Archive for October, 2009
Descon Coaching Programme Lahore October 2009
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009Barloworld Motor Division Care and Growth Programme Johannesburg October 2009
Tuesday, October 27th, 2009
CSR101: Afia Mansoor
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
Corporate Social Responsibility is the current buzzword with business corporations, public sector concerns and society watchdogs. The concept of CSR, sustainability or triple bottom line began to gain currency in the 70’s however, in all fairness; it has existed since the beginning of commerce itself!
Simply put, CSR is to a company as ethics and responsibility is to a human being. In corporate speak, CSR involves a business identifying its stakeholder groups and incorporating their needs and values within the strategic and day-to-day decision making. Companies can no longer be considered as mere engines of wealth creation with no social concern and duties. The fact that out of the 100 largest economies of the world, 51 are business companies (Chris Pinney, 2007), is a testament of corporations being platforms of affluence in an increasingly deprived world. That in itself puts a whole lot of responsibility on business companies to be the drivers of equitable wealth distribution and community development.
Arguments and Counterarguments:
1. CSR is a goodwill exercise restricted to times of prosperity: We say, CSR brings prosperity if planned and executed smartly. The key is in identifying the stakeholders accurately and then serving their needs and values strategically. If a company acknowledges that its employees are the most crucial stakeholders and serves the needs of these as well as the people buying its product or service, there is a natural case for it to flourish. This is exactly why CSR is strategically embedded within a company and is not a philanthropic exercise to be carried out in times of boom.
2. CSR is a hoax. That is why corporate giants have practiced CSR and yet cheated on their stakeholders: That’s a fair argument considering the examples of Enron and Shell. Both these companies invested a huge amount of money into CSR and yet indulged in intentional misreporting. This is precisely why we insist that a company must clarify its intent before pursuing a CSR policy. CSR indeed becomes a hoax if executed with an intention to paint a saintly picture of a business that is malevolent at heart. We say a company need not be in the market if its core function is other than to serve its stakeholders in a responsible and ethical manner.
3. CSR is a soft concept: No more. There are several authentic reporting standards for CSR now, which are based on stringent financial criteria and evaluated by experts who mean business; literally. These include reports by FTSE 4 Good, The United Nations Global Compact and the Global Reporting Initiative to name just a few.
Approaches to CSR:
American definitions of CSR encourage a philanthropic approach whereas European approaches follow a rather holistic, embedded and voluntary approach (Baker). This is why that despite American companies leading European firms in CSR efforts currently, we believe that these efforts will be sustained comparatively stronger in Europe during recession.
Schuitema and CSR: Schuitema’s models on Intent, and Care and Growth™ present the groundwork to companies who wish to initiate CSR frameworks. Our job with CSR begins way before the action sets in.
Over the past 30 years, Schuitema has trained, researched with and given consultation to over a hundred clients from various sectors, industries and from diverse cultures. We have seen through our experience that organisations which have aligned their core values and business strategy to Service, Care and Giving grow steadily over their competition both in terms of market presence and employee satisfaction. To us, CSR means serious business because our own ideology is based on cultivating the Intent to Serve, to achieve Growth and Excellence.
Our Client Telenor Launches a Highly Enabling Service in Pakistan: Afia Mansoor
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
The enduring value of Telenor, one of the largest mobile communication companies in the world and a client of Schuitema, is to enable people to communicate. Part of their vision says, “We’re here to help.”
In line with this, Telenor Pakistan launched the Easy Paisa service in October 2009 to enable people to conduct financial services in a hassle free manner by using their mobile subscription. The service currently offers utility bills payment and plans to offer more services in the future.
Utility bill payment normally requires a majority of people in Pakistan to stand in long queues at banks and post offices and is considered to be a great inconvenience especially on the due date. Now with this service, anybody can at any time of the day or night, go up to the nearest Easy Paisa service providing shop and pay their bill regardless of which cellular connection they have.
A huge investment has been made in Pakistan by Telenor to market this new product which is arousing the interest of shopkeepers as well as common public. Strategists at Telenor believe that this product could mean revolutionary service in the cellular industry. The future of this could mean that an ill old woman living at the foot of a mountain in a remote, inaccessible village could order medicines by first messaging a pharmacist with the detail of her requirement and then messaging her banker for money transfer. Two messages on the cell phone would enable the banker to transfer the payment to the pharmacist who would in turn send the medicine on to the woman via a private cab. Imagine the volume of transactions achieved this way without a physical infrastructure!
