Great teams cultivate a culture that encourages internal coaching. People on these teams don’t hold back; they are not political and they do not miss opportunities to get better.

If you are lucky enough to participate in such a team, you know how great it feels. It is one of the most joyous and fulfilling experiences you can have. Executives from our coaching seminars tell us about the excitement of working with winning teams that develop a coaching culture. These teams make them better professionals and help them to continue to grow and develop.

We all get inspired when witnessing a sports team that is moved by something greater; wherein, the individual players surrender to become part of a greater whole that amplifies their individual contribution.

What are the characteristics of a strong coaching culture, where each person is ready to coach and be coached by everyone else on the team? They are the same characteristics of winning teams:

1.    Unified vision and purpose
2.    Willingness to change
3.    Love of learning and growth
4.    Great humor
5.    Fanaticism about collaboration and improvement
6.    Focus on the team output, not on roles
7.    No defensive in the face of learning
8.    Fast recovery and resiliency
9.    Celebrating success and celebrating learning from mistakes
10.  Low on ego, high on results

Learn about developing Top Talent Teams here.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jun.25.2008 :: Coaching, Organizational Development :: No Comments »

To lead is to go where you have never gone before, to open a way forward into unknown, uncharted possibilities. Then it is to encourage, coach and help others release their greater capacity to achieve the seemingly impossible, to realize a potential beyond their self-concept.

The first breakthrough is inside, in your capacity to reframe reality and lead your own life. Coaching others into their self-discovery and leadership is the natural next step.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jun.01.2008 :: Coaching, Leadership :: No Comments »

Here is a coaching dialogue excerpt that happened this week. P called and we started our conversation. It went like this:
Me: How are you?
P: Not so good today. I feel I am trying too hard to help too many people. I don’t feel too well. I am actually quite exhausted.
M: On a scale of one to ten, where ten is feeling absolutely amazing and one is feeling as if you are dying, where would you say you are?
P: Oh, probably 5.3
M: Well, that’s not good… 9 is being “in the zone”… 8 is a very good functional order… 7 is okay but not your best… 6 is right on the red line below which a bunch of red lights start blinking on your dashboard…  So you are clearly at that point of red lights blinking…
P: Yes, that is correct.
M: Well, step one is to notice it. Step two is to be diagnostic. Would you like to do that?
P: Sure, what do you mean by diagnostic?
M: Well, I can run a list of plausible reasons that could be impacting you and contributing to the way you feel. As I go through each of them, you can say “No” or you can say “Yes”. You can be even more specific and calibrate the responses in terms of how important that area is for you. You might say that’s a big factor or that’s a medium or a small factor. You will then be in a position to decide which one of them you deal with first and take on a remedial or corrective action.
P: Sounds good. I am ready.
M: Great. Here we go. You work too hard and try to help too many people because…?

1. You feel you are not good enough. You feel you need to prove something.
2. You take other people’s problems as your own.
3. You spend too much time thinking what other people think about you.
4. You carry a sense of guilt which you try to alleviate by what you do.
5. You are not ready to forgive yourself.
6. You are too distant from yourself, from your own voice as you are pulled in different directions.
7. You don’t know how to ask for help.
8. You don’t know how to receive help when it’s offered.
9. You feel tired and low in energy because of imbalanced nutrition.
10. You don’t know how to stop, relax and rest.
11. You mix with people that are not good for you.
12. You worry and obsess about things that are outside your control.
13. You’ve been disconnected from what you love to do for too long.
14. You have something urgent you actually have to do before anything else and you are not doing it.

P responded live, at the point as I listed each of these possible causes. In the end she had five relevant items that contributed to the way she felt – one big, two medium sized, and two small ones. We talked through the issues and we then moved on to step three – planning specific actions.

M: Great. As we do this let’s capture the steps so you can apply them to anything you need.
Step one: Notice – become aware of what is going on.
Step two: Diagnose – frame plausible reasons/causes, discern the relevant ones and grade them by weighted influence.
Step three: Plan – identify the action you are now ready to take. (There are many strategies in this step).
The coaching conversation continued into forwarding the action.

