Leaders need to build trust to improve employee performance
Getting the most out of coaching: In December, the Strategic Capability Network hosted an event with Peter Jensen, CEO of Performance Coaching and author of Igniting the Third Factor. Jensen is also featured in a segment on Canadian HR Reporter TV (www.youtube.com/hrreporter). For more information about SCNetwork, visit www.scnetwork.ca.
By Shannon Klie
Leaders need to move beyond supervising and managing employees to take on the mantle of coaching employees, according to Peter Jensen, CEO of Performance Coaching in Rockwood, Ont., and the sports psychology trainer for Canada’s Olympic women’s hockey team.
If leaders only manage employees and give them solutions, employees never learn how to follow through on their own, said Jensen, who spoke at a Strategic Capability Network event in Toronto last month.
To do this well, leaders need to form relationships and listen to their employees, he said.
“If you’re coaching me and at the end of this conversation I know that you know where I’m at, now you have a chance as a leader. But if you come in and in the first three minutes start telling me what to do, I almost have a vested interest in disproving your solution because you haven’t heard me out,” he said.
Coaches need to identify and target the behaviours they hope to develop in the other person to improve his performance. While coaches can help guide people to improve their performance, they can’t be the ones who make the change, said Jensen.
“Change is an inside job. I can’t force someone to acquire new behaviours, they have to choose to,” he said.
Coaches see something in others they don’t yet see in themselves and help them realize that vision, he said.
One leader Jensen worked with had a problem with listening. His employees, and even his family, said he was a bad listener and he believed this couldn’t be changed. Jensen asked him to imagine a person in his life who was a good listener and to break down the behaviours that made that person a good listener.
The leader was then able to see how he could apply these behaviours to his own life to improve his listening skills.
The goal of coaching is about helping employees constantly improve their performance, said Jensen.
“Coaches don’t ever talk about being the best. We talk about being better,” he said.
Good coaches need to know how to actively listen, give competent and relevant feedback and ask effective questions, he said.
“Nothing focuses attention like a question,” but it’s best to avoid “why” questions because they make people defensive, said Jensen.
Coaches should also focus on specific behaviours rather than on labels. For example, instead of calling someone “defensive,” a good coach should point out the defensive behaviours the person had been displaying, such as crossing his arms during a meeting.
While genetics and environmental factors affect performance, there is a third factor coaches can ignite to improve performance — choice. This is a person’s desire to improve by himself and the process by which personal development becomes more self-directed and autonomous, said Jensen.
5 ways to ignite the ‘third factor’
Coaches ignite this third factor in five ways, he said.
Manage yourself: “(Coaches) are extremely effective when under pressure because they consciously work on self-awareness and self-control,” said Jensen.
They understand their own beliefs, which affect behaviour, and the impact their behaviour has on others, he said.
Build trust: Building trust is critical for coaches to be able to drive performance. The best way to do this is for coaches to share their feelings first and to never put employees in a position where they’ll experience a devastating failure, said Jensen.
“Can they skin their knees? By all means. But they’d better not break a leg,” he said. “Trust leads to commitment.”
Encourage and use imagery: A good coach paints clear pictures of where a person is going and how he can get there. The coach needs to break down the end goal into the many specific behaviours and actions that make up the goal.
“This is not something most people are naturally good at,” said Jensen. “Saying, ‘We’ve got to get this done quicker’ doesn’t tell anybody what to do, it just frustrates them.”
For example, if a customer service team has the goal of involving clients more in customer calls, a coach will ask, “What does that look like?” and keep breaking it down into specific behaviours, said Jensen.
Uncover and work through blocks: Coaches need to find out what’s in the way of better performance and then focus on that in a positive way.
If an Olympic figure skater lands all her jumps in practice but then falls in competition, the problem isn’t a lack of skill but rather a lack of confidence, said Jensen. To fix the problem, the coach should focus on the intended outcome (being strong and confident), not what is to be avoided (being anxious).
But uncovering blocks can be difficult. Athletic coaches can observe athletes in practice and during competitions but managers don’t get to see their employees perform all their duties all the time, so they’ll have to ask questions of both the employees they’re coaching and their co-workers.
