Most organizations have some kind of quality process in place. From Six Sigma to Total Quality Management. All have proven to be effective, even necessary to ensure competitiveness in the world market. What I don’t see, is a quality process for human systems. Where standards of excellence are developed and audited […]
It is not that I think judgements are bad, but left unexamined, they can lead you places you don’t want to go. They can get in the way of helping a team member who is stuggling. They can prevent you from seeing a way to coach someone because your own judgements blind your […]
A few years ago I came across a good way to capture my own hidden beliefs. A way to discover what they are and to challenge them. It is a simple technique that yields results every time and gives me new material to work on every time I try it. Here is […]
For years I have worked on the problem of how you help people discover their hidden beliefs. Hidden beliefs often prevent a person from achieving all they can. They can also hinder relationships when a hidden belief leads to unspoken judgements. Of course unspoken judgements can often be seen in non-verbal behavior […]
How does a Leader analyze a group. What does he/she look for in deciding how to develop them. For starters, a team is built with a good deal of individual coaching but the object of the coaching is not just to develop the individual but to develop their connection to the team. […]
One challenge in creating a team-based work system is to get leadership to change its view of the organization from a strictly individualistic approach to a group systems approach. When a leader looks at a team, they generally see a group of individuals. What they miss is the dynamic aspect of those individuals […]
I spent a wonderful evening in Toronto tonight. Running on the beautiful trail that lies next to the Humber River. The waterfowl were plentiful and the Salmon were jumping up the weir. Many people biking, rollerblading, walking, running and just enjoying the evening. After a day of working and training with a […]
Most organizations have some kind of quality process in place. From Six Sigma to Total Quality Management. All have proven to be effective, even necessary to ensure competitiveness in the world market. What I often don’t see, is a quality process for human systems. Where standards of excellence are developed and […]
My friend Paula Gee is a great trainer and sometimes she can really open someone’s eyes with her teaching style. I once watched her teaching a group when they got into a debate about something. It was clear that no one was going to budge so Paula told a story about her former […]
Many companies are moving to rating and ranking systems. Most are modeled after the system Jack Welch used at GE. Such systems create a lot of anxiety among some people. On the surface, it appears that rating and ranking systems are not friendly to a team-based work system. For sure, they […]
A Eric Erikson once said, “Faith that others can change comes from the knowledge that I can change.” In my career, I have encountered obstacles to success or achievement of my goals. As I look back over the years. I find that in every case where I had difficulty achieving a major goal, […]
Watching and working with managers and leaders, there are some key things I look for in the way that they talk about their world. I use these as diagnostics to help understand what their world looks, sounds and feels like. People are almost totally unaware of their mind maps (I wrote earlier about […]
Just worked with a new team. The result of their previous experience with a poor coach left them quite shocked. It was interesting to hear how they perceived their old coach vs how he told me he behaved with the team during his tenure. I am often amazed at how far people […]
In coach training today we had a couple of boy scout leaders who made some interesting points about the role of a coach and that of a boy scout leader. The goal of the boy scout leader is to teach the scouts to literally run the troup themselves during meetings, activities, campouts, etc. […]