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

An Update on Goal Achievement

Last summer, I posted about finally achieving a goal I had pursued for  seven– count ‘em – seven summers.  The very difficult and elusive (for me) deep water start on the slalom ski.  For anyone who has learned to water-ski on two skis, the norm is to get up on two and then drop one.  When you are hanging out with real skiers this is untenably gauche and it became imperative that I master the ability to simply get up on one ski.  At the end of last summer I finally got it. 

So this summer the big question was – could I do it again?  Lo and behold, I popped right up and pretty much have been able to do it all summer.  I am still surprised to find myself up on the water in one piece!

But of course now that’s old news and there has to be a new goal.  Now I have to cut.  It isn’t enough just to go back and forth across the wake and have fun…no.  Cutting is when you hunker down, pull your own weight and shoot across the wake at god only knows what heinous speed so that when it comes time to turn back you are leaning so far in you practically touch the water.  My husband looks like a demi-god when he does this.  And he makes it look so fun. 

And I am writing about this to re-iterate how important it is to my quality of life to have a goal that has nothing to do with work, saving the world, the well being of my children or my own moral betterment.  It is just absurdly fun.

 Wish me luck.

Unplugged

I recently spent seven days on a deserted island with just my husband.  No children, no family, no friends, no cellphones, no iPhone, no blackberry, no computers, no internet, no TV. No work projects that make us feel guilty that we said we would do but don’t.  This is the 6^th year we have done this, we try to do it every year but with work and four kids, sometimes we just can’t swing  it.

We walked, we read, we paddled around in the water, my husband played his guitar.  We did some light snorkeling.   When we walked,  we talked  about our kids – we have four,  22,19,14 and 12, all of whom need something different from us-  about our jobs – we work together and we work constantly-  about our health, about our disappointments and dreams.  How we are different today that we were 6 months or a year ago.  How we are growing, how we would like to grow.  We always have a few epiphanies.  This year I realized that I had let my work dictate my schedule and that my health is suffering because of it. Now, some folks don’t have a choice in this area, but I specifically built my life so that I would, so it is completely my own doing.

The jury is out on the topic of what this modern 24/7 connectedness is doing to our brains.  I am quite certain it is making us smarter in a lot of ways, and that my children’s brains will literally be wired differently from my own.  But I do know this for sure:  taking seven days to completely unplug is one of the healthiest things you can do to refresh yourself and get some perspective.  If you are married, doing it with your spouse will result in a healthier marriage.  You don’t have to go anyplace fancy or expensive.  It is really hard to get coverage for work and kids but it is so worth it.  Nobody died because I didn’t answer my phone for seven days. 

No, a four day weekend won’t do it.  If you give yourself permission,  and save up vacation days, you can actually do it.

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.

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?

On Setting and Achieving Goals

This summer I finally achieved a goal I have been pursuing for seven years. It has nothing to do with raising my children or my work (my two main priorities for the last 21+ years) and it wasn’t a lofty goal, it had nothing to do with contributing to world peace or saving the planet.  It was strictly a fun goal that I set to challenge myself physically so it had been put on the back burner countless times.  Last summer I got so discouraged that I actually gave up and didn’t try at all.

I wanted to be able to ski on one water ski, in waterskiing lingo: slaloming. In addition, I wanted to be able to get up on one ski which is known as a deep water start.  Why?  Well, my husband is a fantastic and fanatical water-skier.  He has trained me to drive the boat for him so all summer I am rousted at 6 am so he can get the best water.  So, in some ways it is a case of “if you can’t shut ‘em up, join ‘em”.  Plus I thought it would be a fun thing to share – I will never join him on the black diamond runs in the winter, and golf puts me to sleep so I thought this could be “our thing” we do together.

I had long ago mastered getting up on two skis; I learned as a kid, and had experimented with dropping one.  That was OK, but I was always worried about another boat hitting the dropped ski, or losing the ski.  And, it required one more piece of gear, and let’s face it, it was just not cool.  I wanted to slalom.

