In my previous blog I presented Part 1 of my speech in Atlanta, GA. to senior leaders at the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) on the subject of the Leader as Coach including, creating a Coaching Culture and providing a Productive Work Environment.

In this blog I’ll present Part 2 of my speech on the importance of investing in an organization’s future through Proactive Leadership Coaching of leaders and their teams.

Again the CDC is a United States federal agency with 15,000 employees under the Department of Health and Human Services based in Atlanta, GA. Its mission is to focus national attention on developing and applying disease prevention and control to improve the health of the people of the United States. The CDC also works with other countries to protect the public health and safety for the people of the world, for example, working to control the impact of potential global health epidemics such as the Bird Flu.

CDC senior leaders include MDs, Ph.Ds, technicians and other professional staff focused on the achievement of the organization’s national and global missions.

I spoke to CDC leaders about the importance of creating a Coaching Culture and maintaining a Productive Work Environment as importance elements of keeping their teams on the right performance path. Following is a high level synopsis of my comments to CDC leaders.

Following is Part 2 of my comments to CDC leaders on the Leader as Coach.

Effective leaders coach their teams that successful leaders are those who:

• Acknowledge the things they know and do well versus the things they don’t.

• Are not ashamed to ask for help if they’re headed in the wrong direction or are stuck.

• Self manage and continually develop themselves and their teams by addressing growth opportunities.

• Are intimately knowledgeable of the larger organization’s goals and the environment in which it operates.

• Continually manage the ambiguity associated with team plans, actions and decisions.

• Are proficient in the competencies and behaviors the organization values.

• Plan and execute the right actions by effectively engaging their teams.

• Are knowledgeable of the critical levers to pull to enhance the likelihood of success.

• Are confident in themselves and their teams.

• Monitor progress and make the necessary course corrections in goals, and actions required for success.

• Don’t panic, instead they learn from mistakes so they’re not repeated.

The advantages to leaders who proactively coach their teams are:

• Focused teams that are clear on strategic direction and expectations.

• Engaged and energized teams.

• Aligned teams who own team objectives and actions.

• Team members who’re role models for the larger organization.

• Team members with enriched team talent portfolios.

• A sustainable bench of capable, prepared leaders for current and future leadership roles and responsibilities.

The key benefits for teams receiving leadership coaching are:

• Enhanced leadership capabilities.

• A commitment to one another’s success.

• Effective working relationships among team leaders.

• Recognition that leadership and coaching effectiveness take time - they’re journeys not destinations.

• Organization loyalty - because of the organization’s leadership coaching investment.

Coaching like leadership can be challenging but it’s well worth the effort to grow in competence and to utilize your leadership coaching expertise to grow and develop your teams. The Return On Investment (ROI) for your time, effort and expense will be more capable leaders and enhanced team performance.

However, success as a Leader Coach requires your personal commitment and involvement, meaning:

• Being committed to growing the talent of the organization’s leadership for today and tomorrow.

• Being vested and committed to your team’s success, i.e., monitoring and extending a hand and not waiting for them to ask for help if they’re foundering.

• Being willing to get personally involved in the coaching and development of individual team members, i.e., you must be actively involved; you can’t sit on the sidelines!

• Being willing to role model what you expect of your teams.

• Celebrating team and team member successes.

Every leader desires to leave a legacy of added value on his/her watch. Establishing a Coaching Culture and Productive Work Environment for teams to explore and grow is the first step in the process. The next and equally important step is to invest in and grow your team talent portfolios through the Proactive Coaching of team members for: “It’s better to invest in and grow talent for the long term than to simply consume (deplete) it for short term results”.

The Corbett Group is a certified leadership coaching and organization consulting organization. Our Value Proposition is to help improve organization results by establishing alignment and commitment between leaders and their teams with their vision, goals and actions. We accomplish this by helping leverage the strengths and address the development opportunities of leaders and their teams, as well as, ensure ownership of team goals and actions, and lead the change efforts required to achieve their vision.

In this blog I’ll share key portions of a speech I was invited to give to senior leaders of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, GA. The subject of the Leader as Coach and the importance of creating a Coaching Culture and maintaining a Productive Work Environment through Proactive Leadership Coaching to keep teams on the right performance path.

