Archive for the ‘Articles’ Category
Friday, May 18th, 2012
Part of your job as a manager and leader is to provide coaching to your direct reports. All employees deserve this, and they all need it to succeed and stay engaged with their work. But remember that there is a big difference between meeting with people on a regular basis, and coaching them.
Coaching is not giving advice, pointing out mistakes, or showing people how to complete a new task. Giving them “face time” also doesn’t qualify. So what is coaching?
Coaching is a process of mentorship that you use to bring out a person’s potential, help them overcome obstacles and achieve goals. Your role as a coach is to provide employees with a process of discovery that uses their goals and recent experiences to uncover their path to success. This takes time and patience to reveal to them what they might not see on their own.
You may be able to immediately see their issues but you must patiently allow your employees to discover them on their own by asking the right questions. You must also be careful to leave out personal bias. You do this to help the employee develop the thought patterns necessary to go it alone when similar circumstances arise. Don’t give them the answers or they will miss out on discovering key lessons before the learning process is completed.
Here are five key questions that indicate whether you are really coaching your employees:
- Do you finish most of your coaching sessions by answering their questions with questions?
- Do you give them your undivided attention for at least half an hour, twice per month, to talk about whatever they want?
- Do they talk more than you during their coaching sessions?
- Who develops their solutions and answers when you meet one on one?
- When you finish a coaching session, do you ask the question, “what did you take away from today and what will you do with it?”
If you are truly coaching your employees, your answers to the preceding questions will favor the employee—they should be the focus, they should do most of the talking, and they should develop the solutions while you guide them with great questions.
Coaching takes time, but its benefits are huge.
Howard Shore is a leadership development coach who works with companies that need leadership development and strategic business coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about leadership development coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:Activate Group Inc, Coaching is a process of mentorship, Coaching takes time, coaching your employees, Howard Shore, leadership development coach, path to success, truly coaching your employees
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Wednesday, May 16th, 2012
Many organizations set goals and fail to reach them. Others achieve some of their goals by accident, and some could achieve a lot more.
Are your goals mandatory or experimental? In my leadership development coaching projects, I’ve seen many organizations set their goals without considering the obvious reasons they may not be achievable. By addressing these reasons up front, an organization can dramatically increase the likelihood of success in achieving their sales goals.
Here is a list of common circumstances that cause organizations to fail in achieving their goals:
- No consideration given to the capacity of the target market (growing-shrinking).
- Overestimating the organization’s ability to deliver the products and services at the optimum level while keeping its brand promises.
- No funding in place to finance growth should the company grow faster than its ability to self-fund.
- No advertising or marketing plan in place to support the goals.
- Marketing and sales forces are not prepared to properly differentiate the company from the competition.
- Low performance track record from the people that need to deliver on the goals.
- Not enough sales and sales support people.
An organization that considers the above questions will discover they should plan on upgrading people, increasing resources, moving some around, refocusing time and making other adjustments. Significant goals—those that require growth rates and increases in profit margins—need refinement on a monthly and quarterly basis.
Great leaders ask these questions, refine goals and make the right adjustments.
Howard Shore is a leadership development coach who works with companies that need leadership development and strategic business coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides strategic planning and management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about leadership development coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:Activate Group Inc, goal-setting, Howard Shore, leadership development coach, leadership development coaching projects, management coaching, Reasons Your Goals May Not Be Achievable, why organizations fail in achieving their goals
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Monday, May 14th, 2012
You embark down a strategic planning process, bring in a consultant and discuss the matter with your senior management team. Everyone comes to the same conclusion: your existing strategy will not work for the future. So you decide on a new strategy. It requires new core competencies, significant financial investment and possibly some leadership changes.
The strategic change scenario is pretty common. What is uncommon is a company’s success in implementing it. Unfortunately, the typical outcome is that change does not occur, and the company clings to its stale strategy.
