As a practitioner of mindfulness meditation for 46 years, and a teacher of it for 25, I’ve followed the rise of the mindfulness movement over past two decades with mixed feelings. On the one hand, it’s been refreshing to see something I so value getting some airtime. On the other hand, its popularization, a.k.a. McMindfulness, has trivialized the practice beyond recognition, depicting it as a faddish skill you can pick up over a weekend. Mindfulness isn’t a new way to think or an attitude to adopt. It’s a practice, a way of being, diligently cultivated over time. It saddens me to see so many apostles of mindfulness, who clearly don’t practice it themselves, monetizing it.
Read MoreCategory Archives: Performance Coaching
Is Leadership Different from Management?
The study of leadership is ancient, as old as Greek philosophy and the earliest Hindu, Daoist, and Confucian scriptures. In contrast, the study of management is new, beginning shortly after the advent of the industrial revolution. But ever since, the study of management has proliferated like wildfire, eclipsing the study of leadership by orders of magnitude in frequency and reach. Naturally this raises the question as to whether the subjects are substantively different rather than different words for the same thing.
Read MoreThe Importance of Teams Today
As many organizational cultures are becoming less hierarchical and bureaucratic, in keeping with the knowledge and information age, the need for teams keeps growing. This means that the capacity of an organization to build and utilize teams can provide a major competitive advantage. This is why real teams may be the best tool modern organizations have for upping performance. More than any other organizational structure, effective teams offer the flexibility and power to respond quickly to change.
Read MoreThe Value of Group Development to Organizations
Groups aren’t the answer to every kind of work. In fact, there are many tasks at which one person can outperform a group, for instance, where talent or experience is the critical performance factor. Who ever heard of group writing a novel, for example?
But groups can be particularly good at combining talents and providing creative solutions to unfamiliar problems. Whenever there is no established approach or solution to a task, a well-developed group’s wider range of knowledge, skills, and behaviors provides a distinct advantage over individuals working separately.
Read MoreStrategic Change Management Principles to Consider
Some of our clients have found it beneficial to approach strategic change as a process guided by proven behavioral principles rather than fancy or faddish models. These principles aren’t merely pet theories of ours. Rather, they derive from research in management best practices and social psychology, and have proven valid in our practice and in the experience of other management and organizational consultants.
Read MoreViable Strategic Planning Models
The terms strategy development and strategic planning mean different things to different people. Not surprisingly, there are hundreds of models for developing business and organizational strategies. The basic thrust and purpose of strategy is even conceptualized in different ways. For instance, strategy has been framed as:
Read MoreWilliam Dyer’s Characteristics of Effective Teams
When he was dean of Brigham Young University’s Graduate School of Management in the early 1980s, William Dyer wrote the pioneering text on team building, entitled appropriately enough Team Building. The book is now in its fifth edition. From the beginning, Dyer cautioned against using teams for anything but team-oriented work. He also was wary of trying to implement team building if an organization’s leadership was halfhearted or skeptical about committing the time and resources needed to do it right.
Read MoreCharacteristics of Good Strategic Plans
Dwight Eisenhower once said, “I have always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.” It was a great way to say that effective strategies are adaptable by nature, and that rigid lists of instructions won’t last long.
That said, a well-conceived and written strategic plan could be a helpful guide for the rollout of programs, policies, and processes—if it achieves some basic things. Note that most of these characteristics have less to do with a plans’ particular format and more to do with its practicality and clarity. To these ends, good strategic plans share the following characteristics, according to planning specialists.
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Is Executive Coaching Right For Your Organization?
Executive and leadership coaching aren’t the right change methods for every organization. Ultimately, the organizational culture is a primary determinant of whether or not a coaching engagement can prove effective. To the extent that the following statements describe your workplace, executive coaching has a great chance of improving an executive’s performance and effectiveness. Conversely, if many of these statements don’t ring true, your organization might want to rethink using coaching as an human resources development strategy at all.
An Overview of Strategic Change Management
“All organizations are perfectly designed to get the results they’re getting . . .”
It’s one of the old-saws of organizational consulting. But consultants are not alone in thinking it. Systems theorists have been saying the same thing in different words since the beginning of the 20th century.
Read MoreAssessing an Executive’s Readiness for Executive Coaching
Not every executive or leader is well suited for executive coaching. What’s more, no amount of time or money spent on coaching is likely to benefit someone who lacks the intrinsic desire or extrinsic support for growth and change. This is why it’s important to evaluate the executive’s readiness before deciding coaching is the right performance-improvement method for her or him. Here are some things to consider:
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