As you probably know the CDC is a United States federal agency with 15,000 employees under the Department of Health and Human Services based in Atlanta, GA. Its mission is to focus national attention on developing and applying disease prevention and control, environmental health, occupational safety and health, health promotion, prevention and education activities designed to improve the health of the people of the United States. Additionally on a global scale the CDC works with counterparts from other countries to protect the public health and safety for the people of the world, for example, working to control the impact of potential global health epidemics such as the Bird Flu.

As you can imagine the challenges to effectively organize and lead teams of CDC employees including MDs, Ph.Ds, technicians and other professional staff to successfully achieve the organization’s national and global missions are many and varied.

Following is Part 1, i.e., a high level summary of my comments to CDC leaders on the importance and benefits of crating a Coaching Culture and a Productive Work Environment.

In organizations with a Coaching Culture coaching is part of the organizational fabric and an integral part of human capital development - it’s seen as the right thing to do to enhance and sustain organization success. Here coaching is a gift that everyone is entitled to receive from their leader. In this setting coaching is provided as an investment to enhance an individual’s current and future value to the organization by enhancing and leveraging his/her capabilities.

Creating and sustaining a Coaching Culture is important because it sets the tone and expectation for coaching to be provided and used as a universally accepted and integrated leadership development tool across the organization. In this way leadership capabilities can be enhanced, aligned and sustained through the gift of coaching and through the supportive environment of a Coaching Culture.

The benefits of creating a Coaching Culture include:

• Instilling the organizational values and desired behaviors for success.

• Helping leaders exercise their fiduciary responsibility by growing their teams’ talent portfolios.

• Enhancing and refining the coaching capabilities of leaders and teams.

• Building trusting working relationships.

• Reinforcing the importance of leading by example.

• Helping coachees gain important personal insights about their strengths and tendencies.

• Creating a productive, sustainable and supportive culture of development and success.

• Portraying the organization to others, both internally and externally as a desirable place to work, develop and have a successful career.

Key elements for maintaining a Productive Work Environment require leaders to:

• Articulate a clear, compelling vision.

• Be accessible to team members.

• Value diverse perspectives of team members.

• Encourage constructive debate.

• Provide timely, balanced feedback.

• Proactively monitor and coach team members rather than wait for them to ask for help.

• Hold team members accountable for outcomes.

The advantages to organizations that are committed to leadership coaching are:

• A Sustainable Coaching Culture.

• An Internalized Leadership Development Process.

• A Strong Bench of Leaders from which to draw today and tomorrow.

• Executive Retention.

Successful leaders create a setting where exploration, learning and growth supported by leader coaching can successfully occur. A coaching culture and productive work environment will enable the frequent and effective coaching and development of team members by leaders and enhance the performance of their teams.

The Corbett Group is a certified leadership coaching and organization consulting organization. Our Value Proposition is to help improve organization results by establishing alignment and commitment between leaders and their teams with their vision, goals and actions. We accomplish this by helping leverage the strengths and address the development opportunities of leaders and their teams, as well as, ensure ownership of team goals and actions, and lead the change efforts required to achieve their vision.

You’re probably familiar with the saying: “Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime”. When we become leaders we’re given a portfolio of talent in the form of teams. As leaders we can take a strategic, fiduciary perspective and increase the talent level and value of the portfolio, and grow and develop confident, capable leaders for today and tomorrow by “teaching them to fish”. Or a leader can milk (i.e., drain rather than enrich) the talent portfolio in the interest of achieving short term successes by “giving them a fish”.

Telling others what to do, i.e., “giving them a fish”, will likely change their behavior in the near term, but has no lasting value - telling fails to provide opportunities to learn by observing and practicing what’s expected. Alternatively, role modeling, i.e., “teaching them to fish”,  are teaching moments used by leaders to demonstrate expectations, shape team member behaviors and actions, and show the leader’s commitment to team member development and success.

Leading by telling is akin to leading by osmosis, i.e., hoping your team learns by absorbing your words of wisdom. Alternatively leading by imposing your will is leading by intimidation, i.e., using your physical presence or leadership level to influence behavior. Neither hope nor intimidation has lasting teaching benefits for adults in the world of work because they’re short term focused,  lack the instructive value of learning by observation and practice, and position the leader as less than personally vested in the team’s development and long term success.