Change requires commitment. Making a decision does not equal commitment to that decision. We all know that change is much easier to talk about than it is to execute. When a new strategy is introduced, the team seems to understand the reasons and is excited about a bold new future. Then reality kicks in. Inevitably, problems arise. Big problems. Little problems. Ultimately, when these problems occur, we are more willing to rethink the decision rather than address the problems.
As a strategic development coach, I have seen companies take years to come to consensus on a new strategy only to break their commitment a few months later.
The following are some of the common reasons why strategic change fails to occur:
- Overconfidence: Executive leadership overestimates their readiness to take the team forward.
- False consensus: Executive management fails to gain consensus among the leadership team. Everyone gives the nod and then maintains status quo.
- Shortsighted shortcuts: Relying inappropriately on “rules of thumb,” implicitly trusting the most readily available information, or anchoring too much on “facts” that support preconceived notions.
- Shooting from the hip: The plan to execute does not take into consideration all of the obstacles to success and/or all the necessary steps to achieve the desired outcomes.
- Poor communication: The mistaken belief that a group of smart people presented with exactly the same information will draw the same conclusions.
- Staffing: Inability to embrace and support new people, or lack of understanding of the behaviors, skills and values required of each position to take the company forward.
- Fooling yourself with feedback: Failing to interpret the evidence from outcomes for what it really says, either because you are protecting your ego or because you are tricked by hindsight.
The bottom line is that change is hard and requires focus, a detailed and disciplined process, people development, and mental toughness. However, the most important key to your change initiative is your commitment to your decision.
Howard Shore is a strategic development coach who works with companies that need leadership development and strategic business coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides strategic development coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:Activate Group Inc, change is hard, Change requires commitment, change requires focus, coaching, Executive Coach, financial investment, Howard Shore, leadership changes, making a decision, steps to achieve the desired outcomes, strategic change, strategic development coach, strategic planning process, why strategic change fails
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Friday, May 11th, 2012
We all want to see 100 percent effort in our workforce every day, but most of us struggle to achieve that level of motivation. Maybe you’ve tried motivational speakers and management trainers, and maybe you’ve even told everybody what you expect, and still experience the same mediocre results.
If you continue to throw the same old solutions at motivation problems, you are going to get the same old bad results. I suggest that you first need to define your problem correctly and then decide if you are willing to do what it takes to solve it.
I hate to tell you this, but in organizations that lack motivation, the issue usually lies within the C-suite (CEO, President, COO, CFO, etc.). Basically, leadership has not created an environment that is conducive to engagement and motivation. As an executive leadership coach, I’ve worked with many C-level leaders and have seen first-hand how their beliefs (many of them misguided) are preventing them from properly motivating the team to get the results they are after.
Myth #1: Information should be shared on a need-to-know basis.
Even people at the management level struggle with this belief and for the life of me I cannot figure out why anyone would want to hide such crucial company information like strategic goals and milestones from the team. They need to see the big picture if you want them to color their part!
Holding information doesn’t help you control people, it only downgrades them. Strategy is certainly not for the executive team only.
Myth #2: More training will solve the problem.
Usually when leaders throw more training at what they think is the problem, the real issues start bubbling to the surface. Training can only maximize performance within the existing system. If the entire process is constrained then the training will fail to get results.
Myth #3: I do not need to motivate my top performers.
Imagine your company is a jigsaw puzzle. The key to building the puzzle is having all the pieces. Suppose you as an employee have only half the pieces to the puzzle. You’ll never have the satisfaction of seeing the entire finished result. In other words, there is no sense of progress and no way to know what you have contributed towards the goal. Since you do not understand the goals, you believe that in the grand scheme your job is not that meaningful to the whole puzzle. How hard would you work?
All employees—especially top performers—need development, information and motivation.
So many leaders subscribe to these myths and the results are frustration, mistrust and misunderstanding between management and subordinates, which results in mediocrity. When you see mediocrity in your company, you have to look at belief systems and activities that are not supporting the outcomes you want. Usually it is the first that leads to the second.