The intent behind this product converges with Schuitema’s belief that in the new millennium, only those organisations will flourish which base their strategy on serving people indiscriminately.
The Impact of Care and Growth Thinking on Organisational Structure. Anonymous
Saturday, October 24th, 2009One of our clients who runs a very successful call centre wrote the following regarding Care and Growth and the implications for organisational structure. Because the organisation involved is in a very delicate phase of union negotiations, she requested the article to remain anonymous.
Having applied care and growth as a leadership philosophy in the organisation I work for, for the last 6+ years, and before that in a previous company for another 7 to 8 years, I believed that I understood the impact well and applied this leadership philosophy effectively.
The work environment here has been designed to ensure accountability, for which a performance scorecard was designed. Rewards and punishments are applied consistently, through incentive and recognition programmes and clear performance improvement programs and disciplinary processes.
Training of the staff involves a thorough 6 weeks process of classroom training, role plays, careful stepped introduction into the workplace and e-learning based skills maintenance.
A fully customised call centre system is used, ensuring a paperless workplace, with all tools available directly on the desktop. The agent follows the process and negotiates within the given parameters to achieve the required results.
All management is exposed to care and growth training and senior management reinforces this continuously. Managers are measured by way of a scorecard that looks specifically at how effectively their staff are able to perform under their leadership.
Yet recently we found ourselves confronted by unhappy staff wanting to introduce a union into the workplace. Under the circumstances it was not surprising that we immediately questioned where we might have gone wrong. There is no clear answer to this question as these events are influenced by many forces and there is no single factor that can be isolated.
During the process of preparing our management team for a new challenge, having to continue managing within the care and growth philosophy and now in a potentially far more antagonistic environment, we attended a talk on Trust by Wendy Lambourne.
Now I had heard some of this before and had read broadly on the subject in an effort to continuously improve the leadership in this workplace. However this time a new realisation dawned. The structure of the Call centre department here, is a typical hierarchical structure with clear accountability established around client delivery teams:
It being a call centre, staff attrition levels are high, staff are typically young – average age 23 – and new to the work environment. A great deal of staff movement occurs. In the business it had become the habit to move staff and managers around whenever the need developed based on client delivery requirements. There were almost weekly changes within teams. The organisational structure was making it impossible for staff and managers to establish long term trusting relationships.
The philosophy around trust tells us that people who trust their leader are more inclined to go the extra mile for that leader. A major cause of a breakdown in trust is management being unresponsive to the concerns and issues of employees. Where teams are regularly being impacted by staff and management changes, trust does not develop. The manager leaves before being able to fully address a staff issue. The staff member is re-explaining an issue to one manager after another with resolution seldom occurring.
We need to find a way to ensure that the supervisor and his/her team remain together as a unit, so that long term relationships can be formed and managers can apply the care and growth skills they are taught.
In future we will create work teams with a fixed manager and team members will only change by their choice. Instead of moving staff between client units, we will move teams as a holistic unit to work on different projects together.
Team members will choose each other and their manager and will then work together for as long as possible. Their tasks or client might change, but the team will then move together and will be re-skilled together as is required. This will be expanded with regards to monetary incentives. These will be redeveloped to reward the team instead of individuals only.
This change is significant as the organisational structure has never been questioned and there will be some practicalities to smooth over. However I have no doubt that managing the work teams in this way will ensure that our managers have the opportunity to build trust with their team members and team members will benefit from working long term with one manager.
Coaching for Excellence in Ability: Wendy Lambourne
Saturday, October 24th, 2009
The Care and Growth model argues that the crux of the difference between management and leadership is an inversion of means and ends. Managers use people as the means to get the job done and produce results. Leaders use tasks and results as the means to enable people.
When there is a job to be done, a manager assigns the job to the person perceived to be most willing and able to do the task at hand.
What concerns a manager is that the required output, in terms of both quantity and quality, is delivered. Whether the person who does the job is excellent or mediocre is in fact immaterial. Excellence in the person is not the manager’s job.
A leader, unlike a manager, is concerned with the excellence of his / her people. A leader in fact is relentless in the pursuit of excellence in people not as a means to an end, but as an end in itself. The tasks to be done and the results to be achieved are what provide the leader with an opportunity to achieve just that.
This article focuses on the coaching process and how coaching enables those in positions of authority to make a fundamental shift in means and ends. It deals with the practice of deliberately using the task as the means to enable a person; more specifically to bring about the highest levels of excellence in a person’s ability.