The need to deliver extremely challenging results quickly can cause leaders to do more telling than role modeling. Communications from the leader become downward directives (i.e., adult to child) rather than  lateral (i.e., adult to adult) collaborative conversations. Unfortunately, if left unchecked, adult to child conversations become the norm and significantly diminish team member enthusiasm, commitment, capabilities and results.

As leaders we want members of our teams to partner, i.e., to commit with us to accomplish the right things and to feel invested and valued in the process. Each and every day we want them to embrace the team’s vision and make important contributions by bringing their best capabilities and efforts to the table.

When people are engaged and invested with their leader and team they are willing to bring and commit more of themselves and their capabilities to achieve a goal and/or overcome a challenge - they exude a what ever it takes/can do level of energy and commitment. Conversely, when they are not invested and instead feel marginalized by their leader; they are more likely to spend time appearing committed on the outside, while on the inside feeling personally vulnerable, limiting their level of commitment and avoiding  all risk taking for fear of making a career limiting mistake. This frequently results in leader expectations not being met and the potential downward spiral of the quality of the leader/team relationship.

So what should a leader do? First, reflect on the best bosses you’ve had and think about the key actions that he/she employed that made working with them a rewarding experience. Second, are you employing these actions with your team - if they worked for you they may work for your team? Third, demonstrate your behavioral expectations of the team by leading by example - don’t wait for your team to figure it out on their own; it wastes time and can damage relationships in the mean time. Fourth, commit to leading by example every day and to hold the team accountable for doing the same with their teams. When leaders role model behavioral expectations they demonstrate their vested interest in the team’s prospects for success and respect for the capabilities of team members.

What does good role modeling look like? It’s a leader who:

• Knows clearly what he/she wants the team to accomplish and who provides latitude on how it’s to be achieved.

• Does what he/she says and consistently demonstrates the behavior and actions expected of their teams.

• Takes the time to develop trusting, meaningful relationships with team members - he/she learns who they are as individuals, their personal/career goals, their strengths and development needs, and what motivates them.

• Ensures he/she hears from everyone rather than the same few and actively listens to the range of perspectives allowing himself/herself to be influenced by what’s said.

• Mobilizes and leverages the diverse strengths and perspectives of team members.

• Holds team members accountable to actively participate in determining and executing the how of meeting expectations.

• Doesn’t sit idly by when teams are struggling but rather uses struggles as teaching moments to help team members isolate key issues and identify the best way forward.

• Provides balanced timely feedback to team members and is personally vested in team members development and success.

• Holds direct reports accountable to role model desired behaviors and actions in leading their teams.

What are the key benefits to leaders who are good role models for their teams?

• Team members will learn to be good role models for their teams by practicing desired behaviors and actions.

• Team members will be valued as role models across the broader organization.

• Desired behaviors and actions will become infectious and lead to enhanced collaboration and team performance and better results.

• Business units with good role models are viewed by the larger organization as desirable places to work and develop.

So leaders, role model what you want to see from your team members. Don’t wait for them to figure it out unless creating an engaging, productive work environment and meeting or exceeding expected results are not a top priority.

The Corbett Group is a certified leadership/executive coaching and organization consulting firm that works with leaders and teams to expand their capabilities, improve and sustain team alignment and achieve their vision and goals.

Bob Corbett

As leaders I’m sure you’ve read about and/or possibly experienced the break through impact of leading fully engaged teams. Engaged teams know that timing + capability = opportunity and that opportunity can be lost without an urgent, timely response, i.e., the fierce urgency of now. To that end engaged teams are energized by opportunities to make break through impacts rather than incremental improvements.

While engaged teams see the need to align short term and long term goals and actions, they view short term goals as milestone steps to achieving and sustaining long term strategic objectives. They’re motivated to make their mark by helping to move the organization forward in a significant way to achieve its vision and to sustain organization success.

Engaged teams are self-energized and staffed with members having diverse yet complementary knowledge and capabilities. When armed with a compelling vision, clear expectations, mutual trust and supportive leaders there’s nothing they can’t accomplish. A compelling vision fires up team members and provides the strategic direction for their actions; clear expectations set the objectives to be achieved; mutual trust fuels commitment; diverse yet complementary knowledge and capabilities provides synergies enabling members to constructively debate, multitask, and successfully complete individual and group tasks in a collaborative fashion; and a supportive leader provides access and guidance and runs interference for the team by, for example, navigating and/or removing barriers to the team’s success.