Since it all happened live and P enjoyed the discovery, she gave me permission to post this excerpt here.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: May.11.2008 :: Coaching :: No Comments »

50 percent of coaching insights and decisions that are not acted upon are lost within 24 hours. More than 80 percent of coaching insights and decisions are lost if not acted upon within 72 hours.

The best time to act on your decision and take your insight forward is always now.
Every insight and decision must be validated and confirmed in action. Insight is an energy release. Decision is an energy directive. If there is no action to validate the release and to confirm the directive of energy, then the insight and the decision will dissipate.

Neurons fire for a connection to build a new circuitry. A new insight or a new decision creates a new brain circuitry. The circuitry must then be validated by action or it dissipates. If it is not validated by action, the insight is forgotten, the decision aborted and the coaching value wasted.

What new decisions have you made? What new insights have you had? Take action now!

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Mar.01.2008 :: Coaching :: No Comments »

Jordan is a young manager. From the start, he has been very effective in solving problems and was quickly promoted to a management position and responsibility. His approach to solving problems has always been aggressive. Show him a problem and he is all over it. Jordan takes great pride in fixing problems. When he walks into a room, Jordan enjoys hearing people say, “Mr. Fixer is back.”

For four months Jordan had nine account managers in his team and now six of them resent him. When I interviewed them they said they admire Jordan, and that he is phenomenal, but they are afraid of him and his temper. When inquiring further I discovered that there was some suppressed resentment against Jordan underneath the fear. “Jordan has a big huge blind spot” one manager on his team told me.”He micro-manages us and wants to know in detail about every deal in the works. He doesn’t trust us and it says more about his insecurity and paranoia than about his capability. He is so used to being the superstar that he reduces all of us on his team to be less than we can be. He takes the job and the pride of success away from us. My guess is, if we don’t see a change very soon half of his team is not going to be here in a couple of months.”

The art of leadership is as much about “what you don’t do” as it is about “what you do”. You’ve got to know when to resist the “fixing itch”; when to delegate and trust the other person to find the solution. It’s about learning to resist yourself. Great leaders are capable of resisting the “let me fix it” reflex. The surest and fastest way to cause resentment around you is to point out every detail of what is going wrong and then attempt to fix it for everybody. I see a relief in managers when they begin to discover the art of coaching. They realize they can use coaching strategies to help their people unleash their own talents.

Jordan experienced an epiphany in our MC class (The Manager Coach). He had always thought of himself as being firmly in control. As we practiced the coaching conversation and the tactic of stepping back from “fixing” to “open ended questions”, Jordan was surprised to discover he was not in control. His fixing habit, Mr. Fixer’s pride and self image were in charge of him. Once he realized these issues, he was ready to step back and then make a leap toward letting go of trying to control a multitude of details. He was ready to empower his team and their capabilities. There was a big smile on his face when he recognized the greater freedom and versatility that become available in asking open ended questions and in trusting the people around him to find answers. It was as if a great weight fell off his shoulders. When I visited with his team six weeks later, I was told, “Jordan is a different person. It’s as if a light was turned on.”

There is a profound change that takes place when you shift from “fixing” to “coaching”. You change your language, your focus and even your posture and energy. It’s a bit like discovering the second floor above the basement you have lived in for years. Jordan suddenly discovered the Manager Coach floor, where natural light comes through the window and there is a view that was never available in the basement.  Breaking through his own limitations, and seeing clearly the things that control him rather than what he chose and aspired for, opened his eyes to the greater light of shared experience and collaboration. It made him a stronger leader. His team was prepared to rally around his own transformation as they recognized the new opportunity. Their results quickly improved and exceeded everyone’s expectations.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Feb.10.2008 :: Coaching, Leadership, Organizational Development :: No Comments »

The Coaching Conversation is dedicated to improving your ability to succeed, and helping you to move forward and take action. It may feature and include any number of the 32 natures and characters listed below.