THE 8 “REALITIES” OF COACHING
Eight commonly made statements about the “realities” of the coaching process provide a useful vehicle to convey what the Care and Growth model believes about this critical aspect of leading others.
|
STATEMENT ONE: Coaching is a useful process for improving employee contribution |
TRUE |
FALSE |
|
|
√ |
This statement is partially but not wholly correct. Coaching is an exceptionally useful process for enabling or improving employee contribution but ONLY when the issue affecting contribution is ability. Coaching is not useful when either means or accountability issues are at stake. This is because means issues are remediated through the provision of means, while accountability issues are addressed by holding people accountable.
Neither means nor accountability issues suggest coaching. In fact using coaching on an accountability issue which, by definition is a matter of the will, is detrimental because doing so entrenches the ‘soft’ mistake. Accountability issues, be they those of carelessness or malevolence, require some form of sanction.
Failure to sanction, when a sanction is appropriate, not only leads to those who are careless or malevolent escaping accountability but convinces others that they can get away with it too. Coaching for accountability issues, in the fullness of time, cultivates the conditions whereby no one in the organisation is accountable for anything
|
STATEMENT TWO: People can be coached to do anything if the coach is good enough. |
TRUE |
FALSE |
|
|
√ |
In the Care and Growth model a distinction is made between capability and ability. Capability is akin to talent; it is the foundation block upon which ability can be built. The absence of a capability or talent which is essential for performance in a particular role must inevitably impede success in the role.
This does not mean that sheer will power won’t assist someone to get a little better at something, especially if it is critically important to them to do so. It also does not suggest that dedication to the acquisition of specific knowledge and skills cannot go someway to counter an absence of talent.
What it does indicate, however, is that even the best coach cannot fabricate talent which is not there. The most a coach can do is work with what is there in the first place.
When there is a significant disconnect between a person’s actual capability and the capability required to perform well in a particular role, then coaching is not the best route to follow. The better solution is to fit the person to a role that matches their capability, to put the person on the right seat on the bus.
Even a small change in fit can have a dramatic effect both on a person’s performance and their motivation. Conversely, failure to recast the person into a role for which they have the requisite capability can only result in poor performance and an ongoing sense of failure. The right thing to do, the caring thing to do, is to remove the person from the role.
|
STATEMENT THREE: Superior ability is inborn. |
TRUE |
FALSE |
|
√ |
√ |
There is a widely held belief that superior ability is inborn. That is, that talent is innate and, therefore, is something that a person is born with. Moreover that super human performers are those who are truly “gifted” in a particular area and fortunate enough to discover their extraordinary talent early on in life.
The counter view is that superior ability in any area is not determined at birth. In fact the only clearly innate limit to the development of ability is a physical one. General abilities, like IQ and memory which have a genetic component may predict performance on an unfamiliar task but are not predictive of success thereafter. Even personality traits, although they may have an affect on the specific field in which an individual is likely to excel, do not limit a person’s achievement in general.
The Care and Growth model is not wed to either side of the talent debate Both the view that “people either have talent or they don’t” and the thesis that” people can be good at anything” are too extreme.
In any event talent, whether it be inborn or developed, is not necessarily the critical factor and certainly not the only variable which accounts for excellent performance. There are clearly numerous factors, including upbringing, dedication and luck among others, which account for superior performance.
While the talent debate rages on, the Care and Growth model continues to ascribe to a firm belief that good leaders significantly affect the continuous growth in ability of their people by, amongst other things, coaching them effectively:
|
STATEMENT FOUR: Developing excellence in anything takes time. |
TRUE |
FALSE |
|
√ |
|
Whilst the will can change in an instant an increase in ability does not happen immediately. The development of any ability or talent takes time.
Prodigious ability in a specific domain apparently takes many years to come to fruition. According to the neurologist Daniel Levitan roughly ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve real mastery. According to him no one has yet found a case in which true world class expertise was accomplished in less time.
An extraordinary investment of hours, however, is not on its own enough. People can work at something for most of their lives, being good at what they do but never exceptional. Apparently it is necessary, but not sufficient, to work hard and put in the hours.
In addition, according to Anders Ericsson who coined the phrase “deliberate practice”, what is required is concerted, repetitive and focused engagement with the intention of improving what is being done. Deliberate practice is in fact the key to excellence. Moreover, deliberate practice is most effective under the guidance of a coach.
|
STATEMENT FIVE: Excellent performers also need coaching. |
TRUE |
FALSE |
|
√ |
|
As the saying goes, even Tiger Woods has a coach. In most fields of endeavour in fact, those who have become exceptionally good at what they do, have received help along the way and continued to do so even in their prime. The person who provided help in achieving excellence acted as a coach or mentor, whether or not they were formally designated as such.There are of course exceptions to this rule. Roger Federer, for example, has spent most of his career without a coach analyzing his own game and making changes himself.