Engaged team members are driven by:

• A compelling vision and mutual agreement on what needs to be done.

• A trust based individual and collective commitment to one another’s success.

• A passion to successfully complete important work and make a significant contribution.

• A desire to create sustainable, successful outcomes.

• The need to sustain a productive team environment for success.

• The opportunity to role model effective team behaviors for the organization.

With team member synergies, an engaging work environment, and a supportive leader the outcomes achieved by engaged teams are consistent and predictable in terms of the quality of their process and results.

Alternatively the success of unengaged teams is a bit of a crap shoot. This is in part because team members may not have diverse, complimentary knowledge and capabilities; may have silo mentalities driven by personal interests; may not have mutual agreement on what needs to be done and how; may not be passionate about the team’s mission; and may not be committed to one another’s success. These factors make unengaged team success more likely to be a matter of luck or coincidence and therefore inconsistent and unpredictable.

Among the key reasons for leaders to field engaged teams are their potential for breakthrough outcomes resulting from:

• Alignment: Team members are on the same page in terms of goals and actions.

• Creative Tension: Team members debate and reach consensus on the best ideas and actions.

• New Insights: Team members identify new links between key influencing factors.

• Innovation: Team members identify opportunities to improve cycle times, capabilities, etc.

• Team Energy and Passion: Team members enjoy working together and are fired up about team goals and actions.

• Ownership and Commitment: Team members individually and collectively own the team’s goals and actions and are committed to one another’s success.

• Strategic Orientation: Team members keep sight of the big picture to achieve the organization’s vision.

Among the key reasons to be a member of an engaged team are the opportunity:

• To contribute doing organizationally significant work

• To work with highly capable colleagues

• For high visibility and recognition

• To share, learn and grow from interacting with fellow team members

• To increase his/her market value within the organization

Leaders can monitor the effectiveness of engaged teams and members by monitoring the:

• Team Results versus agreed upon Metrics.

• Level of Enthusiasm about team progress.

• Continued Growth in Knowledge: Maintain knowledge of the costs and impacts of team recommendations and the degree of difficulty in implementing them.

• Level of Trust & Collaboration: Net change positively/negatively in team member trust and collaboration.

• Continued Growth in Insight(s): Continued new perspectives, e.g., cause and effect, impacting team recommendations and planned actions.

• Growth in Courage of Convictions: The willingness to hold and constructively defend an unpopular opinion and make a compelling case for its adoption.

To sustain the passion, focus, commitment and effectiveness of engaged team members, leaders should be accessible and seriously consider team requests to revise and realign existing organization processes impacted by the implementation of team recommendations.

So leaders engage your teams; you’ve got everything to gain and little to lose. Engaged teams are invaluable because they consistently achieve desired results, create a supportive team culture, and are infectious role models for other teams in the organization.

The Corbett Group is a certified leadership/executive coaching and organization consulting firm that works with leaders and teams to expand their capabilities , improve performance, improve alignment and achieve their vision and goals.

Bob Corbett

What is failure? It’s the inability to perform or the lack of success. What is success? It’s generally defined as the attainment of a desired outcome. For some success might be achieving a goal, e.g., receiving a desired promotion, or achieving a mastery of a technology or subject matter, or developing a successful high performing team, or developing more effective working relationships with peers, or achieving more work/life balance. It’s in our collective DNA to want to be seen as applying our talents successfully. Consequently, to intentionally pursue failure is a disconnect.

Why is success important to us? Psychologically and physically success feels a lot better than failure including, favorable visibility, a sense of accomplishment, acknowledgment by others, and tangible rewards, i.e., increased responsibility and/or increased compensation. In contrast failure doesn’t feel as good as exemplified by, unfavorable visibility, the failure to achieve, negative recognition and lower self esteem. In the former case you feel on top of the world; in the latter you’re at the bottom of the barrel. So it’s more likely that when leaders are unsuccessful it’s because they’re unprepared, i.e., lacked the necessary skills and confidence, rather than consciously pursued failure.

