new employees understand how things really get done in your organization by drawing them a map of who is who, and what is what.

 Don’t miss this opportunity to take a more proactive approach to getting people up-to-speed quickly.

 To register for this complimentary event, click on this link:

http://www.webex.com/webinars/OnBoarding-How-to-Shorten-Rampup-Times-for-Employees

I Am So Sorry

The Pleasure of Giving

Just had the most extraordinary pleasure of being a coach for a delightful experiment called a Collaboratorium for TED Fellows.  13 Fellows, all of whom applied to be chosen for the experience, spent an entire day with a team of coaches and business experts.  Each team had a facilitator and each Fellow had an “advocate” to make sure that their charge didn’t get too overwhelmed.  It is easy to get freaked out by the experience of such focused attention on your heart’s desires and your grand plans to achieve world domination for good with your mighty intelligence and creativity. 

One of the consultants, Sunny Bates, truly a golden ray, did a special presentation on networking and raising money, said an extraordinarily beautiful thing: 

“We don’t ache for what we don’t have; we ache for what we can’t give.”

The bible tells us that it is better to give than to receive, and  in fact, the latest research in neuroscience does reveal that the pleasure centers of the brain show increased activation when we have an opportunity to give or to share, substantially more than when we receive something. 

The lesson for the Fellows (and for me!) was that:

• Receiving all the help over the course of day was much harder than it was for all of we helpers to contribute
• As hard as it is too ask for help, or money or support, if you frame the request properly and make it of the right people, they are delighted to help
• And in fact, that for the right person, being able to give is a greater contribution to themselves and their own deep pleasure than it is to you (at least in terms of the pleasure center in the brain.)

More on this electrifying experience  soon.

The 9 Rules of Showmanship for Presentations

I developed a very short – the requirement is four minutes – talk for a SupporTED* conference  (called, delightfully, a Collaboratorium) on the topic of presence specifically for presentations. 

1. Love:

 First rule of presence and showmanship:  Love what you are talking about and let your passion show.  If you are doing your presentation a lot, which can happen when you are raising money or have written a book, it can get tedious so remind yourself how much you care about your topic every time you open your mouth about it.

As important, love the people you are with.  You will be naturally focussed on wanting them to love you.  Cut that out. Find a way to love them up even if they scare you or disagree with you.  Love them and you will be irresistible.

2. Call to Action:

Be clear about what your message is, ask yourself the question:  what do I want people to walk away thinking, feeling, doing?  What is the call to action? Don’t trust people to “get it”.  They won’t. Tell them.

3. Take Risks:

Take risks. If you aren’t pushing the envelope, you are boring yourself.  If you are bored…well.  People have the attention span of sand fleas.  Compete by using all mediums available to you to – leverage the unexpected.

4.   Feel your Feet:

Be in your body.  You will be afraid, that never goes away, so get used to it.  Get out of your head, your amygdale are there and they can hijack you with fight, flight or this context more likely the dreaded freeze.  Stage fright can be literally described as an out of body experience. Lawrence Olivier, one of the greatest actors of all time was tortured for a couple of years by debilitating stage fright.  He said the one trick that worked for him was to feel his feet. So to get out of your head: feel your feet.  Do it right now. Feel the soles of your feet on the floor, in your shoes.  See how it pulls you right down into your body? Remember this trick, it will serve you well.

Be in your body.  Any movement you make, complete.  Don’t commit the sin of half arm movements, (visualize my  forearms waving around with elbows stuck to sides) you will look a science experiment.

5. Practice: 

Practice in front of the mirror, without a mirror, in the car, on the treadmill, in front of anyone who will let you.   Your dog.  Practice until you are bored with practice and then practice some more.  What’s the 5th rule? 

Right.

6.  Start Strong:

Start strong.  Don’t equivocate, hesitate, dither, or for the love of Pete, apologize in any way.  Don’t apologize for your slides, for the room, for the weather.  If you are late, apologize, once and then get on with it.

7.  Sing out!

Talk a little louder than feels natural and find your light.  Don’t try to hide or pretend you aren’t here.

8.  Go toward the Light

Find your heat sources and speak to them.  Fight the instinct to seek out the people who hate you and try to change their minds.  It won’t work.  Find the people who love you and shower them with appreciation and attention.