In a world of ever rising standards, however, getting really good at something without a coach is rare.
|
STATEMENT SIX: Coaching should focus on improving areas of weakness, strengths take care of themselves |
TRUE |
FALSE |
|
|
√ |
Marcus Buckingham (2004) puts forward the argument for focusing on one’s strengths rather than weaknesses. He maintains that excellence, be it of an individual or a group, comes from maximizing strengths not from minimizing weaknesses. Improving on one’s weaknesses at best leads to mediocrity, makes someone average but never outstanding.
It is difficult to think of any aspect of Tiger Woods game as being less than perfect. Allegedly, however, he isn’t totally amazing at getting out of bunkers. This of course may be because he rarely gets into them! The undisputed strength in his game however is his drive. Hearsay has it that this is what his coach spent most of his time on. As a result, something which was already an exceptional strength for Tiger Woods, became unequalled in the world.
From a Care and Growth perspective coaching should be for both strengths and weaknesses. Coaching can both make a weakness less of a weakness and a strength more of a strength.
|
STATEMENT SEVEN: Coaching is the same as on the job training. |
TRUE |
FALSE |
|
|
√ |
On-the-job training and coaching are distinctly different. Training, be it on or off the job, aims to increase a person’s knowledge or skill in a particular area Coaching has a higher goal. Its purpose is to enable the person being coached to realize the very best in themselves from an ability point of view.
Training is an integral part, or should be, of the empowerment process. Before handing over a specific task or new accountability to someone, the person should be given the ability they need to take on the accountability. Both Step 2 (teaching) and Step 3 (testing) for competency are an integral past of the empowerment process.
Unlike training or teaching however coaching is not about the transfer of skill or knowledge from one person to another. Coaching is about being able to see the potential ability that is there in the other person and helping to bring that ability out into the world.
Two different artists put it best. Michelangelo said “my work is to release the hand from the marble that holds it prisoner.” In similar vein, the sculptor Henry Moore had this to say of his famous sculpture of a horse: “I call the horse out of the rock. I take away all the rock which is not the horse”
|
STATEMENT EIGHT: A person will only respond to coaching once their will has been engaged |
TRUE |
FALSE |
|
√ |
|
A precondition for coaching is that the person’s will to learn has been engaged; that the person has accepted accountability for their growth. If a person is unwilling to learn, has not accepted accountability, then it is premature to coach the person.There is a process for enabling accountability in a person but it is not coaching. It is a counselling or mentoring process which Schuitema calls the Gripe to Goal process.
The Gripe to Goal process addresses matters of the will. It therefore pertains to issues of intent not ability. As a process it enables a maturation of a person’s intent from being here to get to being here to give. It puts the person in the state to hone their ability to the highest level of excellence.
CRITICAL REQUIREMENTS OF A COACH
There are some fairly obvious requirements for successful coaching, certain characteristics which all good coaches have in common.
In the first instance a good coach needs to be knowledgeable but not necessarily more skilful or expert than the person being coached. To be a good tennis coach for example requires an understanding of the game not a level of play equal to or better than the person being coached.
Secondly a coach needs to exercise patience. The person will not learn if the coach gets impatient and intervenes too early or, worse still, takes over and does the task on behalf of the person being coached.
The good coach enables learning, not by teaching but by helping the other person to learn. The primary skills of coaching therefore are listening, observing and giving feedback not the transfer of information. The good coach is able to see what the person themselves cannot see and then conveys what it is that they have seen. They are able to convince the person of what they should be working on next in order to improve their ability.
Thirdly a coach has to be a tough taskmaster. The majority of people under perform because they don’t push themselves to their limits.
The good coach performs a critical role by to taking the person beyond their comfort zone. In order to do so the good coach is likely to be exceedingly tough, even hard on the person. While the person being coached will be unlikely to enjoy the experience, they will accept what the coach is doing because they know that it is being done in their best interest.
Finally the good coach puts their significance second to that of the person being coached. They recognize that ultimately it is the player not the coach who gets up on the podium. They are therefore not only prepared to share the limelight. They deliberately put their own need for recognition to one side; making it possible for the person they are coaching to shine.
The single most important requirement for successful coaching however is the intention of the coach. This becomes obvious only when the true transformation that is the purpose of coaching is understood.