One summer I tried so many times that I drank gallons of lake water and exhausted even my angelic husband’s patience.  Our lake neighbors got into the game and provided coaching and extra help.  This summer I got re-inspired.  My husband and I spent the entire spring working out the gym religiously and I felt strong.  Plus I hate quitting.  Anything.

So it was time to try again and much to my surprise, I got up on the second try.  OK, now we were cooking.  So the next day when I went to recreate my achievement and  got up but also put my back out so badly that I couldn’t even pick up a wet towel much less myself on a tow rope.  A colleague actually suggested I might be too old for these shenanigans. Oh, the frustration, boy was I mad.

Three weeks later, back all better, it was make it or break it, I had 3 more days at the lake and I got up the first try.  The next day, again and then, a third time.  No drinking 10 gallons of lake water, no being dragged sideways yelling epithets.  Just up on the ski and back and forth across the wake until I was too tired to hold on any more.

And who cares?   Well, no one. But I had so much good natured support from people who love me.  It was so touching to see how much pleasure my small success gave them.   It is true that all the research says that learning new things and pushing oneself physically is one of the key ways to ward off aging.  But really, having a challenging, complicated goal with nothing (my pride aside) of true consequence at stake was simply fun.  It made me forget everything else during the time I was doing it.

I laughed, I whooped, I felt like a kid again.  I realize how serious my life is – raising teenagers, running households, employing and managing people. The goals I set for myself these days are so complicated and involve so many moving parts, and although I accomplish a lot, I always fall short of them.

I was reminded how fun it is to actually set and achieve a goal.  Any goal that seems a little out of reach but possible with enough persistence. I highly recommend it.

Useful Coaching Metaphors: You as a Ship

What if you were a ship?

Here are some intriguing questions:

If you were a ship:

• Where would you be going?  (General direction)
• How accurate are all of the instruments for ascertaining location?  (How well tuned is your ability to understand and be clear about where you are?)
• How accurate are the instruments you use to detect threats? Weather, pirates, underwater obstacles?
• What ports are you welcome at? (Where are you supported, where can you go to re-fuel/re-group? what is your community, where are you most comfortable?)
• Who is your crew (Who works on your behalf? Who are your friends?)
• What kind of ship are you? (What is your purpose? I.e.: pleasure, work, save the whales, generate income)
• How strong is your hull?
• Are you part of a fleet?  (What are your roles in life?)
• How many lifeboats do you have?  (Are you prepared for contingencies at all times)?

More food for thought:

The things that you tolerate in life are like barnacles on a ship: one or two is no problem, a couple of hundred are a huge problem.  The moment, at which the barnacle situation crosses over from being a slight “drag” to being a factor in fuel efficiency and speed, the ships need to be dry docked for a scrub down and overhaul.  Everyone needs a couple of scrub down days per year to keep the ship barnacle free. Stowaways can also be a metaphor for Tolerations or crossed boundaries.

Finally:

The larger and stronger the ship, the longer it takes to turnaround.  Often people think they need a 180-degree turnaround when what they really need is a tiny adjustment in course, which over time and distance makes a radical difference in where they end up.  Dramatic change is often difficult, costly and not particularly useful.  A small shift makes a big long term difference.

How are You Sharing Your Heart?

You know, sometimes people are just so amazing.  I recently started work with a new client whose reads like an exemplars manual for management and leadership excellence.  I combed through it looking for something that she could possibly work on.  There were a few communication details we can polish, maybe refine some delegation skills.  It was all practical and straightforward. We spent an hour setting some goals that weren’t particularly compelling because, let’s face it, she is in good shape.

I realized after we said goodbye that I needed to ask her the bigger questions.  Questions like:

• Are you sharing your heart the way you always wanted to?
• Are you having enough fun?
• Are you connected with the meaning that sustained you the first twenty years in your field?
• Are you making the impact you dreamed of making when you were young?

I feel better already – I hate wasting clients’ time.  I’ll let you know how it goes.

Top 10 Excuses To Avoid Change

I was recently a part of a panel on Pay Me What I am Worth’s radio program. It was a great panel to be a part of, and the topic we covered is relevant to just about anyone, especially if you’re a changephobe!

Enjoy!