Wed • Feb 25th, 2009 • by Tom Nees • Comments 6
Tiger Woods returns to the tour on Wednesday this week, eight months after surgery to repair a knee injury. He was reported to have played a practice round earlier this week being observed by his coach, Hank Haney. I wondered, if the best golfer in the world has a coach shouldn’t leaders have the same?
Although athletic coaching is different from executive coaching there is a parallel. I’ve learned that coaching successful leaders is not so much teaching them how to execute as helping them learn from feedback and develop action plans for personal and professional development.
The parallel is having a third party observe, listen and look for areas of improvement that aren’t always apparent to the athlete or leader. Those who have followed Tiger Woods know that at times, as good as he is, he has developed bad habits and has looked to his coaches for direction. His coach Hank Haney isn’t a great golfer. He doesn’t need to be. He just knows what to look for and how to help a very successful golfer become more successful.
In a Harvard Business School article “What An Executive Coach Can Do For You,” Paul Michelman responds to the question “Do you need an executive coach?” He suggests that “coaching can be particularly effective in times of change for an executive.” He writes:
While you may be confident in your abilities to take on new tasks, you may feel that an independent sounding board would be beneficial in helping you achieve a new level of performance . . . you may recognize that succeeding in a new role requires skills that you have not needed to rely on in the past; a coach may help sharpen those skills, particularly when you need to do so on the fly.
An executive coach can be helpful as well in receiving and learning from feedback – which the article notes becomes “infrequent, and more unreliable” as individuals move to en executive level. Without good feedback “many executives plateau in critical interpersonal and leadership skills.”
The article cites a report that “86 percent of companies said they used coaching to sharpen the skills of individuals who have been identified as future organizational leaders.”
Executive coaching is not nearly so widespread in nonprofit and faith-based communities with limited budgets even in good economic times. With so many worthwhile and urgent needs before them boards may be reluctant to invest in the development of motivated and committed leaders. But effective leadership as well as winning golf, takes more than motivation and commitment.
Tiger Woods is back – and so is Hank Haney.
Sun • Feb 8th, 2009 • by Tom Nees • Comments 5
we laugh when we should be crying
and cry when we should be laughing
As leaders age I wonder how they become wise elders rather than grumpy old men or women? Is Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes really an old curmudgeon with something new to complain about each week or is it just an act? I think it some of both. It looks to me like he is playing himself. I know people, some of them not so old, who are like that.
And then there is former President Jimmy Carter who after four years in the White House has since received a Nobel Peace Prize. Now in his eighties he has written two books about Middle-East peace. He has become a consummate elder statesman.
Here are some of the ways mature leaders become wise elders.
They learn from the past.
My father once commented to me that some leaders have only 2 or 3 years of experience repeated 20 or more times in their lives. They keep making the same mistakes, never learning from experience.
One time I called my father out of frustration, feeling like quitting over something trivial, long since forgotten. I remember him saying that sometimes we “laugh when we should be crying and cry when we should be laughing,” and that given time I would learn to know the difference.
Wise elders remember, even write about lessons learned from experience. They accumulate wisdom.
They live in the present.
As they age, wise elders resist the temptation to constantly repeat stories of their past successes. They are valued for what they are thinking and doing in the present as much as for what they accomplished in the past.
They plan for the future.
In his book, The Cathedral Within: Transforming Your Life by Giving Something Back, Bill Shore, executive director of Share our Strength, reflects on cathedral builders, craftsmen who did not live long enough to see their work completed since ancient cathedrals took several lifetimes to build. It is a powerful metaphor and contrary to our obsession with short-term “project management” which always has a definable near-term end point.
Wise elders give themselves to causes they will not see to the end.
It’s Moses travelling to but not entering the promised land. It’s Martin Luther King, Jr., on a mountain top viewing a future he did not expect to experience.
Bertha Munro lived long enough to become an iconic thought leader to those who knew her at Eastern Nazarene College near Boston. The title of her book of reflections, The Years Teach, parallels a statement by Ralph Waldo Emerson , “the years teach much which the days never know.”
But, as my father observed, the years don’t teach everyone. In the movie Cars, “Doc”
(voice of Paul Newman), the old recluse, Desoto race-car/person begrudgingly comes out of self-imposed hiding to help the young hot-shot driver Lightning McQueen learn that there are things in life more important than winning. Doc becomes a wise elder.
That’s another thing about wise elders – they give their time generously to those who follow.
Mon • Feb 2nd, 2009 • by Tom Nees • Comments 2
John Calhoun knows something about coming back from disappointment and defeat. Fifteen years ago he resigned from his congregation due to conflicts out of his control.
At age 50, with no salary and no promise of a job he vacated the church parsonage, placed his furnishings in storage and with no place to live he moved his family temporarily into a Motel 6. For a year he lived on his savings while searching for a position to match his calling and skills. Then an opportunity opened in New York City. Eventually he assumed his present leadership assignment as the overseer of more than 80 churches and missions in the San Francisco Bay area.
Last year in their annual conference several hundred pastors and members of his jurisdiction gave him a unanimous vote of confidence – almost unheard of these days. He is now the chairman of the Board of Trustees at Point Loma Nazarene University and a member of the General Board of the Church of the Nazarene.
I thought about John and several other friends while reading a chapter on “Handling Defeat” in John Baldoni’s new book – Lead by Example: 50 Ways Great Leaders Inspire Results.
As a leadership consultant Baldoni has learned that, “Every leader should know how to lose. Failure,” he advises, “is not something they teach you in school; it is something life teaches you.”
He offers these suggestions –
Avoid personalizing defeat
“Your project failed. Your team disbanded. Your career is in jeopardy. Not so fast. Points one and two may be true but only if you accept defeat, and internalize it as a personal failing, will you be defeated.
You must accept that the project did not meet expectations and your leadership was lacking, but you the person are not a ‘loser.’”
Analyze what went wrong
“Self-analysis that leads to self-awareness is required. Self-analysis that leads to self-pity is to be loathed. Take an active role in your self-discovery process. Write down what you would do differently the next time.”
Renew yourself
“Choose your next objective, or ready yourself for the next effort. Study your mistakes. Consider your options. In time you will get your energy back and be ready for the struggle ahead.”
In a section of the book on how to “Handle the Tough Stuff,” Baldoni encourages leaders to develop “Perseverance: Keep Pounding the Rock” and “Resilience: Get Up And Do It Again,” – with examples of successful leaders who have learned to cope with and learn from defeat.
All of the leaders I’m coaching have had to overcome some major personal challenge, disappointment or defeat in the course of their careers. Most of us know friends and colleagues who have emerged from setbacks to continue or become strong, effective leaders. We are inspired by leaders who hold steady while in a crucible.
For Lisa Marshall in “Speak The Truth, Point to Hope,” the journey to leadership maturity requires facing down our own “monsters, that are illuminated,” she says, “by our responses.” Defeat is not what happens to us but the result of how we handle what happens to us.
After all of our reading, training, and coaching for effective leadership, one thing is sure – sooner or later, personal challenges, disappointment and defeat will come. It may be a family tragedy, a business collapse, a health issue, an unanticipated lawsuit, or some personal failure. Leaders seldom plan for these unwelcome events. Although according to Baldoni and Marshall they probably should.
Defeat is defeated if leaders understand Baldoni’s point-of-view. “Leadership,” as he concludes in his Epilogue, “is a blend of self-preparation and doing for others.” There will no “roadmaps.” he warns, “but there will be plenty of road-blocks.”
There is no lasting or final defeat for those who lead to serve others.