An episode from the BBC series “Faking It” illustrates the point. In one of the episodes in the series a painter of houses is plucked out of his small business in Liverpool and taken to London. Once there, three coaches work on him around the clock for a month, after which he exhibits his paintings at an art exhibition along with four commercial artists Of three leading art critics, brought in for the task, only one is able to identify him as the fake.
In one month the coaches were able to transform a decorator from Liverpool into a “Rembrandt”. What the three coaches produced was an artist, who then produced a set of paintings which fooled the judges. Similarly, in sport, what the coach delvers is an athlete who is able to play the kind of game which puts the winning scores on the scoreboard. In the workplace, also, the measure of the leader / coach’s success is the degree to which the person being coached has changed. It is the transformed employee who excels at the task(s) which lead to positives organizational results.
What this suggests quite simply is that coaching is a 3rd Attention engagement. The conventional manager operates in the 1st Attention is here to get / achieve the result with the person as a means to that end. Progress to the 2nd Attention is made when attention shifts from the result to the task. In practical terms this happens when the person in authority makes it their business to provide the required means, ability and accountability which will enable excellence in the task. This is evidence of giving but is nevertheless still a giving to get.
Only when the superordinate is finally focused exclusively on polishing and refining the person as an end in itself is the leader / coach in the 3rd Attention. This is because, for the first time, the leader is truly giving unconditionally.
This is hugely significant for two reasons:
Firstly, it is only when the relationship between boss and subordinate is a coaching relationship that both parties are being empowered. This is because the boss and the subordinate are now focused on that which they can do something about, namely effect a change in the person being coached.
Secondly, whenever leaders put themselves in the role of coach they automatically make the task and the result the concern of the person being coached. Ironically, the degree to which the coach puts attention on the person, and is therefore prepared to take a risk with the task and the result, is the degree to which the person owns both the task and the result.
SHIFTING FROM A REPORTING TO A COACHING RELATIONSHIP
For a person to continuously hone and improve their ability it is not necessary for them to change jobs or even to take on new accountabilities within their current role. The potential for ongoing learning exists in the tasks that the person has to execute anyway in order to perform in their present job.
The change that has to happen is not a change in job content but a change in how the tasks which make up the job are viewed. Whenever a task is performed an opportunity exists to address a learning requirement or development need in the person. The task becomes the means to strengthen a specific ability in the person, rather than an end in itself.
Etsko Schuitema (2004) in his book “Leadership: The Care and Growth model” suggests that the job that the person is doing be seen as a gymnasium and the tasks to be done as the apparatus for developing the person. A good gym instructor matches the athletes learning need (e.g. stamina) to the appropriate apparatus (e.g. treadmill) Similarly a good coach in the workplace matches a chosen learning need to those task(s) in the job that put pressure on the learning need.
The example on above left shows the key tasks performed by a Schuitema Consultant.
Every time the Schuitema consultant makes a sales call / presentation, facilitates a workshop, coaches a client, consults on an aspect of implementation, builds a relationship or coordinates delivery on a client project the opportunity exists to improve the Consultant’s listening ability.
The task(s) which put pressure on the Consultant’s conceptual ability on the other hand include the design of new products, a diagnostic exercise, design of an intervention and again consultation on implementation within the organization.
The critical insight here is that all jobs have within them a possibility for learning and growth. This is true even of a call centre agent tasked with contacting clients and verifying their personal details for 8 hours of the day. Each call made by the agent provides the means, if it is used as such, to enhance the agent’s diplomacy or influencing ability. In a leadership role dealing with a “subordinate from hell” likewise offers the possibility of developing what is a key leadership competency; that of confronting.
|
|
Training typically enables the performance of a single task. Coaching however has a much more profound affect. In the example of the Schuitema Consultant it is clear that addressing the one learning requirement (in this case listening) impacts on many tasks and can have a dramatic affect on the Consultant’s overall performance.
What using the task and the result as a means to enable the person means practically therefore is the following:-
Firstly the coach needs to ascertain the competencies which differentiate the average from the superb performer in a particular role. Thereafter, based on an assessment of the individual’s learning requirements, the coach should select a competency as the focal point of the coaching interactions that he has with the person.
The chosen competency remains the key element in the interactions between the boss and the subordinate until such time that both parties are convinced that real progress has been made. At that point, attention shifts to strengthening another ability in the person.
A coaching relationship is clearly very different from a conventional reporting relationship. In a conventional reporting relationship the person is there to produce a result not to spend time improving their abilities. The routine interactions between boss and subordinate are therefore typically centred on progress against agreed tasks / deliverables.