What does it take for a leader to be successful? Success requires leaders to:

• acknowledge the things they know and do well versus the things that they don’t.

• ask for help without feeling embarrassed.

• continually develop by addressing growth opportunities for themselves and their teams.

• be intimately knowledgeable of their organization’s goals and the environment in which it operates.

• continually manage the ambiguity associated with plans, actions and decision making.

• be proficient in the competencies and behaviors the organization values.

• plan and execute the right actions by effectively engaging their teams.

• be knowledgeable of the critical levers to pull to enhance the likelihood of success.

• be confident in themselves and their teams.

• monitor progress and make the necessary course corrections in goals and actions required for success.

Another key to leadership success is to effectively manage the variables affecting it. These variables can enhance or decrease the likelihood of success. They can be internal and controllable by you or external and uncontrollable. Examples of internal variables include your personal behavior, thoughts, preparedness and commitment. External variables include things like the weather, the economy, the competitive environment, and the behavior, thoughts and actions of others. Success requires a leader to understand the dynamics of the environment in which he/she and the team operate; to understand the challenges facing him/her and the team; and finally, to execute a plan that anticipates and effectively navigates key variables to enhance the likelihood of success today and tomorrow.

While it’s a given that leaders are expected to control internal/controllable variables; they can also exert influence over external/uncontrollable variables. For example, a leader can create a collaborative, productive team environment and influence team member thoughts, behaviors and actions by:

• being accessible.

• setting clear goals and expectations.

• requiring team alignment (i.e., commitment and ownership of the team’s vision and goals).

• valuing constructive debate and collaboration over internal competition.

• supporting team member learning and development.

• holding team members accountable for team results.

Unfortunately, during challenging economic times organizations typically cut spending for leadership development. The irony here is that challenging times require continuous learning and development to achieve and sustain success. When you learn to lead successfully during difficult times you can apply that learning to lead successfully all of the time. A formalized leadership development process will help minimize leader failure and increase the frequency of success by providing a range of support for leaders, e.g., knowledge and skills development, focused job rotations, special project assignments to address important organizational issues, focused external subject matter courses, and coaching and mentoring.

At the end of the day Leadership Success is the intersection of competence, planning, confidence and execution. Alternatively Leadership Failure is the intersection of lack of preparedness, inadequate planning, lack of conviction and poor follow through - the lack of skills and confidence, limited access to a leadership development process and a reluctance to ask for help are key contributors to failure.

Failure is not a desired state; clearly Success feels better, adds value and is much more personally fulfilling and rewarding.

The Corbett Group is a certified leadership/executive coaching and organization consulting firm that works with leaders and teams to expand their capabilities, improve and sustain team alignment and achieve their vision and goals.

Bob Corbett

Competent executives are the key elements for organization success. But what does it mean to be competent? The definition of the term leadership competency (e.g., sets clear expectations) is the capacity/capability of a leader to function in a particular, desirable way. Therefore an indication of competence is a leader’s knowledge and command of the leadership competencies that their organization has determined are essential for success.

Competencies are a common element of today’s business vernacular. The belief here is that clearly defined and validated competencies performed by capable, committed leaders will result in more consistent and predictable personal, team and organization performance that consistently meets or exceeds expectations. Some organizations have developed processes to identify, validate and  implement a set of organizationally unique competencies that reflect the leadership capabilities and behaviors expected to generate desired organization results. Leaders are then expected to adopt and model those competencies to successfully lead their teams and achieve organization goals.

So here’s the question: Is training a leader in an organization’s unique set of desired competencies sufficient to ensure success?  The answer is no because the simple knowledge of competencies does not equate to competence and success. It’s their daily internalization, modeling and execution that demonstrates the knowledge, commitment and command of the competencies that generates success.