If leaders hear about a troubling behaviour, they should do what they can to observe it first-hand. If that’s not possible, leaders really need to question the people who did observe the behaviour and obtain very specific examples of the problem behaviour, said Jensen.
Embrace adversity: Failure and adversity can be great opportunities for growth because they can highlight where a person has room for development, said Jensen.
In a controlled environment, coaches can use adversity to build resiliency. For example, one manager Jensen worked with artificially imposed shorter workweeks for employees, building up to a reduced workweek in the summer. Each week, the manager and employees discussed the challenges and strategies they faced getting all their work done in the shorter time frame.
Then, when the workload increased in the fall, the employees were prepared and able to deal with it.
However, not everyone is coachable, said Jensen. For example, a person with a permanent, pervasive and personal behavioural problem, such as generalized anger issues, will benefit more from counselling than from coaching, he said.
“You’re not going to change that with coaching. That’s more of a therapeutic intervention. That’s why we have employee assistance programs in our organizations,” said Jensen.
And not every leader can be a coach, he said.
“Without a relationship, and the ability to establish one, it’s very hard to coach,” he said.
SCNetwork’s panel of thought leaders brings decades of experience from the senior ranks of Canada’s business community. Their commentary puts HR management issues into context and looks at the practical implications of proposals and policies.
By Karen Gorsline
Peter Jensen’s presentation about leaders taking on the mantle of coaches was relevant to leadership, and organizational effectiveness, but do his concepts apply to strategic capability?
To find out, let’s look at five ways he says coaches can ignite the “third factor” (as outlined on page 31) and how these can apply to an organization:
Manage yourself: Most organizations have a statement of values. Culture reflects the degree to which organizations live those values. Consider analyzing an observation-based description of the day-to-day culture or supporting self-management learning opportunities.
Build trust: Organizations should seek opportunities to demonstrate trust and “walk the talk.” They need to show an understanding of organizational capabilities by obtaining information and feedback throughout the organization in goal-setting, recognizing incremental progress and being clear on the path forward.
Encourage and use imagery: Most organizations are aware of the power of vision, mission and branding but often fail to translate these for employees into “what does that mean for me.”
Balanced scorecards have been used to cascade goals but they don’t have the power of image. Image fires the imagination and encourages the behaviours needed to achieve goals. Learning maps have been developed to provide imagery, but the use of imagery needs more exploration.
Uncover and work through blocks: Organizations need to learn to debrief every performance. Routinely asking and listening when things are going well is as important as when there are blocks.
This creates the expectation that dialogue is normal, supportive and reflective so when things don’t go well at work a productive, rather than defensive, environment exists.
Embrace adversity: Organizations know the advantages of challenges, but adversity is daunting without preparation. The capability to anticipate and reframe opens possibilities for positive action. Organizations need to create adversity-simulation opportunities to develop confidence and competence.
Karen Gorsline is SCNetwork’s lead commentator on strategic capability and leads HR Initiatives, focused on facilitation and tailored HR initiatives. She has taught HR planning, held senior roles in strategy and policy, managed a large decentralized HR function and directed a small business. She can be reached at [email protected].
By Tom Tavares
Peter Jensen is a learned coach as well as an entertaining presenter. His passion for his work is evident in his stories about Olympic athletes, coaches and business leaders. His five-ring model for improving performance encompasses self-awareness, gaining trust, imagery, uncovering blocks and embracing adversity.
Although no one could argue with his mission to help people be the best they can be, there are limits to the lessons he has learned.
First, Olympic athletes, coaches and business leaders make up an extremely skewed sample. Rare indeed is an individual prepared to invest years of intensive effort to win a gold medal or to lead a business. Generalizing about motivation in the workplace based on such highly focused individuals is like trying to understand water by watching it only when it is boiling.
In addition, conditions in the workplace differ from those on the athletic field. Athletes receive lavish support for their development whereas only about one-half of employees receive so much as an annual performance review. In addition, athletes typically train to achieve peak performance at a single point in time whereas most employees must perform continuously.
