Think & Create

I Will Teach You To Be Rich.

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kennethg budget, Business, Goal Setting, Life, money, Stock Market, success, Time Management i will teach you to be rich, investing, money, personal investment, success

When you hear the word “coach”, what comes first into your mind? Do you picture a basketball team with a man/woman shouting out directions? Or perhaps a football team with a man/woman pacing to and fro and calling out the names of the players?

Coaching is no longer reserved to sports teams; it is now one of the key concepts in leadership and management. Why is coaching popular?

Coaching levels the playing field.

Coaching is one of the six emotional leadership styles proposed by Daniel Goleman. Moreover, it is a behavior or role that leaders enforce in the context of situational leadership. As a leadership style, coaching is used when the members of a group or team are competent and motivated, but do not have an idea of the long-term goals of an organization. This involves two levels of coaching: team and individual. Team coaching makes members work together. In a group of individuals, not everyone may have nor share the same level of competence and commitment to a goal. A group may be a mix of highly competent and moderately competent members with varying levels of commitment. These differences can cause friction among the members. The coaching leader helps the members level their expectations. Also, the coaching leader manages differing perspectives so that the common goal succeeds over personal goals and interests. In a big organization, leaders need to align the staffs’ personal values and goals with that of the organization so that long-term directions can be pursued.

Coaching builds up confidence and competence.

Individual coaching is an example of situational leadership at work. It aims to mentor one-on-one building up the confidence of members by affirming good performance during regular feedbacks; and increase competence by helping the member assess his/her strengths and weaknesses towards career planning and professional development. Depending on the individual’s level of competence and commitment, a leader may exercise more coaching behavior for the less-experienced members. Usually, this happens in the case of new staffs. The direct supervisor gives more defined tasks and holds regular feedbacks for the new staff, and gradually lessens the amount of coaching, directing, and supporting roles to favor delegating as competence and confidence increase.

Coaching promotes individual and team excellence.

Excellence is a product of habitual good practice. The regularity of meetings and constructive feedback is important in establishing habits. Members catch the habit of constantly assessing themselves for their strengths and areas for improvement that they themselves perceive what knowledge, skills, and attitudes they need to acquire to attain team goals. In the process, they attain individually excellence as well. An example is in the case of a musical orchestra: each member plays a different instrument. In order to achieve harmony of music from the different instrument, members will polish their part in the piece, aside from practicing as an ensemble. Consequently, they improve individually as an instrument player.

Coaching develops high commitment to common goals.

A coaching leader balances the attainment of immediate targets with long-term goals towards the vision of an organization. As mentioned earlier, with the alignment of personal goals with organizational or team goals, personal interests are kept in check. By constantly communicating the vision through formal and informal conversations, the members are inspired and motivated. Setting short-term team goals aligned with organizational goals; and making an action plan to attain these goals can help sustain the increased motivation and commitment to common goals of the members.

Coaching produces valuable leaders.

Leadership by example is important in coaching. A coaching leader loses credibility when he/she cannot practice what he/she preaches. This means that a coaching leader should be well organized, highly competent is his/her field, communicates openly and encourages feedback, and has a clear idea of the organization’s vision-mission-goals. By vicarious and purposive learning, members catch the same good practices and attitudes from the coaching leader, turning them into coaching leaders themselves. If a member experiences good coaching, he/she is most likely to do the same things when entrusted with formal leadership roles.

Some words of caution though: coaching is just one of the styles of leadership. It can be done in combination with the other five emotional leadership styles depending on the profile of the emerging team. Moreover, coaching as a leadership style requires that you are physically, emotionally, and mentally fit most of the time since it involves two levels of coaching: individual and team. Your members expect you to be the last one to give up or bail out in any situation especially during times of crises. A coaching leader must be conscious that coaching entails investing time on each individual, and on the whole team. Moreover, that the responsibilities are greater since while you are coaching members, you are also developing future coaches as well.

kennethg Business, Goal Setting, leadership, Networking, self improvement, success coaching, efficiency, goals, leader, leadership, management, manager, organization, team work

By Michael Masterson

For six years, we struggled with the restaurant, training the staff, upgrading the kitchen, and expanding the menu. During that time, we went through a half-dozen managers, an assortment of well meaning people with limited experience and a variety of personality disorders that were impossible to detect during the interviewing process… but then appeared almost immediately after they were put in charge.

The things we could control – how the restaurant looked, what it served, and how much it spent – got better. But the things we couldn’t control – the quality of the cooking, the efficiency of the service, and the bottom line – didn’t improve.

Finally, we hired a guy with a lot of serious experience. We had to pay him twice what we had paid his predecessors, but less than 60 days after he started, he produced the restaurant’s first complete profit-and-loss statement. And guess what? He had turned a profit.

We had been losing about $100,000 a year on this venture. Since it was an integral part of a larger business, we were able to sustain those losses. Still, we knew we eventually had to get the restaurant to run at least at breakeven. What we hadn’t recognized was how quickly that goal could be achieved simply by hiring a more qualified manager.

I’ve made this point many times in ETR: A really good manager is worth a dozen bad ones. When you are involved in a business with tight margins, getting the right person at the helm is not just advantageous, it’s essential.

Every employee you hire should have the potential to become a “superstar.” But making that goal a reality usually requires two significant costs:

* First you must be prepared to invest a considerable amount of your time and attention to finding qualified candidates and selecting the right one.

* And second, you must be willing to invest more dollars in that person by paying him a higher salary and giving him additional support.

“Elton,” a colleague of mine in the publishing business, lured a copywriter away from us several years ago. When this young man was with us, he was good and getting better. What we didn’t realize at the time, but found out later, was that he was just about to advance from better to really great.

Elton credits this writer with a great deal of the multimillion-dollar success he’s since achieved. And I keep that in mind when I mentor young people today. “Is this person about to acquire a financially valuable skill? Is he/she about to advance to a higher, more productive level?”

When you lose a good person, it hurts. When you replace a mediocre employee with a very good one, you rejoice because your prayers have been answered.

As you push your business forward, never forget the value of surrounding yourself with valuable people. Ordinary workers are fine… but they are ordinary. Extraordinary people will improve everything quickly, painlessly, and profitably.

How do you attract potential superstars? It’s a three-step process.

1. You have to find someone as good as – or better than – you at a skill that’s crucial to the success of your business.

2. You have to make him a very generous deal.

3. You must teach him everything you know.

It’s not easy to find extraordinary people. For one thing, they are few and far between. Don’t let scarcity tempt you to accept second best. You cannot make an ordinary person extraordinary. It will eat up all your time and end in failure.

Start your search now. Go to industry meetings. Place ads. Talk to people. Even if you can’t yet afford another salary, start looking.

When you meet someone who seems great, strike up a friendship. Find out as much as you can about him. Show interest. Follow his career. Offer to help. When the time is right, drop hints. “If you ever want to do such and such… give me a call.” Say it every time you see him. The message will get through.

Do this with anyone who seems great. Keep at it. One day an opportunity will present itself and you will have not just one but several highly qualified candidates for an important job. Select and hire the best.

Work with him closely for several months until you’ve seen what he can do. If he has the potential you’re looking for, it will become apparent. Invite him to share your future.

Start looking for your superstar immediately.

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