HOW MAY I HELP YOU?

No matter how forward-thinking they are, many Baby Boomers and even Gen X leaders have different working styles and expecations than their younger colleagues. Unfortunately, inter-personal challenges that can be relatively easily addressed from an inter-generational lens are often undiagnosed or reduced to simple personality differences. One-on-one coaching will help individual leaders understand how their own behaviors are generationally-driven, and how to modify them for more effective collaboration. More broadly, through a combination of group coaching and training seminars, I can help your team identify and work through these issues. 

Many people assume that delegating is a pre-requisite to entering the higher corporate ranks. As easy as it sounds, however, senior-level leaders struggle delegating important work to their direct reports. This reluctance to trust in others and let go some of the control is one of many behaviors that executives demonstrate that hinder their overall effectiveness and long-term growth potentional. One-on-one coaching is highly effective at measuring, monitoring and improving this issue and others like it that keep leaders in their status quo. 

Strong leadership skills are transferable, but not always naturally. The best leaders know how to adapt to their audience, but they must first learn the norms and traditions of those at their destination. Individuals who excel in some cultures and environments don’t excel in all – through individual coaching in both general communications and also country-specific cultural norms, I can prep your leaders for success no matter where their passport is taking them. 

It is not unusual for leaders with strong, even aggressive, personalities to “get away” with behavior that negatively impacts their environment until it stifles their upward mobility. Such attitudes can be overlooked by peers and even supervisors for many years when the individual is a superstar in critical business areas. Unless the coporate culture is aggressive as a whole, eventually that behavior will become a stumbling block. Emotionally intelligent leaders understand the importance that destructive behaviors play in the workforce, and are willing to get them under control before they get out of control. Through a series of assessments and coaching, I can help you increase awareness of, and then improve, the negative behaviors that are preventing forward movement. 

In many ways, you probably do deserve a promotion. Your boss is probably well aware of those reasons, and might very much want to advance you to the next level. Your boss has probably also communicated with you the reasons you have been passed up. You may not consider them appropriate or reasonable or even “fair” – but denying them will not take you down the desired path. Through one-on-one coaching, I will help you dig deeper into the ins and outs of the situation, and help you establish a clear path to remove roadblocks and help you finally get that promotion. 

As much as many of us like to brag about working for a global company, many don’t really understand what that means from a practical standpoint. We understand intellectually that colleagues from other regions work differently than we do. When faced with actually working with them, however, we are perplexed and often even offended behaviors that are intolerable “back home.” The good news is that learning how to collaborate with your international colleagues is a lot of fun and highly rewarding. With a “when in Rome” mindset, your leadership growth opportunities will expand. Through individual coaching and training, I will help you unpackage and then overcome inter-cultural challenges, for perhaps one of the best experiences of your career. 

Behaviors are what set leaders apart. At a leadership level, skills and job knowledge start to become overshadowed by behaviors, because knowing how to “get the job done” is something you have already mastered (along with your direct reports).  The better you can play well with others, the more likeable and promotable you will be (assuming you meet your business targets and objectives, of course). Your boss is not asking you to become best friends with your peers. He or she is probably just asking you to engage in more amicable interactions with them, to lighten up the work environment and become a little more approachable. You may be the best when it comes to influencing your teams to do what you need them to do, but don’t forget the business golden rule #1: people do business with people they like. Through individual coaching, I will help you identify and then engage in opportunities to be more approachable to your peers – measuring your progress over time. 

 Challenges with inter-generational dynamics should not be underestimated. With more generations in the workplace than any other time in history, and with digital natives working side by side with those who don’t always have a stronghold on the fast pace of technology, communications get tricky – as do working styles, expecations, and future outlooks. While not all generational stereotypes hold a lot of truth, many of them do. They are useful in helping us understand our colleagues with new respect and admiration, and help us build bridges that were unable to pinpoint as specific gaps. Through a series of training sessions and also small team coaching when needed, I will help your teams and larger groups unravel the truths and myths around inter-generational differences, and then help you use them to your organization’s advantage. 

Your CEO may have considered the unilateral hiring decision efficient, but making decisions in a silo at the highest levels of the organization will more often backfire than not. Understanding his reasoning would be helpful, and getting his trusted team involved the next time might be critical. The outward situation in a case like this is often a symptom of underlying and counterproductive dynamics. Through small-group coaching and a number of personality assessments, I will help you and your executive team understand what happened, why, and how to better manage the process in the future. 

Sending your leadership team to a different continent for some leadership develop and collaborating with foreign colleagues sounds like a great idea. Many times, it is, and morale and team work enjoy an upswing. Too many times, however, people assume that common courtesy and professionalism will prevail in any work setting, and therefore little cultural communication preparation is required. What people forget is that how common courtesy and professionalism are defined in one country can be very different from another country. And when those groups come together, it can get pretty ugly. I can prepare your teams to conduct business in other regions and countries, training them on topics ranging from proper introductions to meeting etiquette to social meal and interaction etiquette. 

You’ve heard that “the only constant is change” – right? It’s a cliché that is accurate, and yet most people resist change at every opportunity. Yes, there are countless motivators who try to convince their audiences to embrace change, that change is good. And many times the change is indeed positive. But regardless of the outcome of the change, most people would rather stick with the devil they know. The good news is that 1) we know that change efforts are worth the effort because the ROI on change management projects is significant, and 2) there are highly effective methodologies available to walk organizations through the entire change management process. I am partial to the Prosci ADKAR model as the industry leader, and am a certified Prosci practitioner. With many years of experience in this field, I can lead your entire team, department or organization through small and large change initiatives. 

Effective management is a learned skill that is not transferable to all situations and environments. Your superstar project manager may excel at leading his team in a specific office, city or even region. When tasked with leading a global virtual team, however, he may be a fish out of water. The rules of successful virtual team management are very different from non-virtual teams. Managers who are not trained in their differences and thrown into the virtual environment will falter not because of their lack of talent, but because of their lack of proper training. No matter how big or small, and no matter how globally dispersed, I will help your virtual teams be founded, grown, and implemented with the tools required for success.