The Business Case for Coaching

Over the last 2 decades coaching has become very prevalent. As business continues to accelerate and evolve, coaching is a highly effective practice which supports change efforts. It’s a powerful leadership instrument. And yet, it’s not really being practiced well by many managers or leaders. Only exceptional leaders have realized it’s significant and power to develop team members and to achieve exceptional business results. Bersin research outlines this business case for coaching: Organizations that effectively prepare managers to coach are:

·        130% more likely to realize stronger business results

·        33% better at engaging employees

Organizations reporting "excellent" cultural support for coaching experience:

·        13% stronger business results

·        39% stronger employee results, including engagement, productivity and customer service

Organizations whose senior leaders “very frequently” make an effort to coach others have:

·        21% higher business results

What would these improved results mean to your business? My guess is that they would go a long way in achieving your strategic plan. Drop me a line and let’s get the conversation started about bringing coaching into your organization.

13 Leadership Skills You Didn’t Need a Decade Ago That are Now Essential

Last month, Forbes’ article: 13 Leadership Skills You Didn’t Need a Decade Ago That Are Now Essential listed these critical leadership skills: Executive Presence Resiliency Culture Management Navigation of Ambiguity Hybrid of Skills Multigenerational Management Collaboration Emotional Intelligence Social Media Presence Authenticity Mastery of Crucial Conversations Leadership of Virtual Teams and Independent Contractors Co-Creative Leadership How do your leadership development programs line up with this list?  Does it need an overhaul to stay up to date?  Essential leadership skills evolve over time as do the needs of businesses.  If you haven’t updated your required leadership competencies in some time, please drop me a line and let’s start the conversation.  We can have you up to date in no time!

Workplace Trends for 2017 - Are You Ready?

Forbes Magazine recently had an article called 10 Workplace Trends You'll See in 2017.  Two of my favorite trends are: Millennial meet Generation Z in the workplace.  Gen Z (also known as Digital Natives) have just begun entering the workforce and Millennials are moving into management positions.  Interestingly, Harvard Business Review found that only 7% of companies have accelerated leadership programs to nurture them.  Do you have Millennials?  Are you part of the 7% or the 93%?  Drop us a line and we’ll help you create a custom leadership program to support their growth.

The war for talent heats up as the employer and employee contract continues to evolve.  As Boomers continue to make their exit, retaining the existing workforce becomes even more critical.  Maintaining high levels of employee engagement needs to be a key element of your Human Resources strategic plan.  Do you regularly survey your employees to understand their level of engagement?  Are you creating engagement plans to increase their level of engagement based on the data from the surveys?  Do you perform stay interviews?  If not, you could be putting your organization at risk of losing key contributors and ultimately your competitive advantage.  Let us help you put together a talent strategy to keep your best and brightest fully engaged.

Social and Emotional Intelligence

Have you ever met someone who is “book smart” but not “street smart,” or maybe seems to lack “people skills?”  The phrase “emotional intelligence” was not part of the public lexicon 10-15 years ago, but Daniel Goleman’s 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence, moved the phrase from academia to the general public.  Today, in the world of business and leadership, it is well understood that high intelligence (a high IQ) does not necessarily mean that the person has high emotional intelligence (a high EQ).  There are certainly some very smart people who are not in touch with their own emotions or the emotions of others. When we talk about social and emotional intelligence, we are referring to the ability to be aware of our own emotions and those of others, in the moment, and then using that information to manage ourselves and our relationships.  In essence, social and emotional intelligence is about awareness of ourselves and others while being able to manage ourselves and our relationships with others. Managers who are lacking in social and emotional intelligence are often called “bullies” and “jerks.”  They can be angry, hostile, and emotionally immature.  Leaders who lack social and emotional intelligence induce stress in the workplace and cost their companies in both productivity and talent.  Research from Stanford University, and from the Center for Creative Leadership, has found that some of the top reasons for executive derailment include poor interpersonal relationships, rigidity, and the inability to work with a team -- in other words, poor social and emotional intelligence. On the flip side, leaders with high social and emotional intelligence tend to be more successful.  In a study of 2000 managers in 12 large organizations, it was found that 81% of the competencies that distinguished outstanding leaders were related to social and emotional intelligence.  In an additional study of 15 global businesses, it was found that 90% of the difference between the average and best performing leaders was in social and emotional competencies.  One of the 26 social and emotional intelligence competencies is trust, and high trust teams outperform low trust teams by 300%. The good news for leaders, managers, organizations, and even individuals just looking to improve their skills is that the social and emotional intelligence competencies are both measurable and learnable.  It all starts with awareness, and to best understand your current social and emotional intelligence level, that means taking an assessment.  Once you know your areas of strength and weakness, you can improve your social and emotional intelligence through coaching, training, and (perhaps most importantly) practice.  Moreover, these skills are easiest to improve and produce the best ROI when the methods for improving social and emotional intelligence are integrated into organizational culture. How can social and emotional intelligence coaching and training help organizations?  Sheraton Hotels and Resorts introduced social and emotional intelligence training and coaching with the goal of building a service culture.  They were able to increase their market share by 24%.  Sanofi-Aventis trained a group of sales representatives in social and emotional intelligence.  The training resulted in an 18% increase in social and emotional intelligence over the control group.  Furthermore, the trained sales representatives outsold the control group by an average of 12% ($55,200) each per month.  At Pepsico, social and emotional intelligence programs generated a 10% increase in productivity and an 87% decrease in turnover. Social and emotional intelligence training can work for both individuals and organizations of all sizes.  These programs have a proven positive return on investment and benefit employees throughout all levels of an organization.  Are you interested in learning more about social and emotional intelligence assessments or training programs?  Aspen Edge Consulting can help make your organization happier and more profitable.