The First step to enhance leadership and organization success is to identify and validate a set of leadership competencies that are uniquely aligned with your organization. Competency validation means ensuring that the desired competencies are appropriately aligned and compatible with your organization’s vision, culture, goals and operations. Second, use action learning to formally indoctrinate leaders to the importance of these competencies for leadership and organizational effectiveness. Third, provide leaders a line of sight between the competencies and goal achievement including, vision, goals, actions, metrics and sustainability. Fourth, roll out the leadership competencies including communication, training and ongoing support to leaders and their teams. Fifth, establish metrics to monitor the level of competency execution by leaders, as well as, the competencies’ continuing alignment with the organization’s culture and direction. Sixth, hold leaders and their teams accountable for results and the desired behaviors that demonstrate a command of the leadership competencies. Seventh, continually coach and mentor leaders to effectively internalize and model the competencies while leading their teams and achieving organization goals.

What can leaders do to ensure that they’re demonstrating a command of the organization’s leadership competencies and behaviors? Among the considerations for a leader are to:

• Set a clear team vision with clear goals and metrics.

• Ensure the leader and team are focused on the right things by monitoring team progress against goals and quickly responding to issues that arise, making course corrections in team goals and actions as needed.

• Make himself/herself available to advise and counsel team members; also, establish a climate that encourages team member input through constructive debate and dialogue.

• Regularly invite and accept feedback from team members, peers, customers and the leader’s manager; also, hold the team and its members accountable for agreed upon results.

• Constantly look for break through insights and opportunities to take team capabilities and effectiveness to the next level.

• Model the leadership competencies and behaviors daily with team members and peers.

• Develop a personal track record of success and become a trusted and collaborative go to resource for peers and others in the organization.

So while knowledge of an organization’s desired leadership competencies and related behaviors is an essential beginning; knowledge alone won’t  guarantee  a leader’s success. In the end it’s how well you consistently demonstrate a command of the competencies and related behaviors that portends leadership and organization success, i.e., it’s what you do with what you know that counts.

The Corbett Group is a certified leadership/executive coaching and organization consulting organization that provides competency and executive team alignment assessments and coaching support to leaders and their teams to help enhance team collaboration and performance.

Bob Corbett

Using debate and dialogue in tandem to help teams resolve organizational issues can lead to better outcomes than the exclusive use of either.

Webster defines dialogue as an exchange of ideas and opinions. Alternatively it defines debate as the discussion of a question by considering opposing arguments. At their core both are a form of discussion and neither definition references winning or losing a discussion. In fact in successful organizations team members set aside competing agendas to collaborate on identifying and implementing the best solutions to organizational challenges.

There’s a perception by some leaders in organizations that dialogue and debate are mutually exclusive processes. This is apparently based on the fear that passionate discussion is disruptive to team success and leads to personal attacks and lackluster outcomes. These leaders prefer a feel good dialogue process that is passion-less and polite and allows team members to weigh-in and be heard. Team members are discouraged from challenging the ideas and perspectives of others in an effort to avoid disruptions and emotional turmoil. Perhaps these leaders witnessed someone using debate as a weapon to advance a personal agenda at the expense of a colleague or peer. However, the risk to an organization of using a safe, passion-less dialogue process for solution development is the absence of constructive dialogue and respectful debate likely leading to a suboptimal solution from the team.

By definition a Constructive Dialogue is one in which team members are expected to actively participate, share their views, and identify the best outcomes to address an organizational challenge.  In concert with constructive dialogue a Respectful Debate is one in which the airing of team member ideas and perspectives is expected and where ideas and perspectives are respectfully vetted in pursuit of the best outcomes. Neither personal agendas nor attacks are allowed, and ideas are vetted and prioritized based on criteria determined by team members, e.g., by the quality and feasibility of an idea.

The value of constructive dialogue is that it brings a team of people with a common objective together to discuss ideas, goals, actions and possibilities. However, what makes dialogue more than a polite, passion-less discussion is empowering team members to constructively challenge respective points of view so that a team is confident it has whittled down the myriad ideas and opinions to the best ones. In this way the team can legitimately commit to and own the implementation of its recommendations and passionately communicate them to others.

During the course of a dialogue when team members respectfully challenge (vet) the perspectives of others they engage in healthy, constructive debate. Additionally, respectful debate is collaborative, identifies pros and cons and leads to a consensus on the best solution and actions to be taken.

It’s the responsibility of a leader to define expectations for team member behaviors and the caliber of ideas and recommendations. Additionally, the leader should encourage constructive dialogue between himself/herself and the team, as well as, among team members.

In the end dialogue and debate are not an either or, i.e., mutually exclusive. Instead they’re mutually enriching, interdependent and work best together to achieve better solutions.

