Bitesize Leadership Techniques – Driving for Results

Setting SMART goals for individual and team accomplishment and instilling high positive expectations for their achievement.

Driving for Results is one of my Bitesize Leadership Techniques. They are exactly what the title suggests. Short snippets of leadership tips, tools, process and ideas for you to use on a just-in-time basis. Use them as an update and to refresh your leadership professionalism. You could call it leadership in a hurry! This article is an Executive Summary of my eBook of the same name – Driving for Results – published on Amazon Kindle. If you are a subscribers to Kindle Unlimited you can borrow and read the eBook for free.

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Class Reunion – Leading Others Gothenburg 2007

How good is your training retention and application? Here we look at ‘Setting Objectives’ from the Leading Others programme.

This is the first in a series of Class Reunion articles where I reflect on leadership training courses I have facilitated in the past. I look back at the leadership learning lessons from the course and select one topic for special focus in each article. The topic for this article is Setting Objectives.

My questions for the participants is: how much of the learning have you retained; what has experience taught you in the interim; and how are you applying it now?

My challenge to anyone who has attended leadership training in the recent past is to Reflect, Refresh & Renew.

  • Reflect on the skills you learnt – including referring back to your notes in the course workbook.
  • Refresh your knowledge of the subject and re-learn how to use the skills – including examples of how you have developed your skills and knowledge since the course.
  • Renew your commitment to applying the skills in your daily leadership practice – including sharing this commitment with your manager and/or leadership coach as part of your continuous professional development.

Read on for more about my focused leadership learning topic for the Class of ‘07 ….

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Making Coaching Stick

As business leaders, Learning and Development professionals, coach trainers and educators, what can we do to help make coaching training really stick?

The case for sticky coaching

Many businesses expect to increase their spending on coaching in the coming years, both on external coaches and on developing their own internal coaches. It’s no surprise then to find that conversations are increasingly turning to how we can make sure that coach training, whether as a formal, ‘pre-contracted’ activity or as a more ad hoc approach to unlocking potential and improving performance, ‘sticks’. At NG Bailey we’re no different. Over recent years we’ve taken four steps that are starting to make a real difference in our quest for sticky coaching; I’d like to share them with you.

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Learning in the new millennial

 

So much written about Millennials suggests that they are turned off by the way generations before them have done things. As someone engaged in professional learning this interests me.

Millennials, it would seem, are more civic and community minded than their predecessors. Lacking the financial security from which their parents have benefitted they are not as interested in a career path as generations before them. Instead, meaningful work, creative outlets and immediate, interactive feedback mean a lot. One only needs to look at a random selection of start-ups  to see this behaviour in evidence.

What does this mean for those of us now who work in more traditional institutions, based on and run by baby boomers or Gen X-ers? It’s an important question because bigger and slower moving organisations still need to employ, engage and retain millennials.

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What You Think You Deserve vs. What You Have Earned. A Tale about Hard Work

My personal experience has taught me that if I haven’t received from life what I think I deserve, it is most likely because I need to do a better job at earning it.

I was resting before my next fight during my latest Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament when a mother of one of the kids, who was competing in the children’s competition,  approached me, looking quite desperate, looking for feedback she told me that she needed my help.  Her son had just lost his first fight against a more skillful kid and she insisted on showing me the video of her son’s fight to see if I could give her tips on how to improve his technique.  Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu is a sport that does not believe in talent. One improves by training constantly. There is no secret formula for overnight improvement, just like life.  I looked at her and noticed that she was very concerned and recommended that she should have a talk with her son’s coach to understand the process and let him take care of his progress.  She replied, “I want to help him but I do not know how”.  I am also a father and completely understood her position.  We do not want our kids to go through unnecessary hardship.

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Execution and Extreme Ownership The DIG/SET/SPIKE Principle

Include yourself in every win and loss and take time to have fun and laugh about your mistakes. They are a gift that life gives you.

 

Over the last 2 years, I have been blessed with the wonderful opportunity to lead an operational execution team and we have managed to put together a group of fine professionals. They combine knowledge and experience but also curiosity for improvement and a hunger for growth. It has reached a point where we need to stop and look around and reflect. The conclusion I have reached is that we dedicate ourselves to execute plans that are being handed to us… right?  More reflection is needed to find the real purpose:  We hold in our hands the service delivery promise to our clients. Suddenly a job with no apparent complexity has become one with the highest possible stakes.

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Coaching for Performance #3 – REVIEWING

This is the third of three Posts on the subject of Performance Management and how the leader can drive for results with coaching. Post #3 – Reviewing Performance. The other two are Planning Performance and Supporting Performance.

What does reviewing performance involve a leader doing? What options does the leader have for the way they invest their time? How does the leader add value? What are typical coaching goals? What resource material does the leader need as a platform for the coaching? What tools does the leader need from the Coaches Toolkit? I start with an overview of coaching for reviewing performance. I then draw on the experience of two senior leaders I have worked with and observed in action.

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Coaching for Performance #2 – SUPPORTING

This is the second of three Posts on the subject of Performance Management and how the leader can drive for results with coaching. Post #2 – Supporting Performance. The other two are Planning Performance and Reviewing Performance.

What does supporting performance involve a leader doing? What options does the leader have for the way they invest their time? How does the leader add value? What are typical coaching goals? What resource material does the leader need as a platform for the coaching? What tools does the leader need from the Coaches Toolkit? I start with an overview of supporting for performance. I then draw on the experience of two senior leaders I have worked with and observed in action.

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Coaching for Performance #1 – PLANNING

This is the first of three Posts on the subject of Performance Management and how the leader can drive for business results with coaching. Post #1 – Planning Performance. The next two are Supporting Performance and Reviewing Performance.

What does planning performance involve a leader doing? What options does the leader have for the way they invest their time? How does the leader add value? What are typical coaching goals? What resource material does the leader need as a platform for the coaching? What tools does the leader need from the Coaches Toolkit? I start with an overview of planning performance. I then draw on the experience of two senior leaders I have worked with and observed in action.

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Procrastination and Creativity

It is not OK to miss deadlines. It is also not OK to meet a deadline by impacting negatively on quality. How I learnt to balance impatience to produce results with a need to focus on the quality of the outcome.


During the early start of my professional career, I gave a lot of value to get things done fast.  I was an impatient operator whose only focus was execution with acceptable results.  Now, ‘acceptable’ is very subjective word that can have a lot of different meanings depending of the one who use it.  Later I found out that acceptable results often lead to rework. Continue reading “Procrastination and Creativity”