Traditional intelligence vs. Social and Emotional Intelligence. What’s more important?

Most positions require a certain baseline IQ.  It’s the price of admission.  This is especially true when thinking of positions like physicians, engineering, and the like.  However, once you reach an average IQ, then social and emotional intelligence can become the differentiator for your career success.  You may have the IQ that’s required to get into medical school, but if you want to go from being a good physician to a great one, you have to have social and emotional intelligence.  It’s difficult to become successful without social skills.  According to Daniel Goleman, often referred to as the father of Emotional Intelligence, 80% of “adult” success comes from emotional intelligence.  Having healthy relationships at work can have a huge impact on a person’s performance and those around them.  If an employee at work doesn’t understand how they impact others, if they are causing friction, you will see the global morale of the office drop.  If they are customer, facing the impact can be even more catastrophic.  Another study by The Center for Creative Leadership says “75% of careers are derailed for reasons related to emotional competencies, including inability to handle interpersonal problems; unsatisfactory team leadership during times of difficulty or conflict; or inability to adapt to change or elicit trust.” What exactly is Emotional Intelligence?  There are many definititons but simply It’s the ability to be aware of our own emotions and those of others, in the moment, and to use that information to manage oursevles and manage our relationships.

If you are a manager, can you see the value of investing in your leaders who report to you, and gaining increased social and emotional intelligence benefits from them?  Imagine them complaining less, being more productive, and increasing revenue.   Not to mention being easier to work with!

Emotional intelligence becomes even more important as you move up in the organization because you are responsible for more people and that can have a big impact across the organization.  Increasing Emotional Intelligence among your leadership can have these positive benefits for organizations:

• Increased retention of strong performers

• Reduced turnaround time

• Increased sales

• Expanded market share

• Increased employee engagement

• Increased customer satisfaction

15 Ways Coaching May Benefit You

Did you know that 80% of problems within an organization are people-related?  Only about 20% are technical.  Utilizing a leadership coach can help minimize those people-related problems so that you can focus on growing your business. If you're considering coaching for yourself or a member of your team, here are a few ways coaching can help you:

1. Identify your leadership strengths, blind spots and development needs.
2. Define your values and integrate them into your leadership style, creating greater conviction and quicker decisions.
3. Improve specific skills - communication, delegation, conflict management, team building, influence, etc.
4. Become a better communicator, both inside and outside of the workplace.
5. Learn great insights about yourself and what makes you tick.
6. Increase self-awareness of perspectives, beliefs, and attitudes that may be holding you back.
7. Increase your confidence to make bold moves.
8. Adopt and expand executive leadership competencies crucial to the organization's culture.
9. Create positive and sustainable behavior changes.
10. Enhance career planning and development with an action-oriented plan.
11. Accountability to help you stay on track with your big goals and ideas.
12. Create greater work/life balance and more satisfaction with both.
13. Foster discussions of new ideas which generates more innovation.
14. Gain an outsider’s objective perspective.
15. Create depth in your leadership pipeline for better succession planning.

Is your organization’s talent ready for the future?