Coaching conversation is…
1. Strengths based and
2. Opportunities focused

The conversation is…
3. Challenge embracing
4. Possibilities assessing and creating
5. Observations framing
6. Insights seeking and articulating
7. Capabilities evaluating and
8. Frameworks exploring

The coaching invites and makes possible…
9. Feed-back / feed-forward receiving
10. Priorities sorting
11. Goals setting
12. Strategy framing

Through the coaching conversation we promote…
13. Intelligence and resources gathering
14. Confidence and stature enhancing
15. Blockages removing
16. Action forwarding

The coaching conversation entails…
17. Blind spot revealing
18. Clarity forming
19. Letdown overcoming
20. Closure finding
21. Alignment creating
22. Options generating

Through the coaching conversation you find…
23. Purpose and values re-centering
24. Life and work balance enhancing
25. Results driving
26. Future designing
27. Potential realizing

There are other specific focuses that can become part of a coaching conversation…
28. Management effectiveness improving
29. Stretch assignment enabling
30. “Twelve Environments” organizing
31. Complexity managing
32. Keynote, meeting or conversation preparing

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Jan.24.2008 :: Coaching :: No Comments »

I am often asked towards the end of a four or five day seminar, “How can I sustain what I have learned here?” Typically this is an indication that the person has found new insights which they want to act on and not lose. The new self-knowledge and insight may consist of a clear set of values, appreciation of personal strengths, a new leadership strategy, how to better enable and develop their team, new appreciation about building trustful relationships, a clear set of goals, a determination to better align short and long term intentions, or something else. They ask how to sustain it because they instinctively feel that the pressure system they are returning to will be challenging. They fear losing the precious clarity they gained while in the seminar when faced with returning to the demands of their busy lives.

I usually reply with the five step success strategy for everything:

1. First, you have to be driven. If you are not driven with a great intensity the other four steps will not be enough.
2. Second, you’ve got to design your environment to support your success. Build into your life reminders, support mechanisms and rituals to help you stay on course.
3. Third, have a coach or a buddy to help you stay accountable to your decisions and personal commitments.
4. Create or join a mastermind support group with people whose endeavor is on a similar path with intentions and objectives that resonate with yours.
5. Attend an annual retreat, seminar, development opportunity to gain further knowledge and insight.

These five steps are the foolproof strategy for sustainable success in everything.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Dec.31.2007 :: Coaching, Personal Growth, Strategy :: No Comments »

Mentoring and coaching are two adjacent strategies to develop your capabilities and talents. They each bring a different emphasis and approach but the driving outcome is similar: to improve your ability to succeed in what you hope to accomplish.

1. A mentor is someone who has specific experience in the role or field of knowledge sought after. Mentoring is based on the mentor’s experience and expertise. A coach is someone that brings a set of questions, tools, processes and strategies to help you clarify and achieve your aspirations. As a coach you don’t have to be a CEO or run a billion dollar business to work with a CEO of a multimillion dollar company.

2. Mentoring is primarily the transfer of knowledge from someone who knows to someone who doesn’t. A big part of coaching is helping you access and draw out knowledge from inside – to realize what you already know but have not yet acted upon.

3. A mentor tells you what he did and how it worked and prescribes his success formula. A coach helps you to discover your own talents and recognize your unique success formula.

4. A mentor will model the behavior, demonstrate the skill and describe her experience. A coach will help you discover your way.

5. Often a mentor is an older person. The intimation is that the mentor ‘has been there’, ‘has done that’, has ‘faced these kinds of challenges’. A coach can help you discover your challenges together with you.

6. In terms of scope, mentoring tends to focus on the task, the role, the domain of knowledge. Coaching is about the whole person including the 12 eco-systems of success.

7. A mentor transfers job-specific and role-specific skills, organization-specific know-how, and culture-specific understandings. For example, engineer mentors a younger engineer; a movie director mentors a beginner movie director; a financial planner mentors financial planners, a manager with experience in multi-cultural groups mentors a junior manager moving into multi-cultural responsibility. A great coach will help you identify what’s most important to you, clarify what you “really” want and will help you create your individual roadmap to get to where you want to go. The Coach will encourage and challenge you to take action and will hold you accountable for your commitments.

8. The mentoring relationship is driven by the mentee’s inquiry and curiosity. The coaching conversation often evolves through the coach’s inquiry and usage of powerful questions. Therefore, a mentoring engagement thrives when the mentee takes the initiative to promote interesting questions to the mentor with their own insatiable desire to learn and apply the learning. The coaching engagement thrives through a collaborative discovery guided by interesting and provocative questions the coach brings forward.