Teamwork also differs qualitatively between sports and companies. In athletics, it’s all about the internal cohesiveness of a small group. In companies, it’s all about making the whole business the team. Manufacturing has to be mindful of the impact of costs on pricing and sales. Co-operation between divisions and departments is vital to consistently execute strategic initiatives.
Although many people in management could stand to improve their skills in managing working relationships, the five-ring model is an awfully complex framework.
The nuances of imagery and uncovering blocks suggested by Jensen may be helpful to skilled coaches, but the performance of most companies would take a quantum leap forward if leaders simply briefed staff on strategy, guided them in translating priorities into action and provided support in addressing unforeseen problems.
Most of us have a peak experience in our career when a new leader arrives, a team jells or a project clicks, and people become more open, innovative and co-operative. However, when the leader departs, the team breaks up or the project ends, the effect tends to fade away.
Answers hard to come by
With experts disagreeing about the cause of these transformations — see the books The One Minute Manager, The Fifth Discipline, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People or Igniting the Third Factor — who should organizations follow?
As change has accelerated, one of the most pressing questions facing companies is how to achieve lasting improvement in performance-related behaviour by choice rather than by chance. We’re more likely to find the answer to this question by studying representative groups of people rather than those at the extreme ends of the spectrum.
Tom Tavares is SCNetwork’s lead commentator on organizational effectiveness and a senior organizational psychologist. In addition to managing in large corporations, consulting in varied industries and coaching executives, he has written extensively about the relationship between business performance, behaviour and change. He can be reached at [email protected].
By Trish Maguire
Making “wow” happen is the assured promise from Peter Jensen when good leaders take an active role in “igniting the third factor.” The irrefutable evidence lies in a lifetime of working with Olympic athletes, coaches and business leaders to not only be the best they can be but to develop everyone around them to do the same. Jensen’s principles, laid out in his book Igniting the Third Factor, serve as guiding values for anyone working with people, whether at work, at home or socially.
Practising how to interact and develop meaningful relationships is a decisive prescription to improve people’s engagement and performance, and clearly important for any organization looking for long-term success. The third factor encourages us to start with ourselves and take responsibility, build trust, learn to uncover who we are, work with what we already have, remove our blind spots, imagine the possibilities, embrace adversity and continually learn to get better at what we do.
The principles emphasize the need for guidance in understanding and developing our authentic human inner motivation for self-realization through self-development. Achieving self-realization involves gaining a personal understanding of consciousness and will, awareness and choice. The process of self-development requires a courageous willingness to let go of old ways of seeing and thinking, and learning or relearning how to pull rather than push others to realize their best potential.
As an HR leader, imagine how you can directly influence, contribute and help rebuild a workplace that engages, inspires and guides people to greatness and success by integrating Jensen’s principles with your HR platform.
The coming year is sure to present new challenges and one of HR’s prime objectives is to generate ownership, awareness and responsibility in leaders, managers and people who excel.
Perhaps now is the perfect time for the C-suite and HR leaders to evaluate how their workplaces measure up to the principles championed by Jensen. How do business and HR strategies, policies and practices enable others to excel? How do they help build trust? How do they enable leaders and managers to have the courage and strength to create opportunities for people to fly? Do they excite and encourage people to grow and develop?
Last but not least, reflect on Jensen’s words about leaders who made a difference to him because “leadership for these people truly is a mantle, a cloak they put on that transforms others.”
By wearing such a mantle, imagine how you will make a difference in 2010, help transform others and make the “wow” happen for your organization.
Trish Maguire is a commentator for SCNetwork on leadership in action and founding principal of Synergyx Solutions, focused on developing customized talent management strategies for small entrepreneurial businesses. She can be reached at [email protected].
Would you like to attend one of the upcoming Breakfast Series in Toronto? Here’s a look at upcoming sessions:
February: Leading in turbulent times — building flexible and resilient organizations, with Jim Clemmer, a speaker and bestselling author of six business books. (Feb. 23.)
March: Getting recognition right, with Roy Saunderson, president of Recognition Management Institute, and Elvie Glee of Johnson & Johnson Medical Products. (March 25.)
Visit www.scnetwork.ca for more information.