9.  Finish Clean

Ending is hard because you have built up momentum and it feels like letting go. Just go for it. Never, ever, ever go over your allotted time. Be brief, succinct, to the point and end early and cleanly. 

That’s all.

*SupporTED is the organization that provides executive coaching for TED Fellows.

What do We Really Know?

There was an article in The New Yorker last December called The Truth Wears Off by Jonah Lehrer that rocked my world.  I am working on a Masters in The Neuroscience of Leadership so I know just enough about research and scientific method to be dangerous, but I was really enjoying the certainty (now, I know it is more accurate to say the perceived certainty) of it all.  The, rather stunning, fundamental premise of the article is that the scientific method may not be quite as objective or irrefutable as previously thought. From the abstract:

“The test of replicability, as it’s known, is the foundation of modern research. It’s a safeguard for the creep of subjectivity. But now all sorts of well-established, multiply confirmed findings have started to look increasingly uncertain. It’s as if our facts are losing their truth. This phenomenon doesn’t yet have an official name, but it’s occurring across a wide range of fields, from psychology to ecology.”

This phenomenon (called The Decline Effect in the article) is making scientists in all sorts of fields very nervous and well it should.  For me, it begs a whole host of questions in the area of brain function and neuroscience starting with this:  to what extent do we really know the difference between what we think (what is in the imagination, in memory) and what we know (what is in concrete reality)?   To what extent does what we wish for, pray for, hope for and plan for affect the manifestation of what we think of as reality?

As a coach I work with leaders to create and articulate a compelling  vision that will be powerful enough to harness people’s creativity  and energy – in essence to build in the imagination the engine that will drive the  manifestation into reality something concrete that  did not previously exist.   Ben Zander in his brilliant work The Art of Possibility talks about the idea that it is all made up.  Everything.  All of it.  The implication of this is that it is up to leaders to literally define and create reality. This New Yorker article certainly makes me wonder if that is really the truth.  Lehrer ends his article with the following words, which challenged my desire for certainty:

“The decline effect is troubling because it reminds us how difficult it is to prove anything.  We like to pretend that our experiments define the truth for us but that’s often not the case.  Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved.  And just because an idea can proved doesn’t mean it’s true.  When the experiments are done, we still have to choose what to believe.”

Just when you thought it was safe to trust the scientists!  But you can ask yourself the question: What am I choosing to believe?  Is it making me the best possible leader?

Dan Pink is Shaking Things Up!

Have you seen Dan Pink’s new book Drive?  He questioned all of our assumptions about what motivates us.  He found that money is an excellent incentive for rote and mechanical tasks, but for work that requires creativity, insight, discretionary energy (solving problems in your car on the way home) the research is very clear.  We are motivated by a combination of three things:

1. Autonomy – a feeling of being self directed.

2. Connectedness – a sense of being in the know, understnading what the work is all for, a clear idea of how my contribution is making a difference to greater good.

3. Mastery – an opportunity to get really good at things and new things. 

For more info you can get the book or watch this incrdibly fun and cool RSA Animate very short version of the key points of the research.  My husband just showed this to a group of Club Managers and it rocked their world.  To those of us who really are motivated by the above three things, it seems like a bit of a no brainer, but I thought that about Emotional Intelligence too. You will LOVE this.

Why CEOs Fail

Ongoing investigation prompted by CEO Query: “what should I not do?” causes re-organization of my bookshelf and out pops and an old favorite: Why CEO’s Fail by Dotlich and Cairo (Jossey-Bass, 2003) – great book.

The list is so intriguing, but also the notion that you can’t eliminate derailers so much as seek to understand and manage them.  That is so what coaches help people to do, because if we’ve learned anything in the last 20 years it is that you can transplant a heart and a kidney, but not a personality.  Yet.

So here is the list – See if you can find yourself, probably more than one applies.

Arrogance: You’re right and everybody else is wrong.

Melodrama: You always grab the center of attention.

Volatility: Your mood swings drive business swings.

Excessive Caution: the next decision you make may be your first.

Habitual Distrust: You focus on the negatives.

Aloofness: You disengage and disconnect.

Mischievousness: Rules are made to be broken

Eccentricity: It’s fun to be different just for the sake of it.

Passive Resistance: Your silence is misinterpreted as agreement.

Perfectionism: Get the little things right even if the big things go wrong.