Succession planning for future success

At some point in the next 10 years Great Britain will have a King. Whether the successor to Queen Elizabeth II will be the heir apparent, Prince Charles or her grandson, Prince William, remains to be seen. What isn’t likely is that the role will be filled from outside the line of succession.  In businesses today, we have the opportunity to avoid this “crown prince phenomenon” and utilize succession planning as a viable alternative to increase the pool of talent and give broader choices. With baby boomer retirements on the rise and a growing demand for senior management expertise, there is no large emerging group of potential employees on the horizon as in past generations.  Many organizations have eliminated middle manager positions and no longer have this group as a source to fill senior level vacancies.  With this dilemma, imagine if a key employee resigned, fell ill, had to be fired tomorrow or (fingers crossed) wins the lottery? Would you be prepared?  What opportunity costs would be lost because it took too long to replace them?  Succession planning is not an issue that many organizations address in any systematic or strategic way.

Traditional succession planning has focused on a selection of ‘replacements’, a secret process that was reactive and focused on the CEO or senior levels only.  Frankly, it was simply a form of risk management to ensure the longevity of the business.  Today’s integrative approach is focused on the creation of a leadership pipeline.  It’s proactive and expands into mid and lower-level management.  When done successfully it can support the fulfillment of your strategic plan and will increase organizational capacity.

Additionally, strong leadership is a key contributor to job satisfaction, commitment and an employee’s intent to stay; especially true for top talent.  Sadly, few companies rate their succession management plans as excellent; most rate them as fair or worse.  Another distressing statistic is that 66% of senior managers hired from the outside usually fail within the first 18 months, however, companies with a succession plan that results in an internal hire are less likely to experience negative effects on employee morale.

Aspen Edge Consulting uses a simple 6 step succession planning process that can:

• Identify your organization’s competency gaps
• Help achieve your organization’s strategic plan
• Communicate to employees that they are valuabl
• Increase or secure retention of key talent
• Manage the corporate risk by ensuring a supply of talent to fulfill future business roles
• Reduce recruitment costs
• Realize the potential of individuals
• Increase organizational capability

Take your organization to the next level!  Click here to begin the conversation and find out how you can realize the benefits of a strong succession planning process and provide increased bench strength to your company.

What’s the cost of doing nothing?

Think about your favorite teacher.  What were their special qualities?  My hunch is that they:

• had a vision
• pursued excellence
• communicated effectively
• were trustworthy
• built confidence
• were enthusiastic
• served others

The reason for my hunch is that those are the same characteristics of leaders.  While common leadership qualities or competencies are easy to define in effective leaders, developing such core leadership qualities are more difficult. Organizations need to develop leaders faster and build deeper bench strength.  Leadership development strategies help meet the challenges faced by today’s businesses.

Poor leadership skills are costly to an organization.  One study said as much as 32% of an organization’s voluntary turnover can be avoided through better leadership skills and can generate 3-4% improvement in customer satisfaction scores, which corresponds to a 1.5% increase in revenue growth.

Important elements of your leadership development program include:  identifying successors for critical roles, developing leadership bench strength and accelerating the development of high potentials.  These elements when successfully launched will increase employee engagement and productivity, enhance the effectiveness of current leaders and influence or change the company culture.

What is the cost of doing nothing?  Will your turnover, customer satisfaction and employee productivity improve without focus?  Best practice organizations recognize leadership development as a key component to improving those metrics and are committed to creating leaders throughout their organizations.

7 Mistakes Companies Make when Trying to Change to a Winning Culture

1. They don’t hire to the new culture they are trying to create.  They hire for the current company culture.
2. They don’t move tenured employees out of the business who cannot adapt to the new way.  This holds the business back and creates a ‘this is how we’ve always done it’ culture of stagnation
3. They want a quick fix.  Like a marketing campaign, they want to launch today and see results tomorrow.  Real change takes time, perseverance and support from the top.
4. Not all senior leaders buy in to the change and can create hurdles by not holding their department teams accountable to the new direction
5. They don’t integrate the new culture into their way of doing business.  The culture will not sustain itself if it’s not incorporated into the business.  Systems, processes, and policies all need to be changed to support the new direction.
6. They don’t get feedback from their employees on what they need and desire.  They assume they know.  Today’s generation has different ideas from past generations about what makes a culture engaging.
7. They ask their employees for feedback but they don’t listen.  They don’t take action on changing anything meaningful.  This is even worse than not asking and can do damage to the trust leaders have with their employees.

Top 10 ways to Identify Leadership Potential

Are you ready to identify leadership potential?  Many are still vague on what high potential is and in organizations everyone has a different opinion.  You need a clear set of standards before you start and there are many ways to do this.  One of my favorite ways is using a set of criteria that DDI has developed that they say will accurately predict high-potential success based on research they have conducted.  Here is their list:  1. Propensity to lead. They step up to leadership opportunities. 2. They bring out the best in others 3. Authenticity. They have integrity, admit mistakes, and don’t let their egos get in their way 4. Receptivity to feedback. They seek out and welcome feedback 5. Learning agility.  The speed which they learn 6.  Culture Fit.  Ability to conform and adapt to company core values and behaviors of the organization.

