Objectives
To accelerate and optimize the development of key contributors to the
organization
To build high performance leaders and future leaders who can fulfill the
organization's vision, goals, and business strategy
To maximize managerial benchstrength and overall organizational
capability: have the right person for the right job at the right time
To link the behavior of high-impact contributors to the business plan
To retool command-and-control managers into effective leaders of the
flattening, information-based organization
How We Do It
Specializing in optimizing human performance, our firm has designed a
powerful individual coaching program that integrates our core
competencies:
Advanced expert systems that enhance psychological testing and
assessment
Computerized 360° technology
Keen diagnostic skills
Advanced rapport-building methods
Accelerated development strategies
Motivating and creating true behavioral change
By integrating these performance development technologies, we assist
the candidate in assembling the three essential ingredients for high
performance: feedback (both broad and deep), multi-lateral motivation to
make changes, and change partners for their development initiative.
Together, these three elements serve as the infrastructure for a Blueprint
For Action, which guides the candidate's achievement of measurable
results.
Program Methodology
The program is designed around the principles of adult learning and around
the structure of the adult learning cycle. It's now well established that
adults:
Prefer self-direction when involved in learning and development.
Improve their performance best through experience, experimentation and
low risk; adults develop most effectively and most efficiently on the job.
Develop only when there is a clearly perceived need (i.e., pressure) to
change. In essence, learning for adults is a response to problems and
challenges.
Are competency-based learners, in that they are motivated to learn and
change only when they can apply the learning in a pragmatic way to
immediate circumstances. That is, utility rules.
Can also be motivated to learn by appealing to personal growth and gain,
i.e., WIIFM (What's in it for me?).
Can also be inspired to develop if enhanced self-esteem and/or
empowerment are part of the deliverables.
The adult learning cycle is integral to the adult learning model. The
four key steps in the cycle are:
Assess
Plan
Act
Reassess and Refine
Given this structure, our Enhancing Effectiveness Program unfolds as
follows:
I. Assess
Conduct a series of life-career interviews with the candidate, focusing
on:
personal and work history
interpersonal experiences
attitudes, values, and interests
aspirations
Assess the candidate, using an array of business-based psychological
inventories and 360° tools, most of which are computer analyzed.
Integrate performance management data into the assessment.
II. Plan
Deliver an in-depth, confidential debrief of all assessment findings.
Identify the candidate's key strengths and areas in need of development,
as they relate to personal aspirations and to the business strategy.
Clarify inner motivators for change and inner resistances to it. Harness
the former and neutralize the latter. Clearly specify WIIFM and WIIFOrg.
Synthesize findings into a Blueprint For Action
Detail the specific behavioral changes desired - precisely what does the
candidate want to continue, start, and stop doing? Computerized assessment
reports serve as an invaluable resource for development activities. In
addition, we take advantage of dozens of activities for
development-in-place (i.e., activities that do not require a job change).
Identify all the benefits that will accrue to oneself and to the
organization when the change objectives are achieved.
Similarly, identify all potential impediments that could hinder the
change effort - inner, interpersonal, organizational, and so forth.
Specify the action steps that will be required to achieve the prescribed
changes.
Determine how to enlist the involvement of others. Change requires
support from others, playing an array of roles: coach, mentor, colleague,
friend, role model, counselor, protege, advocate, and so forth. Change
requires change partners.
Establish time frames and metrics, against which progress is measured.
III. Act
Recognize and reciprocate with those who gave feedback to the candidate.
Enlist one or some as a change partner.
Debrief candidate's manager and involve them in refining the Blueprint
For Action.
Begin action experiments during real-time, day-to-day work life, then
debrief and further refine with coach.
Adopt high-impact behavioral change techniques.
Measure progress against plan. Design simple and practical feedback
loops into work routine.
IV. Reassess and Refine
This final phase of the adult learning cycle works best when it is
hard-wired into the Action Phase of the cycle. By designing monitoring and
evaluation tools, the candidate can regularly reflect on progress and then
recalibrate the Blueprint for Action.
Final Thoughts
If people are truly the primary resource of a company, as most
organizations assert, then they must be managed and developed like other
assets. It's really not unlike the management of any asset portfolio. That
is, every person is like an individual portfolio with a strong potential
for either managed growth or sub-par performance. The portfolio, however,
is at least partially opaque, as regards its assets and liabilities. We
have the expertise, though, to "value" the portfolio. If one is to
optimize the asset-liability mix, the portfolio must first be valued; that
is, assessed for its strengths and weaknesses. Then after this initial
appraisal, we are in an excellent position to optimize the potential of
that individual's set of assets. The optimization process involves
maximizing the person's strengths, minimizing their weaknesses, and adding
new "assets" to their portfolio (i.e., skills, behaviors, and attitudes),
in order to maximize performance and protect against downside risk.
Whether we're talking about the development of key contributors, the
turnaround of potential derailers, careerpath development, or even
teambuilding, there is one strategy that is more effective than any other.
People can change, but the most substantive and permanent change is
realized when people develop from the inside out. This is the surest way
to prepare and motivate someone to accept the new change opportunities
made available to them. Consequently, whenever we're working to enhance an
"individual human resource portfolio," the surest strategy is to begin at
the beginning and focus on the inside (that is, self-awareness and
self-understanding) before the outside (that is, skillbuilding and
on-the-job development). This change strategy has proven to be a more
certain way of assisting people through the process of behavior change,
self-development, and performance enhancement.
