In or Out of the Swimming Pool

We have been trying the find the right swimming class for our young boys  - a class where they will obviously learn, have fun and of course be safe.

And after trying out a number of options and talking to other parents, a key differentiator has emerged and it is this - does the instructor get into the pool or not.

I have been amazed at the number of classes where the teacher stays at the edge of the pool and tells the kids in the water what to do. In or Out? - it seems a no brainer which would be most effective and that is what we have found in terms of which classes helped the boys learn and have fun.

So it got me thinking about whether we in our roles as leaders and managers perform our roles in or out of the pool.

Do you stay out of the pool?- spend a lot of time in your office, lot of time in meetings that are not at the coal face, find yourself giving lots direction and instructions through email? All important and justifiable (but then I am sure the swimming instructors have their good reasons for not getting into the pool too).

What would being in the pool more look like for you?

• Attending customer meetings with your team?
• Attending meetings with the customers of your internal customers?
• Shadowing a key stakeholder for a morning?
• Walking around the factory or office floor and making time to talk to the team?
• Committing to and doing 1 to 1's?
• Having skip level meetings with the folks a few levels below you?
• Have lunch with your people as opposed to at your desk?

Does this make a difference?  It sure did for my kids and their swimming (they have made leaps and bounds since moving to a class with the teacher in the water with them). But in business?

The Sales Executive Council published research that a sales team performance went up 17% just from 2 hours a month of coaching from their manager.

So Summer is here (kind of) - why not pull on your leadership speedos (no one will see them I promise) and get into the water with your people.

Resurrecting your career by following the rules of the stock market

It's resurrection time as mother nature comes back to life after the Autumn and Winter recess.

So let's look at a common coaching challenge I often see - resurrecting one's career in your current organisation.

The fact that one's career needs help can often catch you unawares, like the lobster not noticing the rising temperature of the water around it in the pot.The awareness that there's an issue often comes from some form of comment or feedback from a boss or senior stakeholder  through a process like a 360. 

The analogy I use with clients who find themselves in this situation is that of their personal stock price. Historically they have experienced career advancement,  their stock price consistently rising. But now suddenly we discover that people are selling as opposed to buying the individual's stock.

Here are the steps I advise my clients to follow to get their career growing again

1. Get to the issue.

Be relentless in finding out what the perceived problem is - why is your stock price falling. Even if you have feedback, go back and get even more specific feedback. The more data you have on why people have a specific perception of you and your career, the more focused you can be in addressing the perception.

2. Identity the institutional investors in your career.

Stock prices are not based on individuals like you and me trading - its all about the pension funds and the big institutional shareholders - their decisions move the market. So as opposed to convincing the whole organization how great you are, identify who the big institutional investors are in your career. This may or may not include your manager depending on how senior they are. Very often it is some key folks a couple of levels above you in the company.

3. Get a sponsor to help you demonstrate value to the institutional investors. 

Companies need intermediaries to get them in front of investors and venture capitalists. So do you. Who is going to get you in front of the senior people while also selling your worth to them when you are not in the room. This is were a supportive boss or mentor can really help you.

4. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate.

Wall Street does not support a stock just because they like you or think that you may have value - they buy based on stated intentions, follow through on those intentions, demonstrated results and constant communication of all these. You need to start broadcasting to your sponsor on a regular basis so they can both sell you and challenge negative perceptions about you that come up in senior leadership meetings. And you need to broadcast, on an appropriate basis, to the big investors in your organisations to show them your impact and value. This is not PR over results - it is visibility into your results.

The four steps above have helped my clients get focus and leverage to rebuild their personal stock price.

But! But if the above steps represent plan A, I always encourage my clients to start building a plan B no matter how tentatively. Sometimes the perception is so ingrained with very senior people that at some point one needs to be able to cut ones loses and go elsewhere. In other words, you need to think about refloating your stock in a new market.

PS: the other bit of resurrection going on here is with my blog which has been dormant for over a year. I want to try and make it a more regular process for me

Two lessons I learnt last month from Mai and Dave;

1. Don't write for perfection - just put your thoughts out there i.e. let the writer me, not the editor me, own this process.

2. Write for a few mins every day - something will come out of the simple discipline. 

The Steve Bennett Leadership Basics - what Symantec can expect

The recent appointment of Steve Bennett as CEO of my former employer Symantec has got me reaching for one of my favourite books on the software industry – “Inside Intuit – How the Makers of Quicken beat Microsoft and Revolutionised an Entire Industry

Steve Bennett was CEO at Intuit for eight years . In that time he grew Bennett left Intuit in December 2007 after serving as president and CEO for eight years. revenue grew to $2.7 billion in fiscal 2007 from less than $1 billion in fiscal 2000. He also led Intuit to being in Fortune Magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For” list for six consecutive years.

One chapter in “Inside Intuit”, called The Bennett Basics, may give Symantec employees a clue to what to expect from their new leader.

Leveraging his 23 years at GE under Jack Welch, the chapter identified Bennetts key leadership principles;

Set A Tone – a leader’s personal intensity determines an organisation’s intensity.

Maximise an Organisations Intellect – take everyone’s best ideas and transfer them to others.

Put People First and Strategy Second – getting the right people in the right seats is crucial to the success of any strategy

Foster Passion – winners care more than anyone else

Reach For More Than What Seems Possible – when the leader stretches, the whole organisation stretches.