Howard Shore is an executive development coach who works with companies that need leadership development and strategic business coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides leadership and management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about executive leadership coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:Activate Group Inc, executive leadership coach, Howard Shore, motivatetop performers, Motivation, myths that kill motivation, organizations that lack motivation, people at the management level, Training can motivate top performers
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Wednesday, May 9th, 2012
How much budget have you wasted on training that didn’t result in ROI? I’m a sales trainer and coach and see failed training programs every day. If you are spending your training dollars on training that strengthens employees’ skills while allowing them to grow personally and professionally—then you are in the very successful minority.
There is a big difference between training and development. If you (and your HR team) don’t know the difference between these terms, you are spending money providing training to executives and managers who already have the skills and knowledge they need. This training will not move the needle for your company. What you need is to develop existing skills to their maximum potential.
Training = Teaching New Skills
Development = Perfecting Existing Skills
You have likely invested a lot in recruitment so you could find and hire the best possible candidates, right? They have the knowledge and skills, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will be successful in your company. How many times have you met individuals with Ivy League degrees whose careers went nowhere?
Training is the acquisition of knowledge, skills and competencies as a result of teaching. Development teaches how to become more productive and effective at work and at the company. In other words, training provides the skill and development maximizes it.
When you invest money in developing your employees, you are helping them use their existing skills and your company resources to perform better. The best development programs give employees the opportunity to discover things that they would have never discovered in their day-to-day work.
As you strengthen individuals, the team as a whole also becomes stronger. As the team gets stronger, the organization becomes more successful.
Your people are the most important asset in your organization. They were hired for their skills and knowledge, and it is time to think about developing their skills to their maximum potential to propel your organization’s growth.
Howard Shore is a leadership development coach who works with companies that need leadership development and strategic business coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides leadership coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about leadership development coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:acquisition of knowledge, Activate Group Inc, development maximizes skills, Difference Between Training and Development, how to become more productive, Howard Shore, leadership coaching, leadership development coach, Perfecting Existing Skills, sales coach, sales trainer, Teaching New Skills, training provides the skill
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Monday, May 7th, 2012
How do you know when it is time to bring on a business partner? I just brought on an executive leadership partner, and am so excited for the great opportunities this will bring to AGI. My new partner, Lou Partenza, brings amazing business expertise, new business development experience, and will help me expand the capabilities of AGI and take it to the next level.
Until Lou came aboard, I was spread pretty thin, which was preventing me from growing the business the way I envisioned. We all have our capacity limits and I was reaching mine. I have an amazing team, but I was carrying too much of the load myself. The sheer volume of accounts and potential new business demanded I bring another executive-level person into the fold. I brought in Lou as my partner, and by doing so I immediately increased my company’s capacity.
Define Business Partner Needs
Besides increasing capacity, there are other very good reasons to consider bringing in a partner. Maybe you want to enter a new geographic market or start selling in a new community with a culture and/or language barrier. The long-term goals of your company should weigh heavily in your decision to bring in a partner and the type of partner you seek.
The first step is to decide what role you want the partner to play. Do you need someone for an executive leadership role for business guidance, or do you need someone with a total focus on new business development?
Based on the desired role, define the skill set for this person. The search process should be similar to bringing on a full-time employee. You want to look for a partner that has a set of complementary skills—skills that you may not have but really need in your business. The difference between a partner and employee is your partner will be someone who will assist you in making key decisions for the company, so they should be someone with whom you really mesh. You need to be able to bounce ideas around and have equal amounts of commitment to growing the company.
Define Success
Once you identify your potential partner, be careful to clearly define the role that you want them to fill, and define success metrics and expectations around that role.
Finding the right partner isn’t something that happens overnight. My advice is to start looking passively now. Even if you aren’t sure you need a partner (or a full-time employee for that matter) you should be in a constant state of recruitment. Great talent—especially at the partner level—is not easy to find. Talk, ask around and always be looking for great talent for key areas of your company.