In a coaching relationship the conversations between boss and subordinate are very different. Most importantly they include content which is not there in a conventional reporting relationship. In a coaching relationship what is discussed is the subordinate’s progress against a learning requirement, what constitutes the next learning opportunity for the subordinate and what tasks will enable the person to strengthen the ability which is the current focus of the coaching.
THE COACHING CYCLE
Coaching is not a singular event. Rather is a series of activities which repeat themselves over and over in an ongoing cycle. The coaching activities which make up the cycle are those of reviewing, monitoring and designing.
The purpose of the Review is diagnostic. It requires the coach to reflect on what it is that the person needs to learn and what then will become the focus of the coaching. The product of the Review activity is the identification of a learning need and the specification of a learning opportunity
The remedial activity in the coaching cycle is concerned with Designing and Setting the task(s) which will enable the person to strengthen the ability which is the current focus of the coaching.
The Monitoring activity requires the coach to observe the person while they are doing the job and give the person feedback on what they have observed. The aim of the observation is for the person to gain insight into their mastery of the current learning requirement and to identify the next learning opportunity for themselves.
The Review and Design activities take place off the job, in a one-on-one conversation between the leader and the person being coached. The Monitoring task, on the other hand, takes place while the person is actively doing their job.
Within the coaching cycle, moments of action and reflection repeat themselves over and over again. In due course what changes is the specific learning opportunity and, hence, those aspects of the person’s job which are the points of focus in the relationship.
· Identifying the learning need and the learning opportunity
A good sports coach would never work on all aspects of an athlete’s game simultaneously. Similarly, in the work context, it is appropriate for the coach to focus on and work intently on improving only one aspect in the person at a time.
What the coach does in this phase of the coaching cycle is to help the person to identify very specifically what they should be working on and to phrase this as a learning opportunity.
Some examples of learning needs and learning opportunities for individual managers are given below.
A learning opportunity is also not a value; such as respect or honesty. A value is what a person is prepared to put their self interest second for. As such it is not an ability issue but an accountability issue.
The role of the coach in the Reviewing phase is to elicit the diagnostic information which leads to the specification of the learning opportunity. When the person being coached has a high degree of self awareness the information can be elicited from them directly. Alternatively the coach needs to source the diagnostic material either through direct observation or by getting input from those who can bear witness to how the person performs in real time
- “Watching” the person doing the task and determining what they need to learn next to improve their ability
The purpose of watching the game is to identify what it is SPECIFICALLY that the person needs to learn which will further improve their ability. The problem with a learning opportunity, stated as a competency, is that it is still too global.
What does the person need to improve/change in order to enhance their listening ability for example? Do they need to learn not to interrupt? Is it that they are not fully present? Are they analytical, and therefore able to ascertain the crux of the issue, but are insensitive to the feelings behind the facts?
Only by watching the game, while the game is being played, is it possible for the coach to put their finger on the next step forward for the person in terms of the ability which is the current focus of the coaching.
The insight gained by the coach is of course only useful if it is conveyed to the person in a manner which convinces the person of what they need to work on next to improve their ability. There are a number of obvious ‘dos’ and ‘don’ts’ when it comes to giving feedback. The crux of good feedback however is that it looks to the future. It tells the person how to do better going forward, not what they did wrong.
- Setting the task(s) which put pressure on the learning need
Practice task(s) are, or should be, deliberate. The coach does not simply implore the person to go out there and work on their listening, delegating or whatever. Rather the coach determines the specific task(s) which, when performed, will put pressure on the current learning need.
Practice tasks can be designed well or badly. Best practice activities stretch the person beyond their current abilities. They require the person to stretch just out of reach of their current level of ability. They place the person in a learning zone.
Task(s) which are in the person’s comfort zone on the other hand fail to extend ability since, by definition, they are already activities which can be done easily. Activities which are too hard, meanwhile, engender panic rather than learning. Specific task(s) which can be used to pursue particular learning opportunities are given below.
Part of setting the task(s) is for the coach to agree the level of support / monitoring they will provide while the task is being performed. The amount of support provided by the coach must of course be directly proportional to the level of ability of the person being coached.
Superficially coaching can appear to be a relatively easy, if not mechanistic, aspect of the Care and Growth role. Nothing could be further from the truth. Engaging in the coaching cycle unconditionally, with no motive other than to realise the very best in the other person, tests the very essence of a leader’s generosity and courage.
It clarifies, like nothing else does, how far the leader is really prepared to go / to what degree they are prepared to sacrifice to realise the very best in the other.