Eagerness to Please: Winning the popularity contest matters most.

Values in Action – The Value of a Coaching Conversation

A CEO of a company that manufactures and distributes all the little plastic parts that go inside all the electronics no one is buying right now says “I know what we’ve done before when business was down.  I have no idea what the right thing to do is now though.”  The crux of leadership – deciding what to do when no one has any idea what to do. Tough job.

In our coaching session we laid out two options:

1. A variation on the obvious, what had been done in the past.
2. A creative approach that would challenge his team, and scare the board.

What to do?

When we first started working together he clarified two of his top values as being to try new things, and respect for his people.  I asked which option most clearly reflected his values – his eloquent silence made it clear that it was option #2.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

“I have to try something new, I think,” said he.

A valuable conversation.

Preoccupied?

Working with a new client, the planned 360° Feedback is delayed so we are having the conversation about what we can accomplish with coaching without the benefit of clear data to create a development plan.  We start with, “well, I’m not perfect but I can’t really think of anything I should be working on.”  Out comes the magic wand question: “if you could wave a magic wand what would be different (at work) a year from now?”

Well, it turns out there’s plenty to work on.  I can hear the client’s mental wheels whirring through the phone!   A week goes by and client comes back with “wow, it’s amazing what one hour of thinking can change.” (And I get paid to do this?  After 20 years I still pinch myself.)

Client decides to start at home and polls his family.  The unanimous response from all quarters is that he is over stressed and absent – not there even when he is there.  The word preoccupied comes to mind – literally previously occupied and therefore NOT AVAILABLE.  Not present.  So client then asks “I have wonder to what extent my employees feel that way?”  Indeed.

We have reams of research – thank you Daniel Goleman for your work on Emotional Intelligence and to Kurt Kaufman and Marcus Buckingham for First, Break All the Rules – that support the notion that people are desperate for a decent manager who pays attention to them.  And not just negative attention when something goes wrong.  But the kind of attention that signals:

I see you.

I hear you.

I notice distinctions, details, differences, growth, and effort.

I notice when you are struggling, rise to a challenge, go above and beyond.

You are important.

And we all know that we can’t pay attention, at home or at work, when we are pre-occupied.

It is true that if the client changes only this one thing in a year, if he in fact disciplines himself to be present with whomever he is with (at work and at home), his quality of life is guaranteed to go up.  The possibilities of what can come from this tiny shift are endless.

Cranky Boss Day?

Have you ever noticed that things tend to go in trends?  Well yesterday I had 4 coaching calls, and every single client was inordinately frustrated with his or her boss.  All four of these folks had definitely tagged ‘managing up’ as a focus area for coaching, but things seemed to have reached a fever pitch yesterday – it made me wish I understood astrology to see if there was something in the stars!

All of the complaining (gently called venting by coach Mad) centered on the same things –bosses who try to be decent at certain things that aren’t natural to them have folded under the stress and aren’t even trying anymore.  The general message is “don’t expect me to change my spots – just suck it up and deal with it.”  The result is that unsupportive bosses are less supportive than ever, uncommunicative bosses cease all communication, surly bosses become downright mean.  None of this is improving anything.

Some questions for my clients in pain:

• What can you do to take care of yourself?
• How can you communicate your distress to your boss, if at all?
• As a boss yourself are you potentially weakening the same way?

Here are the takeaways from collective brainstorming and discussion:

1. It takes guts to call your boss out on bad behavior, but if the relationship is there sometimes it is worth it.  Practice giving feedback using concrete observations and neutral language.  Ask how you can help ease pressure.
2. If your boss is folding under pressure and providing you with nothing you need, stop complaining and start finding what you need elsewhere.  Sure it sucks more time, but you can’t go under just because your boss is losing it.
3. If you notice other people – especially your boss’s peers- are also complaining about your boss, keep your ear to the ground for political repercussions.  If people are being laid off, your boss could be on the list and you need to be prepared.  Harsh but true.
4. If you are a boss and you have more work than usual because people have been laid off, and business is down 27% and you are more stressed than you have ever been in your adult life, now is the time to grow.  This is not the time to fold under pressure and revert to bad habits. Under no circumstance is it appropriate to take things out on your direct reports. Now is the time to be more communicative, patient and generous.  It is called “rising to the occasion” – a marvelous expression. Ask yourself how you are rising to this occasion.