Don’t Rush Into a Business Partnership
One caution: don’t make the mistake of bringing on a business partner too soon. Make sure you are eating well before you bring someone in. It takes energy and money to bring someone in as a partner. It’s important to be able to recognize where you are in your company’s evolution and know that you are financially stable before you commit to that extra executive salary.
Howard Shore is an executive leadership coach who works with companies that need leadership development and business management coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides strategic planning and management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about executive leadership coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:Activate Group Inc, adding a Business Partner, Business Coach, business expertise, business management coaching, Business Partner, Coaching in Miami, decision to bring in a partner, Define Business Partner Needs, Executive Coaching, executive leadership coach, executive-level person, growing your business, how you know when to add a Business Partner, Howard Shore, leadership development, New Business, new business development experience
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Monday, May 7th, 2012
Communication is a skill that can make or break you in business, especially if you are in executive leadership. As a coach in this area, I focus my sessions heavily on improving communication skills for better negotiations, strategic partnering and referral opportunities.
Here are three tips that will help you immediately improve your interpersonal and business communication skills.
Focus On Their Needs. Regardless of whether you are meeting new contacts or long-standing partners at the conference table (or coffee shop couch), you should focus on their needs and goals first, then think about how you can help them achieve those goals. The ultimate objective of any meeting should be to create a win-win situation or resolution.
Adapt to Different Communication Styles. Just like leadership styles, everyone has different styles of communication. Great communicators observe and note the stylistic differences of the people across the table and adapt to them. Some great salespeople even feed off these differences. Adjusting to their communication style makes them more comfortable and more willing to work with you.
Smile. It may seem obvious, but it is so common in the business world for people—especially executive leadership—to leave their humanity at the front door. People want to do business with people they like and trust. Keyword: like. Smiling, laughing and even a little joking can diffuse situations, make people feel at ease and create instant report. So be likeable.
These steps are just the tips of the iceberg of tactics for more effective business communications, but they are a great place to start. The next time you have a meeting remember these steps and reap the instant rewards.
What other communication tactics would you add?
Howard Shore is an executive leadership coach who works with companies that need leadership development and strategic business coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about executive leadership coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Friday, May 4th, 2012
Recruiting is an art that few have mastered. At AGI, we work with many companies to create systems for Human Capital Management—for each company a customized strategic system for managing employees through every stage of their employment, from recruiting to retention. When we evaluate a company’s employee processes, one of the first things we look at is recruitment.
Recruiting “A” players is the goal of most HR professionals, but recruitment is one of the areas where many miss the boat completely. That’s because 99 percent of companies start the recruitment process with the wrong tool: the resume.
Starting the candidate evaluation process by reviewing resumes is one of the biggest mistakes you can makes. Here’s why:
- Resumes aren’t accurate. Let’s face it, the resume is the most overinflated self-promotion tool invented. Most resumes are embellished heavily and some are flat-out inaccurate.
- Resumes don’t reveal personality. Resumes are, at best, clinical lists of accomplishments and experiences. They tell you almost nothing about a person’s attitudes or working style.
- Resumes encourage bias. Formatting, language, word choice, past employers, schools—whatever. All of these things can trigger an irrational “like” or “dislike” of a candidate that could very well be the “A” player you are looking for.
Use Talent Assessment Tools
After posting an open position, the next step of the recruitment process should be assessment testing. Candidate assessment tools like Topgrading and OMG (for sales recruiting) provide revealing and unbiased information about a candidate’s natural abilities and inherent skills—these are the most important qualifiers for the successful matching of candidates to jobs.
A resume should be used only as a guide for interviews and a tool for sharing potential candidates with the hiring manager and other decision-makers. Using resumes as the first step in qualifying candidates will definitely make you pass over “A” players.