By definition, a learning opportunity is a defined ability or competency which can be enhanced through coaching. A learning opportunity is not a particular skill (e.g. reading a profit and loss statement) or a piece of knowledge (e.g. how to draw up a business plan) both of which are best addressed through training.
Care and Growth Accountability and the Requirement of South African Labour Law: Claire Hock
Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Poor work performance can be a form of misconduct or incapacity. If the employee is wilfully performing poorly (i.e. doing it on purpose (e.g. insubordination) or because of negligence (i.e. not taking proper care), then it is a form of misconduct and should be dealt with in terms of the Disciplinary Procedure.
If the employee is performing poorly because he/she is not able to perform properly (i.e. he/she does not have the ability/capacity - he/she may even be trying their best), then it is a form of incapacity and should be dealt with accordingly. Sometimes an employee is not able to perform properly because he/she is ill (e.g. AIDS) or addicted (e.g. and alcoholic). In all of these cases of genuine poor performance due to incapacity, the Labour Relations Act requires a different procedure from the Disciplinary Procedure - a Poor Performance or Ill Health or Injury Procedure. These procedures still require an investigation, evidence of poor performance, a hearing and representation but, significantly, the employer is required to consider alternatives to dismissal before an employee is dismissed for incapacity. These alternatives include: adapting the job, demoting or transferring the employee or even medical boarding (in the case of ill health).
To use the “care and growth”[1] terminology; employees need to be empowered
by being given:
- The means (e.g. tools, information, authority, support)
- The ability (e.g. training in “how” to perform and an explanation
on “why” performance is necessary) and
- Accountability (i.e. holding the employee accountable for a
particular standard of performance and the consequences of not performing).
In summary;
Different Scenarios
Means
v
v
X
X
Ability
X
v
v
X
Accountability
This is a situation where the employee is not performing to the required standard because he/she is unable (i.e. does not have the ability). In this situation the “poor performance” procedure of the LRA should be followed which requires training, counselling etc. to assist the employee to acquire the ability.
If this process does not result in the employee performing at the required standard, a “no fault” dismissal may result, provided that alternatives such as demotion have been considered first, and a fair procedure has been followed.
If the employee is not performing to the required standard despite having both the means and the ability, this is likely to be a form of misconduct (e.g. negligence, insubordination, failure to follow operating instructions, sabotage etc) and the disciplinary procedure should be followed. Depending on the severity of the misconduct, this may result in progressive discipline or dismissal.
If the employee is not performing to the required standard because of a lack of means, this is a management issue and the employee should be given the means to perform.
If the employee is not performing to the required standard due to a lack of means and ability, management should provide the means and assist the employee to acquire the ability. If the employee is given the means and does not acquire the ability, then the “poor performance” procedure would be followed as indicated in the first scenario.
According to the leadership diagnostic, “exceptions” (i.e. incidents of poor performance) should be analysed to identify who did what to cause them and what the root causes of the exception are. At each level of the leadership chain (from employee upwards through management), incidents should be analysed to ask:
- Did the employee have the means?
- Did the employee have the ability?
Employees who have both the means and the ability and yet do not perform to the required standard, should be censured (i.e. disciplined). Employees who do not have the means but have the ability, should be provided with the means. Employees who do not have the ability but have the means, should be helped to acquire the ability (i.e. the LRA “poor performance” procedure). Employees who have both the means and the ability and are performing to the required standard should be recognised and/or rewarded.
- Claire Hock: Resolve Consulting
CSR and the issue of Trust: Afia Mansoor
Monday, October 19th, 2009We are an interdependent species no matter how we look at it. We need others to fulfill our simple and complex needs. We need a weaver to make our clothes, a farmer to harvest our food and a doctor to cure our ills not to mention scores of other individuals and creatures who contribute to defining our state of being.
Like the cyclical nature of all things happening on this planet, what comes to us must go to others. Imagine the consequences if honey bees refuse to carry pollen grains on to their legs after they’ve had their fill from a flower, or the bee community refuses to produce more honey than it needs. The bee community knows instinctively that its own survival depends on what it does for the eco system it is in.
The banyan tree does not discriminate which creatures it will provide its shade to, and the wheat grain does not announce its rights of being consumed by a certain class of creatures. What nature provides, it provides unconditionally.
The least that we as human beings can do living on an interdependent and a naturally unconditional planet is to understand that our own survival as a species depends on how we let the good that comes to us flow onto others in whatever shape we can best transform it into.