The Steve Bennett Basics of Leadership - what Symantec can expect

The recent appointment of Steve Bennett as CEO of my former employer Symantec has got me reaching for one of my favourite books on the software industry – “Inside Intuit – How the Makers of Quicken beat Microsoft and Revolutionised an Entire Industry"

Steve Bennett was CEO at Intuit for eight years . In that time he grew Bennett left Intuit in December 2007 after serving as president and CEO for eight years. revenue grew to $2.7 billion in fiscal 2007 from less than $1 billion in fiscal 2000. He also led Intuit to being in Fortune Magazine’s “Best Companies to Work For” list for six consecutive years.

One chapter in “Inside Intuit”, called The Bennett Basics, may give Symantec employees a clue to what to expect from their new leader and his playbook.

Leveraging his 23 years at GE under Jack Welch, the chapter identified Bennetts key leadership principles while at Intuit;

Set A Tone – a leader’s personal intensity determines an organisation’s intensity.

Maximise an Organisations Intellect – take everyone’s best ideas and transfer them to others.

Put People First and Strategy Second – getting the right people in the right seats is crucial to the success of any strategy.

Foster Passion – winners care more than anyone else.

Reach For More Than What Seems Possible – when the leader stretches, the whole organisation

Review of "Creating a Coaching" by Peter Hawkins

The concept of a coaching culture existing within an organisation has become a hot topic in recent years as the suppliers and buyers of coaching seek to move beyond the historical 1 to 1 coaching format and explore how coaching can impact the many as opposed to the select few.   However much of the discussion I have seen on coaching culture has lacked research and practical case studies and hence it has begun to take on the characteristics of other Holy Grails within organisational development that have come with great fanfare and gone with an embarrassed silence.   Peter Hawkins has taken the concept on in this book (Creating a Coaching Culture)and, through a combination of a well-structured framework, numerous case studies and his usually high standards of research and practical experience, has given CEOs, HR Directors and external coaches lots of practical ideas and models about creating a culture of open and honest dialogue within teams, functions and organisations and beyond to customers and stakeholders.   I personally really enjoyed the excellent deconstruction in the final chapter of coaching culture down to its rawest and most meaningful form  - that of better quality dialogue in day to day situations, be it in team meetings, performance reviews or in the corridor. My corporate clients will see more tangible value in the idea of better dialogue than they will in a something called coaching culture.   The book is an easy read and very engaging and has challenged me as an external coach to add more value to my corporate customers. I will be sharing the book with clients as they look to move beyond coaching being often one off engagements. I will also be recommending it to participants on the postgraduate programme on executive coaching that I lecture on as the best discussion and analysis of what coaching culture is and can be out there so far.   I finished the book feeling excited about the possibilities of coaching in organisations. Peter Hawkins has moved the discussion on coaching cultures from one of aspiration to one of possibility.

Presence - you have one but what is it? A Two Minute Blog

The context
A coaching client was told by his boss that he needed "more presence" in order to get to the next level of the organization.In this situation I had a suspicion that "more presence" was code from the boss for "be more like me". However there is no doubt we all individually bring something of ourselves every time we walk into a room, or attend a meeting, or interact with another person. We provoke some form of reaction in others. Peter Bluckert sees presence as "bringing who you are to what you do".

So what?
So what impact do you have on others? Do you bring energy or suck it away? Do you draw people towards you or put them off approaching you? Do you seem open or closed? One of us or apart from us?

Most of us will have two responses to the above questions. The first is that we kind of know the answers about our presence but are not 100% sure. The second is that how we are will depend on the situation.

The call to action
To really get a handle on your presence you have to ask others about it. You may know 70% but by asking others you will get validation on what you know and you will also probably hear a few things you are not fully aware of (nice things too!)

So go find 3 or 4 people you trust and ask yourself and them the following questions (borrowed from Dr. Geoff Pelham):


What is my presence?

What do I evoke in people?

What would extend my range?

Only by learning about how we impact others can we be intentional about how we show up to different people in different situations. It allows the possibility of range and repertoire while still being authentic to ourselves.

Be curious, be brave!

What is your manager identity? Is Coaching part of it?

What is your manager identity? Is Coaching part of it?

Time – let’s face it – none of us have enough time!

So then it comes down to a case of prioritising as best we can.

And so much of our conscious and subconscious prioritisation as a manager is based on what is important to our self-image.

So how do you see yourself as a manager? What do you value about your role?

If I see myself as a “doing manager”, I will prioritise action and tasks over everything else – but in my experience this approach often ends in tears – the manager becoming overwhelmed and frustrated by their workload, their reports disengaged and bored because their manager is doing their work, and the manager’s boss disappointed that the manager is not….well…managing.

If I see myself as having to be the “expert manager”, the source of all answers, then I will prioritise telling and solving the problems of others over everything else. The problem is you cannot maintain the expert stance long term as knowledge and expertise is so fluid - and if you do try to hold and protect your expertise you just end up suffocating your reports and creating an unhealthy dependency.

However if I see my identity as “the one who helps other do”, suddenly the importance of making time to connect and be with my reports rises up my “to do” list.

Coaching is not the primary task of a manager but nor is being the doer or the expert – its about a blend and it is about a manager integrating coaching into their routines so that people don’t even necessarily label it as coaching.

It’s is not about lengthy one to one coaching meetings. It’s is not about have a degree from the University of Buffalo in amateur psychology.

It’s about having a coaching mind-set so that you seek coaching moments with your reports.

When people are asked to describe a manager who really helped them develop, they say the manager did the following:

- Gave them a challenge
- Believed in them
- Asked the right questions as opposed to telling the “right answer”
- Trusted them, especially in high profile assignments
- Gave feedback – positive and critical – in a respectful way
- Seemed to be interested in them as a human being


It’s not rocket science – it never is unless you build rockets – it’s being a manager who really wants to be “the one who helps others do “– and then making the space in the calendar for that shift of focus to happen.