Howard Shore is a human capital management expert who works with companies that need leadership development and strategic business coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides leadership and management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about human capital management through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:a company’s employee processes, Activate Group Inc, business coaching, Candidate assessment tools, hiring, Howard Shore, Human Capital Management, interviewing, managing employees, OMG, Recruiting Mistakes, recruiting to retention, recruitment process, reviewing resumes, strategic business coaching, Talent assessment tools, Topgrading
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Wednesday, May 2nd, 2012
Of the many hats I wear at AGI, I think my favorite is that of leadership development coach. The experience of working one-on-one with business leaders and helping them become the best leaders they can be is very rewarding. Once in a while, I encounter people who don’t know if they are at the right point in their careers to benefit from leadership coaching.
Here are five easy-to-recognize signs that you are a leader who would benefit from a professional coach:
1. You frequently wish you had mentor. If you regularly have issues you wish you could bounce off an experienced executive, a leadership coach can help. Having an experienced advisor can help you gain reassurance that your decisions are thorough and can be an enormous benefit to you, your employees and the company. We coaches are also unbiased so we can offer sound, rational advice.
2. You want a strategic collaborator. If you need guidance from someone that can help you develop or review strategies, you are ready to hire a leadership coach. We’ve been a part of creating hundreds of successful business strategies, in boom years and downturns. When it comes to crafting the right strategic plan, we are incredible resources to draw from.
4. You need a confidential advisor. Like a consillere to the Godfather, a leadership coach can be your personal and private advisor. We all have moments when personal issues make us vulnerable and times when we need to discuss sensitive business issues. At those times, a leadership development coach can talk through things and keep the discussions “in the vault”.
5. You want access to the best tools and practices. Leadership development coaches have access to strategic tools that have been proven to increase company and people performance. When you engage with a coach, you automatically get access to those tools without the commitment of long-term contracts.
Think you might be ready for a leadership development coach? I’d love to hear from you!
Howard Shore is a leadership development coach who works with companies that need leadership development and strategic business coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides leadership and management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about leadership development coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:Activate Group Inc, coaching, Executive Coach In Miami, Howard Shore, leadership coach, leadership development coach, need an professional coach, People Performance, personal advisor, private advisor, review strategies, wish you had mentor
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Monday, April 30th, 2012
In my career as a sales force development coach, I have worked with hundreds, possibly thousands, of salespeople. I’ve helped companies large and small develop the right sales force development practices, including finding and hiring “A” talent for their teams. In my experience, there are a few personality traits that are common to all top sales talent, regardless of background or industry.
Ego. Great salespeople can handle rejection without letting it consume them. They realize that it’s part of the job and let rejections roll off them like water off a duck’s back. They also truly believe in themselves and their abilities. The ones who are full of doubt and need constant wins never last long.
Self-motivation. “A” sales talent needs coaching and development just like all other employees, but they can generate their own motivation. Most great salespeople have their own goals and aspirations and have no difficulty pushing themselves to get there.
Results Mindset. Top performing salespeople always see the numbers they need to hit. They keep their eye on the prize and work at achieving their goals. They also have a tendency to break those results down into smaller chunks (“chunking”) so they can achieve smaller results along the way.
Energy. Great salespeople jump out of the bed in the morning and go full force until there is no steam left in the engine. Their presentations are engaging and full of life, and they have the ability to get others excited about the product.
Have you seen these traits in your sales team? What other traits would you add to this list?
Howard Shore is a sales force development coach who works with companies that need leadership development and strategic business coaching. Based in Miami, Florida, Howard’s firm, Activate Group, Inc. provides leadership and management coaching to businesses across the country. To learn more about sales force development coaching through AGI, please visit www.activategroupinc.com, contact Howard at (305) 722-7216 or email him.
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Tags:Activate Group Inc, Coaching in Miami, Executive Coach, Great Salespeople, Howard Shore, personality traits, Personality Traits In Great Salespeople, presentations are engaging, sales force development coach, strategic business coaching, Top performing salespeople, top sales talent, top sales talent needs coaching
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