Businesses are evolved forms of individuals working together to create some sort of abundance that is beyond their immediate need. Companies that operate with the realization that their abundance must be utilized completely by the eco system they exist in, have cracked the code. But what businesses need to realize even faster is that the more this abundance is shared and the more people served this way, the more a company flourishes. In simplest terms, the more pollen grains a bee carries, the more chances there are for more flowers and fruits to be produced. This is beyond the ‘job description’ of the honey bee and yet it continues to do so after it has had its own fill.
Corporate Social Responsibility is achieved best when businesses get together with other businesses and especially social concerns (NGOs as we call them) and formulate relationships that are based on letting the abundance that they have formed with the help of others, flow onwards into society. A collaborative effort to engage into CSR is always better than an individual effort by a single company. A petroleum company that decides to serve the educational needs of the community it employs and sells its products too, can effectively understand the needs of this community if it engages with an NGO working on education projects.
For the sake of serving and not for the sake of meeting corporate responsibility goals, organizations need to trust each other and the NGOs to fulfill the needs of the planet which in turn sustains them.
Companies as Individuals: Afia Mansoor
Monday, October 19th, 2009The definition of a business concern that we have studied at college is certainly true; that a business organisation operates like an entity with a purpose to make profits.
To me back then, it made sense that the sole purpose of a company was to make profits but I could not understand how it was an entity with an identity of its own like a human being. More than a decade later, after having worked in several corporations, I continue to disagree with the definition. But only with its second half.
A company certainly does operate like an entity with its worldview, way of working and goals manifesting the aspirations, the will and the level of fulfillment of its top management and in highly evolved organizations; the employees at all levels. We in Pakistan, for instance are certainly aware that a Seth owned organisation reflects the ethos of the Seth; be it the way it treats its employees or the way it sells its products. It does not matter if the Seth has been educated from the Ivy League or has only been to the local high school. If the Seth believes that he knows best how to get his work done, then his company works with his spirit, his moral values and certainly his intent. That is why we see new CEOs taking over and reshaping the destinies of their organisations with their own will and action.
That companies indeed are entities is why we see that corporations whose ethos are instilled by a set of diverse people often emerge as strong players in whichever industry or region they operate. Multinational concerns are a case in point. Companies like Unilever, Proctor & Gamble or Nestle spend enormous amounts of money for hiring and retaining their people for it is these people which imbue their character into the company.
Coming back to the second half of the business concern’s definition. Is a company’s sole raison d’eter to make profits?
That is like saying, human beings are a species who live for the purpose of earning money. That’s a rather dangerous definition of a human being! It fails to take into account that money is a means to an end even if you leave aside the debate on the kind of means it is.
Likewise, saying that a company’s purpose is to make profits is like exonerating it from its social, legal and moral responsibilities. That is perhaps why we have seen phenomenal damages made to the planet and its people, by business entities that operate on the premise of existing for profits and managed by people whose purpose in life is to earn enormous amounts of money.
Some critics argue that the moral mumbo jumbo should be limited to pressure groups, governments and religious doctrines at best and that companies are only meant to create abundance. However, this argument is increasingly losing force as companies themselves are realising, as a popular CSR expert Mallen Baker says, that ‘they cannot operate as islands of prosperity in a sea of abundance’. That is why business giants all over the world like Microsoft, Shell or ICI to name just a few, are turning towards their social responsibilities. Corporate Social Responsibility is the realisation that a company does not just live to make unbridled profits. It is the awakening of a company to its logical way of existence by being a channel to the flow of abundance. That the only reasonable and sustainable way of making profits is to share it with the planet and its people who created it in the first place.
The pinnacle of this wisdom will be achieved when companies realize that they have to engage in serving the community VOLUNTARILY. That they have to have an intent to serve the people making their profits whether they are within the company or are buying their products. There are companies that serve their people and communities because others are doing it. There are those who do it because it whitewashes their excesses committed elsewhere. There are those who do it because it gives them a good name and there are those who do it when there is a lot of profit a portion of which can be spent on charity.
All of these companies need to clarify their intent. These companies fail to realize that CSR or the act of serving back as a voluntary commitment is not a public display of apparent generosity, it is not a whimsical exercise only to be carried out in times of comfortable prosperity and it is certainly not a cosmetic effort meant to conceal other unethical ways of doing business by the company. Serving back is the only reasonable way for a company to survive and sustain in a depleting planet. And serving back with the intent to fulfill one’s duty to the planet through all times is the only honest way of serving back. At the end of the day, like an individual, a company that is honest to itself shall be the one that has achieved true success.
