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September,
2006 Welcome
to Leadership Hand™, a monthly e-newsletter To ensure receipt, please white-list our address by adding "Info@" plus our domain name to your e-mail address book. 1. Three Keys to Improving Performance: Part 1 Teasing Out Competing Commitments So what's stopping you from performing at a higher level? Let's get diagnostic in a fun and useful kind of way. One lens that I love comes from James Flaherty's book Coaching for Excellence. It is assessing your ability to achieve an outcome by looking at three things:
In this issue, let's address commitment. First and foremost, are you committed to the outcome? Or do you find yourself behaving in ways that obstruct rather than support achieving your goal? If your behavior is getting in the way, it's a given that you have competing commitments that may not be obvious to you nor ones to which you might even want to confess! Here's an example. A client once told me she wanted to achieve a particular executive position. It didn't ring true--I just got the sense that it was a "head" goal--what she told herself she wanted but not one her heart had bought into. As we talked, it became clear that if she achieved what she thought she wanted, it would mean relinquishing growing high-performing teams--something she loved to do and something to which she was also committed. She also enjoyed being in the trenches, acquiring new business not relegated to "leadership at a distance." With these insights, my client could now re-assess her original commitment and begin to explore how it could provide an equal but different type of satisfaction. We could also challenge the assumptions that had fueled her competing commitments. My client had an easier time of making this discovery because she was working with an executive coach--me. But what about the rest of us--how do tease out the competing commitments when they aren't so obvious? And what do we do when that competing commitment isn't quite as pretty and grand as our stated one? Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey (How the Way We Talk Can Change the Way We Work [Jossey-Bass, 2002]) help us sneak in the back door to find answers by asking these questions:
Or consider the flip side: something you don't do that is keeping your commitment from being realized.
Within the answers to what you lose out on or what you wouldn't like lies the competing commitment. For example, my client might have said, "If I stop being involved in the day-to-day operations--in the trenches with my team--then I'll be perceived as someone who thinks she is better than they are." Now, we get to the heart of it: her need for inclusion. A competing commitment is sustained by what Kegan calls the Big Assumption. In my client's case, the Big Assumption here is that if she stopped doing what she was doing and took the new executive position, her employees would think she felt superior to them and she might not feel "part of" the new team in the same way as she does with her existing teams. She didn't want to be seen that way or feel that way. Such insights offer a wonderful opportunity for challenging these assumptions. Here we get to truly core issues that, when addressed, change lots of behaviors that otherwise have a hidden power source.
Here's to Commitment! Beth Hand © Copyright 2007, Beth Hand. Beth Hand, MBA helps leaders increase their effectiveness and satisfaction, now and for the future. She can be reached at (+1) 703.820.8074 or via her website www.leadershiphand.com. 2. Reprint Permission This is a copyrighted publication. You are welcome to reprint an issue on a non-exclusive basis provided you:
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Once
these issues come to light, the act of awareness and observation
alone begins to create change. We'll make that change and the outcome
even more achievable when we address "competence" in the
next issue.|
© Copyright 2006, Hand Associates and Beth Hand • All Rights Reserved Hand
Associates, LLC Leadership
Coaching & Development |
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