The Corbett Group is a certified leadership coaching and organization consulting group. Our Value Proposition is to help improve organization results by establishing alignment and commitment between leaders and their teams with their vision, goals and actions.

We accomplish this by helping leaders leverage their strengths and those of their teams, address development opportunities, own their goals and actions and lead the change efforts required to achieve their vision.

Bob Corbett

Increasingly today’s and tomorrow’s leaders will be challenged to effectively mobilize and lead increasing culturally diverse teams of people in organizations. So the question is; does leadership success in these times require a competency in Conflict Management?

A conflict is the intersection of opposing views without a mutually satisfactory resolution for the parties to the conflict. Positive conflict occurs when people learn from and about one another and where there’s resolution of the opposing views. Negative conflict occurs where ultimately there’s and impasse no willingness to move beyond the impasse to resolution.

Would a competency in conflict management process enable a leader to help team members move beyond differing opinions that fuel uncollaborative behavior and negative conflicts to reach consensus? The answer is yes, if compliant behavior is the desired outcome. However, the answer is no if instead the desired outcome is sustainable collaborative behavior.

Contributors to negative conflict include:

• Ineffective Communication between the leader and team.

• Unclear Expectations between the leader and team.

• Lack of Respect for differences among team members.

• Little or no active listening to others perspectives and resistance to being influenced by others.

Unfortunately conflict management is a reactive response where a proactive approach would better serve the leader’s and the team’s desire for sustained collaboration.

Alternatively a proactive leadership approach is a preventative. It’s focus is to create an environment where understanding and respecting the basis for others’ perspectives is encouraged and valued. Where the constructive challenging and discussion of differences for understanding while allowing yourself to be influenced by what you hear is also valued and encouraged.

This preventative approach creates an environment where members of diverse and multi-cultural teams can thrive and succeed because differences are valued, are not a distraction and instead enhance team success. It also facilitates personal understanding and collaboration. In this way the leader creates a team culture where learning is maximized and negative conflicts are minimized.

Through a preventative approach by the leader members of diverse and multi-cultural teams learn to appreciate rather than dismiss out of hand the power of their individual diversity, (i.e., diversity of culture, expertise, and thought), and to value the insights that their diversity can contribute to identifying the best solutions and the next steps for achieving team goals.

Contributors to a proactive and preventative leadership approach include:

• Constructive, challenging dialogue on different perspectives and thought to get to the best outcome.

• Active listening to team member perspectives to learn, understand and be influenced.

• Valuing diverse perspectives and thoughts.

• Trusting the intentions of team members.

So is a competency in conflict management required for leadership success? It can be helpful but isn’t required for success. Rather a proactive, preventative approach that creates a team environment that values differences, respectful and challenging dialogue, and sustainable collaboration will generate far more leadership success.

At the end of the day it’s the responsibility of an effective leader to create the supportive environment necessary for teams and their members to value rather than fear their differences and to value the power of heterogeneous thought over homogeneous thought.

The Corbett Group provides leadership and team effectiveness coaching to help leaders and teams leverage strengths, clarify expectations, and improve team alignment, communication and working relationships.

Bob Corbett

What is a high performing culture? Is it simply one that encourages and supports the maximum aggregate performance of individuals? Or is it one that encourages and supports the best efforts and accomplishments of teams including the alignment, development and working relationships of team members?

A culture that emphasizes and rewards individuals over team performance can still be high performing, however, a culture that encourages and recognizes the collaborative efforts of teams can more easily and successfully sustain an even higher level of performance. This is because collectively team members can consistently bring and pool their breadth of resources including, knowledge, experience, energy and focus to effectively address organizational strategies, goals and challenges.

Organizational cultures that support and reward individualistic thinking and acting can become under performing because they:

• Encourage Unhealthy Competition: Everyone selfishly works their respective agendas.

• Encourage Duplicity: No one monitors redundancies.

• Encourage Myopic Thinking: Everyone takes a limited view of reality and the possibilities.

• Discourage Synergies: The lone wolf mentality doesn’t encourage collaboration.

• Discourage Alignment: Individuals aren’t held accountable for making their respective agendas compatible with others.

