coaching – 3×5 Leadership

January 12, 2020

We Need to Talk About Our Peoples’ Engagement at Work

Would you confidently state that your people are highly and consistently engaged at work? I think many of us would naturally respond with yes, myself included, but we unfortunately see too many data points that prove otherwise.

Within my military experience, I’ve found that the #1 identifier on how engaged Soldiers are with their work and training at any given time is counting the number of cell phones currently out distracting them from training, work, and the unit’s mission. This is a universal problem though; we can walk into any large business within any industry and see similar disengagement challenges. During my recent holiday travels, I was fascinated to see the extent of employee disengagement that permeated across multiple airports.

The bottom line is that many of our people are not actively engaged in their work or committed to our team or organization. In Gallup’s 2017 State of the Global Workplace report, only 15% of employees worldwide are engage in their jobs.

That’s a problem. And it’s a leadership challenge. Continue reading → We Need to Talk About Our Peoples’ Engagement at Work

December 16, 2019December 16, 2019

The Best Of: A Three-Year Anniversary Celebration

Well, 3×5 Leadership is three years old today. I’m both thrilled and humbled by this landmark. I’m thrilled in seeing what this crazy experiment has accomplished both in my personal leadership growth and in helping others make people and organizations better. I’m humbled by the amazing community of support. I offer a deep, heart-felt thank you to fellow leaders, friends, and followers. You make our leader development community and me better.

To celebrate, I want to highlight the top three things across five different topics from this past year. (3 things x 5 topics…see what I did there?). I hope these resources can inspire you and improve your developmental journey as we head into 2020.

Thank you and as always, lead well, friends. Continue reading → The Best Of: A Three-Year Anniversary Celebration

December 2, 2019

I Will Go On: Leadership and Resilience

“I can’t go on. I’ll go on.”

—Samuel Beckett

Earlier this fall, I attended a GEN (Ret.) Martin Dempsey lecture to West Point Cadets on leadership and building a meaningful life. His first visual to support the lecture was this simple line from novelist, Samuel Beckett, with a black and white photo of a WWI Doughboy assaulting from a trench. Dempsey’s argument: you, as a leader, must be the period between those two thoughts. You must lead and inspire your Soldiers from a place where they think they cannot go on toward a resolute “I will go on” – in life, our professional missions, and in our own continued growth and development. I’ve thought on this point often since that lecture. Not only must leaders model resiliency themselves, but also develop it in others. Further, I continue to reflect on the fact that in a lecture on “building a meaningful life,” Dempsey’s first point addressed the importance of personal and collective resiliency. Continue reading → I Will Go On: Leadership and Resilience

November 4, 2019November 2, 2019

The Five Types of Developmental Communication

Any time I interact with someone I lead, I see it as a deliberately developmental opportunity. Through our interaction(s), I aim to grow their knowledge, skills, and/or abilities in some way. Any time I am communicating as a leader, I am engaging in one of five types of developmental communication: setting expectations, giving feedback, teaching, coaching, or mentoring.

I leverage the appropriate type based on the person, the situation, and context. Should I be giving targeted feedback in this moment or should I be helping them better understand by providing perspective as a mentor? Should I set clear expectations or would it be better to coach them through determining their own ideas and plans?

These types can be applied at the individual level (one-on-one) or collective (to a small group, your whole team, etc.). Further, these can all be done in formal or informal settings. For example, feedback can be given formally in a scheduled meeting where you provide planned and thought-out feedback on performance for an evaluation report. Or, it can be offered informally in the moment if someone is failing to meet basic standards or expectations.

As leaders, we must determine and enact the most appropriate type of developmental communication to maximize our peoples’ effectiveness and growth. Continue reading → The Five Types of Developmental Communication

June 13, 2019June 9, 2019

Ownership

By Pete Fovargue

When I turned 16, I bought a red 1990 Dodge Dakota.

I washed that truck several times each month and did all of the routine maintenance. I drove it carefully and was reluctant to let anyone else drive it, even my parents. I was proud of my ride. That truck was a major step toward adulthood and the responsibility that comes with it. I felt complete ownership for my truck because my parents were clear. If you want a car, you buy it. If you want to drive your car, you pay for the gas. All of the costs and benefits were mine alone.

Ownership isn’t tied to a thing like a truck, it is tied to an environment. How many people change the oil in a rental car? For a rental car, it is completely different. You pay for the privilege to not care about the car itself, just the transportation it provides. You can forget about the responsibility of dings and scratches, just pay a small fee for insurance. You don’t care if the car gets regular oil changes. You only care that it works for your week long vacation. Continue reading → Ownership

March 22, 2019June 12, 2019

Getting in the Arena: Creating a Culture of Truth & Feedback

This is part 7 of the 3×5 Leader Development Handbook. I encourage you to start with the introduction here if you have not yet.