9. When you want to know how something works, an organization, a process, a culture, you seek out a mentor. When you want to clarify how you should work on your future objectives you seek out a coach.

10. The power equation of coaching is peer-to-peer. The mentoring power equation is senior-to-junior or more experienced to less experienced.

11. The mentor shares life’s lessons and wisdom and you identify and decide what out of their experience is relevant for you. A coach will generate together with you options and strategies from which to choose your course of action.

12. As a coach you can take a mentoring approach when you have a personal knowledge in the domain of inquiry and the person coached inquires about your experience. As a mentor you can take up a coaching strategy to help the mentee discover her optimal path of action. The best coaches and mentors both enjoy helping people to actualize their potential and realize their goals.

13. An effective coaching program progresses through planned sequences of meetings: monthly, twice monthly or weekly sessions. Discipline is an important aspect of the coaching framework. We create accountability inside the coaching space. The mentoring framework is often less formal and the onus of initiative and discipline rests largely with the mentee.

14. You ask a mentor: “what should I do in this situation?” and she tells you her experience. You ask a coach and he reframes the question back to you: “What do you hope to achieve? What are your options? What if you did nothing? What feels right? Which path is most energizing? What would you do if you knew you cannot fail?”

Great managers are capable of a stepping into both – coaching and mentoring strategies. In our Adaptive Leadership (AL) and the Manager Coach (MC) programs we practice theses skills and behaviors. Most managers tend to use one style of engagement in which they are comfortable. Great managers practice situational awareness and adapt their mode of engagement to enhance the situation, promote growth and achieve best results.

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Dec.08.2007 :: Coaching, Mentoring :: No Comments »

“Coaching is a collaborative process dedicated to help and inspire an individual or team to achieve a desired result.”
Here are some of the benefits of coaching I have experienced and witnessed both in being coached and in coaching executives.
The coaching process unfolds through discovery, expanded awareness and insight and leads to designing a strategy of action. It is intuitive, energizing, challenging, sometimes painful and always interesting. If it is not stimulating and interesting then the coaching process is not on. Coaching value is generated on the foundation of trust and authentic conversation.

Here are 32 Benefits you can find through Coaching. You can…
1. Increase self-awareness
2. Clarify situations and reduce complexity
3. Identify opportunities
4. Evaluate threats
5. Explore options and choose the optimal path
6. Remove obstacles
7. Improve communication effectiveness
8. Prioritize goals
9. Articulate values and purpose
10. Refocus on the vital few most important things
11. Let go of the unimportant
12. Role play an upcoming situation and improve readiness
13. Learn to ask powerful questions
14. Examine beliefs to overcome personal limitations
15. Develop a strategy for career advancement
16. Develop a personal and business vision
17. Download new ideas and frameworks
18. Get feedback and feed-forward on personal strengths and style
19. Update your self-view and presentation
20. Align short and long terms objectives
21. Free up time and resources
22. Manage chaos and ambiguity
23. Resolve conflicts and pacify emotionally charged situations
24. Change your inner state and practice new ways and approach
25. Gain confidence and fluency
26. Practice and optimize influencing skills
27. Create a strategy to develop your team
28. Rebalance work and personal life and family
29. Learn to coach individuals and teams for breakthrough results
30. Overcome a career setback or other significant disappointment
31. Clear your space and environment
32. Set a course of action and build support system and accountability

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.15.2007 :: Coaching :: 1 Comment »

As I said in Part One of this net casting – this process is intended to help you gather your thoughts and your strengths and prepare for the best opportunities and growth you can have in the next year. Visit these questions (and those in the previous parts) time and again from now to the end of the year. By December you will have an open net that is ready to find and receive new answers.

In part four of this net casting process I invite you to look at the following questions:

10. What will make next year the best year yet?
11. Who and what do I want to help next year? Where can I make the most difference?
12. What support do I need? What help do I need to achieve all that I hope to be doing next year? What and who am I ready to have come into my life to help me live on purpose and realize my opportunities?

© Aviv Shahar

Aviv Shahar :: Nov.02.2007 :: Coaching, Personal Growth :: No Comments »