Alternatively organizational cultures that support and reward team oriented thinking and acting can become high performing because they:

• Are Flexible and Adaptable: Encourages nimbleness in response to a changing environment.

• Encourage the Healthy Debate of ideas: Everyone is expected to voice their opinion and to actively, constructively discuss the pros and cons of competing ideas.

• Encourage Macro and Consensus Thinking: It facilitates strategic, tactical, and collaborative thinking.

• Require Synergistic Thinking: A willingness to work together to identify ways to leverage opportunities including, strengths and resources.

• Require Alignment and Ownership: Commitment to and ownership of agreed upon goals and actions is required for success.

High-level requirements for becoming a high performing team oriented culture are:

• Top Management communicating the need and expectation for becoming high performing and the expected benefits of the change.

• Organize Teams to Address Organizational Needs with team members representing the diversity of knowledge, thought and competencies.

• Encourage Teams to Strive for Organizational Efficiencies through planning, problem solving and solution development.

• Revise Organizational Processes to support the new performance oriented culture.

• Create Reward Systems that recognize team over individual results.

• Provide Leadership Coaching Support to facilitate the transition.

The Corbett Group provides customized leadership/executive coaching and organization consulting to organizations planning a culture change.

Bob Corbett

A major challenge to leaders and their teams is the ability to maintain ongoing efforts to successfully pursue an organization’s desired direction while achieving quality results and outcomes. Successfully meeting this challenge is an example of sustainability, i.e., continually engaging in and committing to the actions required to successfully pursue a long term vision or goal.

A hypothetical example of a successful sustainability effort is an executive team concerned about the lack of bench strength that collectively commits to create a strategic leadership development culture that values continuous learning and leadership growth.

In this case the executive team actively sponsors an upgrade of its talent acquisition and talent management processes including, committing to treating developing leaders, i.e., their direct reports, as organizational assets to be developed, shared and allocated in accordance with personal development goals and interests and organizational needs.

In this example of sustainability direct reports are not unilaterally controlled by their respective current managers, instead their development is strategically, collectively and proactively managed by the executive team. Sustainability here is represented by executive team members who are continually willing to release their direct reports for growth opportunities and to leverage their strengths, while addressing their development needs and expanding their capabilities.

This commitment to create a leadership development culture is strategic in that there’s no end date - it’s an ongoing organizational goal. Additionally, if successful, its pursuit will offer a significant long term benefit to the organization, i.e., a much improved bench strength from which to draw senior leaders in the future. The executive team is demonstrating sustainability through its ongoing ownership, actions and pursuit of this long term strategy.

A failed sustainability effort would occur if an executive team member, or members, resisted releasing direct reports to, instead, ensure the success of the executive’s organizational unit, i.e., if the executive put his/her personal wants ahead of the collective commitment by members of the executive team.

Key challenges to organizational sustainability include:

• The Degree of Difficulty to achieve the goal is greater than initially thought.

• Trust that the goal can still be achieved wanes.

• Collaborative Support to achieve the goal unravels.

• The Willingness to Share Resources among team members is strained.

Key requirements for successful organizational sustainability include:

• A Compelling Organizational Direction actively pursued by its leaders.

• An Ongoing Commitment to own and pursue the compelling direction .

• Ongoing Flexibility to revise plans and actions based on what works.

• The Courage to change processes and culture to support the achievement of the new organizational direction.

• Ongoing Engagement to be intellectual curious and proactively participate.

Sustainability can be the difference between long term success and failure. It can also be the difference between pursuing a worthwhile strategic vision or goal versus settling for an easier to achieve short term objective that doesn’t serve the long term interests of the organization.

It’s more difficult to sustain focus and commitment to an enduring long term vision or goal. However, leaders and teams that embrace the challenges and opportunities resulting from sustainability will realize huge returns for their efforts.

The Corbett Group provides Team Alignment Coaching and Consulting to help leaders and their teams:

• Identify and Engage to achieve a compelling vision or goal.

• Commit to and Own a compelling vision including its goals, plans and actions.

• Gain Commitment and ownership from their direct reports to achieve the leadership team’s vision, goals, plans and actions.

• Identify and execute the behaviors and actions needed to sustain the commitments and efforts needed for ongoing success.

Bob Corbett