I believe too many leaders in the 21^st century have lost the art of giving quality and relevant feedback to their people. Such feedback has become a novel experience for so many. In my own experiences within a nine-year career in the Army, I can only recall four instances where I received relevant, eye-opening feedback from a boss or peer that challenged my current ways of thinking and assumptions about my performance. Such feedback cannot be so novel if we desire to become an organization that prioritizes leader development.

This is so challenging, though, because it requires leaders to no longer hide by either using position to be exempt from receiving feedback or not demonstrating the courage to tell the truth about others’ performance. We must demonstrate the candor and care for our people to tell the truth, which makes our 2^nd and 3^rd generation leaders better and more inspired to keep getting better. This is what leaders “getting in the arena” is about. With practice and time, we become more comfortable in telling the truth to our leaders about their performance, growth, and potential, no longer making it such a novel experience in the work place. Ultimately, we hope that quality feedback (truth shared in love and care for our team members) becomes a commonplace and routine method of leader development that goes up, down, and across the organizational chart. Continue reading → Getting in the Arena: Creating a Culture of Truth & Feedback

March 7, 2019June 2, 2019

On-the-Job Development: Leaders as Teachers & Coaches

This is part 6 of the 3×5 Leader Development Handbook. I encourage you to start with the introduction here if you have not yet.

I have two whiteboards in my office; a 4×3 ft. one for big subjects and a 2×1.5 ft. “lap-sized” board for smaller scale ones. I’m using one of those whiteboards, if not both, every single day. I use them while counseling my Cadets, for teaching moments to help them make sense of new ways of thinking, and of course, to post the weekly #whiteboardwednesday quote. In fact, I just used my lap-board to draw out the first diagram below for one of my Cadets learning how to create developmental experiences for his subordinate.

I share this to communicate a key leader-developer lesson I’ve learned over the last year: every interaction I have with one of my Cadets is a “developmental communication” opportunity. I view every conversation I have with them, at an individual or collective level, through a developmental lens where I can teach, coach, mentor, or counsel. This applies to discussions in my office, passing a Cadet in the barracks hallway, during room inspections, training, meetings, a formal leader development session, or even running into them outside of the barracks on the way to/from class. Leaders can apply this same lens to their own people and organizational context. Continue reading → On-the-Job Development: Leaders as Teachers & Coaches

February 1, 2018June 2, 2019

You Need a Peer Coach to Become a Better Leader

No one grows as a leader without the support from others, which includes superiors, peers, and even subordinates alike. We need people to help make sense of our experiences and of the world. We are often familiar with developmental relationships where we learn from the experience of others, such as through mentoring and on-the-job learning from superiors within your chain of command. Further, many are gaining familiarity with the idea of coaching as a leadership tool, which you can read more about HERE.

Beyond these developmental relationships, which tend to be an “up-down” relationship (a relationship between a superior and subordinate), there is still one source often untapped: your professional peers. Properly leveraged, your peers can be your best source of learning, professional encouragement, and accountability. Peer coaching is an ideal structure for reflection and just one more reflective activity to add to your arsenal of leader learning tools. Through reflection and feedback within your peer coaching relationship, you develop a clearer awareness of personal behaviors and beliefs that affect your performance. Further, work experience alone is insufficient to foster effective learning; we require the assistance of a partner. Continue reading → You Need a Peer Coach to Become a Better Leader

January 2, 2017June 18, 2019

Coaching – An Essential Leadership Tool

By Lt. Colonel (Ret.) Thomas Bowen

Coaching your followers, whether they be US Army Soldiers, West Point cadets, or civilians, is an ideal way to cultivate their involvement in solving their own challenges, engage them relationally, and exercise your leadership.

Although the term “coaching” could connote athletic drilling by your football or softball coach, here we mean it to be impromptu, one-to-one interactions between a leader and his or her led. Alternatively, “coaching” could conjure up visions of a long-term mentor-protégé relationship; in this context, we will confine the term to mean preemptive, informal, in-the-moment interaction between a leader and a subordinate. A coaching interaction can take place on the side of a Stryker infantry vehicle, on the parade field, or in the aisle of a warehouse. As a leader, you take advantage of a coaching moment when you see a follower struggling, or potentially struggling, with a task. Out of pride or embarrassment your follower may not approach you with his or her problem, whereupon you approach that person to avoid a potentially disastrous situation. Continue reading → Coaching – An Essential Leadership Tool