Chapter Connections

Laurie Reinhart led ATD-OC's Structured Networking topic for March, asking: Who was the professional coach who most inspired you? What did he or she do that impacted your performance?

Bucky Elkins

“I had a manager at Disney who allowed me to be creative and do my own kind of thing. He provided guidance, but then would ask us to come up with what we needed to do. It was very eye-opening, and actually, I think it led the down this path to where I am now."

"My UCLA gymnastics coach, who taught me: ‘Everything we have in life is a choice, and our choice produces emotion, and our emotion produces action.’ So if we want to act a certain way, we have to choose our thoughts.”

Stephanie Lang

Jeffrey Hansler

“The sales manager who asked me on my first day: "What are you going to do? What's your plan?" And he sat down and did nothing more than ask me questions all morning. And from that we developed a plan."

In his book "Leading Change," J.P. Kotter says, “Because major change is so difficult to accomplish, a powerful force is required to sustain the process.”

Last month, Denise Lamonte shared her experiences on what it took to create that "powerful force" through the establishment of a "guiding coalition."

"The characteristics of people who should serve on a coalition are key in choosing the coalition -- specifically to avoid egos that fill the room and those whose behaviors create mistrust and kill teamwork," Denise shared. "These two requirements are straight out of Kotter, and I applied them diligently."

It was a message that resonated with more than one of the event's attendees.

When asked what was the event's most important take-away, ATD-OC member Mary Escudero replied: "The success of the coalition was the direct result of choosing the right people. Denise set up her significant criteria and followed them in staffing the coalition and its support organization. When backfilling positions or expanding her team she kept to the same criteria. This created a true team that worked together creatively."

Donald McGray was surprised to learn that the guiding coalition at St. Joseph's comprised of 10 people on three teams:

1. An Executive Steering Committee that included the COO, CAO and a couple of Vice Presidents
2. A Core Coalition of 12 people that included supervisors
3. An Adjunct Coalition of 23 employees interested in contributing to the change
   

"The manager’s challenge is to build individual capabilities at the same time he or she encourages individuals to tackle new challenges that build their competencies in preparation for the future." from the  Dale Carnegie Training whitepaper: Talent Management.  

If your company's performance review period is like mine, you're just wrapping up your mid-year reviews. And if you're company's like mine, you're realizing that performance management is still driven primarily by deadlines.

Maybe you've grown accustomed to that.

"Coaching is a small part of the job description for most managers. Nearly half spend less than 10% of their time coaching others." reported Forbes.com back in 2010.  Wonder if that number's gone up in the past four years, or down, or remained about the same.

Coaching is widely recognized as an important component of performance management.  Articles in Forbes, Inc., and Harvard Business Review (to name a few) all study how strong performers can grow and improve when coaching is done well, and the impact of coaching when done poorly or not at all.

Just as equally recognized: effective performance management requires ongoing coaching discussions.  

The Dale Carnegie Perspective: "Most development occurs on the job and in the context of work activities. It is not limited to off-the-job training."

This perspective is evident in Dale Carnegie's Growth and Change cycle. It's a little different than the performance management cycle you may have shared with your managers when kicking off another "performance year," but it similarly establishes an accountability between manager and employee for the employee's development.  It also points out where most performance management stops -- at least until new goals are set.

You can learn more about Dale Carnegie's Growth and Change Cycle at this month's ATD-OC Learning Event.

"The future is not given. Especially in this time of globalization and the network revolution, behavior at the individual level will be the key factor in shaping the evolution of the entire human species. Just as one particle can alter macroscopic organization in nature, so the role of individuals is more important now than ever in society." Ilya Prigogine, 2000

In preparation for this month's Learning Event, presenter Denise Lamonte begins by asking: "Is your organizational change effort failing because the wrong people are leading it?" She goes on to suggest that the people with the titles are not necessarily the right drivers of organizational change, other individuals are.

Denise won't be quoting Belgian physical chemists, but will be referring to the research conducted by Dr. John Kotter, a best-selling author and authority on leadership and change. Dr. Kotter identified an 8-Step Process for leading change, one step of which is assemble a group of the right individuals with the power and energy to lead and support a collaborative change effort -- or, building a guiding coalition. 

This session will draw from Denise's real experiences in building a guiding coalition at St. Joseph Heritage Healthcare, and promises to be an insightful exploration of Dr. Kotter's process for successful organizational change.

Are you a manager involved in a project that will likely create some organizational change? Do you, yourself, wish to change the world? Join us over lunch this Wednesday, February 25.