7. Passion for Results.  Drives high standards and derives satisfaction from continuous improvement

8. Adaptability.  Maintaining effectiveness during change.

9. Conceptual Thinking.  Ability to see patterns and connections between seemingly unrelated things.

10. Navigates Ambiguity.  Manages unclear situations and the unknown effectively.

According to DDI’s Global Leadership Forecast, “organizations’ ability to identify and prepare high potentials remains weak overall.  Only 18% of HR professionals surveyed rated their organization as strong in its available bench strength to meet future business needs.”  Becoming clear on what defines top talent and using evidence-based competencies increases the changes that your available talent is ready to meet your business need when you need it.

Aspen Edge Consulting works with businesses to develop consistent leadership development processes which reduce the worry and help ensure you’re investing in your best and brightest.  Keeping your top talent from leaping to a new startup and fixating on that shiny new ball helps keep profit up by lowering your recruitment costs, increasing productivity and ultimately keeping your customers happy.  Interested in Aspen Edge Consulting help you assess your leadership talent? Drop me a line and let’s get started.

Cultivate Raw Talent

A true mentor does not subscribe to the outdated myth that leaders are born! We are in the business of mentoring leaders! We take raw talent and cultivate innate skills. We stretch your key employee's comfort zone until they reach their highest potential. We design formal mentor programs that take leadership development to an all time high.

With the economy in a downward spiral, business owners must seek innovative solutions to enhance their bottom line and stay one step ahead of the competition. As you are aware, your company's best assets are your employees experience and expertise. Yet, every day we see savvy business owners, like you, set their employees up for failure.

Well-meaning employers who put shining star employees into management roles without providing in-depth job training and promoting managerial skills have found this likely leads to resignation or termination.

Of course, as an entrepreneur you don't have a lot of time to groom, nurture and educate your employees. We can help! Not only do we concentrate on the nuts-and-bolts of everyday business, such as strategizing and customer service, we introduce a new paradigm in business.

Studies have shown repeatedly that the satisfied employee looks forward to coming to work. On-the-job contentment is contagious. Happiness trickles upward and soon you'll enjoy doing business with happy clients who virtually flock to your door!

We will lead your leaders toward successful management. We will mentor your managers with the idea they will become future mentors.

Key components of a formal mentorship program:

• Facilitate learning experiences
• Identify learning styles. (visual, auditory, tactile)
• Motivate leaders
• Provide tools to increase morale
• Validate competency
• Develop critical thinking
• Foster positive attitudes
• Turn shining stars into competent, energized managers who will initiate leadership development in staff

We invite you to contact us for a free consultation today!

Happy Employees Create Huge Profits

For companies looking for ways to boost their financial health, studies suggest that focusing on employee happiness, often referred to as employee engagement, is essential. Although the idea of employee “happiness” may be seen in the corporate world as fluffy or soft, you cannot argue the connection studies have found between employee engagement and a company’s profit margin. Why does employee engagement or happiness count? Employees have a lot of effort to give at their discretion. If you engage and motivate employees, they have a lot of effort to provide the company, leading to increased profits. Many studies back up this concept as well.

One recent study from Perspectives on Psychological Science, which was done by Gallup, Inc., looked at the impact of employee work perceptions on an organization’s bottom line. According to the abstract, it is already known that employee attitudes affect customer loyalty, company sales, company profits and employee retention, but the study went further to find out that positive employee perspectives can improve a company’s bottom line, while negative perspectives can damage the bottom line of the company. [1]

Analysis brought up in the report, “Engage Employees and Boost Performance,” from Fortune Magazine showed that pro-employee measures helped to increase stock appreciation significantly. In the same report, a study done at Sheffield University was noted to show that people management practices improved profitability and could be an excellent indicator of overall company performance financially. [2]

The studies back up the advantage of “happy” employees for companies today. Reports from Hewitt Associates showed that improving employee morale helps to create excitement about the company’s future. Companies that have the highest morale and employee engagement also learn to identify potential problems and address them early.[3]

Employee engagement is not something that companies can afford to ignore, since so many studies back up the idea that engaged employees result in profits. Companies today need to learn the drivers of employee engagement, increasing employee engagement and happiness to enjoy increased profit margins. There is nothing soft about cold, hard cash.

[1] Casual Impact of Employee Work Perceptions on the Bottom Line of Organizations [2] Engage Employees and Boost Performance [3] Why Happy Employees are Good for Business