The Yarbrough Group

Coaching And Leadership Skills
By G. Michael Moore, Senior Yarbrough Group Associate

Tell me and I'll forget;
Show me and I may remember;
Involve me and I'll understand.
-Chinese Proverb

Most managers did not train to be experts in managing social systems. And yet, with the increase in team-based work groups, managing the human environment has become increasingly important. Employees expect more room for self-expression and growth; as a result, the military hierarchy model of management is increasingly obsolete.

As organizations are pressed for greater productivity, despite shrinking resources, maximizing the creative potential of an organization's human capital becomes critical. The technical, scientific and academic excellence necessary to achieve positions of responsibility are threshold competencies for these positions. In order to achieve excellence as a leader, an additional set of skills is required. One term popularly used to describe this set of skills is "emotional intelligence."

IQ has the least power in predicting success among that pool of people smart enough to handle the most cognitively demanding fields. In MBA programs or in careers like engineering, law, or medicine… emotional intelligence carries much more weight than IQ in determining who becomes a leader.
-Dr. Daniel Goleman in Working with Emotional Intelligence

We can be highly motivated, world-class experts, but if we lack people skills-if we offend or turn people off-we will lose the opportunities we deserve. Being a responsible and highly-effective leader requires the ability to step back from the dictates of our own egos (the desire to be a boss, to be in control, to correct error) long enough to be able to listen carefully to subordinates-to let the other person feel important. True influence is not achieved by being interesting; it is achieved by being interested.

The following table compares directive, top-down management based on hierarchical authority with leadership and coaching, an interactive process that focuses on employee development. The purpose of our coaching and leadership modules are to provide a rationale and specific skill set for achieving masterful leadership.

	COMMAND/CONTROL	COACHING/LEADERSHIP
ROLE	Boss and taskmaster making sure subordinates are doing what they are supposed to be doing, on time.	Coach and mentor, available as a resource person, creating an atmosphere that builds people, that brings out the best in them.
OBJECTIVES	Accomplish short-term goals-noting and correcting errors.	Long-term development-(becoming someone, in whose presence, people excel).
STYLE	Maintaining an image of being in control and on top of things at all times.	Creating an active practice of noting and encouraging the best in others.
FOCUS	Focusing on what went wrong and who was to blame.	Focusing on solutions necessary to meet objectives.
COMMUNICATION	Telling, directing, a lack of trust reflected in micro-management.	Asking, conducting inquiries, creating a shared vision.
DELEGATION	Detailed involvement in deciding how tasks are done.	Creating autonomy through delegation, coaching and training.
COMMITMENT	High for managers, less ownership for subordinates.	Intrapreneurial spirit and commitment shared by all.
INFORMATION	Flows from top down.	An open system.
CREATIVITY	Limited	Maximized
MODEL	Newtonian	Quantum

For another example of this distinction, consider the leadership style of Captain Kirk of the original Star Trek series. He typically makes a decision standing, facing his executive officers. After receiving minimal input, he gives them his decision and the commands for carrying it out.

The United Federation of Planets has clearly developed a different management style by the time of Captain Picard of Star Trek, the Next Generation. The captain, faced with a decision, gathers the executive team in a seated circle and reaches consensus through a discussion of all the options, giving respectful attention to the perspectives of each member of the team.

The mutual confidence on which all else depends can be maintained only by an open mind and a brave reliance upon free discussion.
-Judge Learned Hand

Why is this important? People have feelings. Research based on recently developed brain scanning techniques has demonstrated clearly that there is no such thing as cognitive thought devoid of emotional content. Multiple studies on what matters most to people in the workplace have consistently, in one form or another, yielded these results.

The two things that people want the most:

To be heard
To make a contribution

The command and control style of management provides the first outcome by accident, if at all. As to making a contribution, subordinates are more motivated, creative and productive, if they feel that they have had a creative role in developing the solutions and action plans they are charged with carrying out. To get the best from people-creativity, commitment, and productivity-we must fully engage them emotionally in their tasks.

The deepest principle of human nature is the craving to be appreciated.
-William James

Therefore, the first skill of a great leader is the ability to listen with acuity and focus. Listening earns power, respect and affection. A great leader does not listen to be nice; a great leader listens to learn and create influence. This kind of listening is a skill that requires development-it is not a passive activity.

The Yarbrough Group offers consultation, training and coaching in Masterful Leadership using a Holistic Leadership Model. See our training course offerings on this website.

The Intentional Community
Replacing the Family Model in the Workplace

by Catherine L. Clement, M.A., L.P.C., Senior Associate of the Yarbrough Group

I see the immediate need to replace the family model in the workplace with a more accurate and inspiring model. An alternative to the family model is what I refer to as the Intentional Community. My experience has shown me that the Intentional Community Model can be applied successfully to organizations of all types and sizes. It is founded on the recognition of basic human needs, as well as marketplace imperatives. This article describes how the Intentional Community Model can provide an organization with a more satisfying and effective workplace culture.

As an organizational development consultant, my work takes me to companies large and small, public and private, nonprofit and for profit. In all of these environments there is a predictable pattern of responses among employees and their managers. In response to the past decade of changes in the American work environment, employees are experiencing overwhelming feelings of vulnerability, distrust, grief, and purposelessness.

They've lost colleagues, organizational structures, and benefits. Job security, stability, and predictable futures have disappeared. Everything they formerly depended upon in their companies and in the market place has changed and will never be the same. They've lost the feeling of belonging, the feeling of family.

Most of today's managers joined the workplace when the family model was alive and well. Companies large and small strove to insure dedication and loyalty by encouraging employees to "join the family". Company owners and presidents, the symbolic "Moms" and "Dads", took care of "the children" and their children's children as best and as long as they could. Employees signed on, anticipating uninterrupted employment and cradle-to-grave benefits for themselves and their families.

American corporate families have gone the way of the nuclear family, where separation and divorce are now common. It is no longer a correct or fair representation to invite a potential employee to join a corporate "family". With the daily changes ensured by a global marketplace, and the rapid development of new technologies which make processes and people obsolete, there is no way to guarantee job security. For most organizations, to grant permanent employment would destroy the ability to compete.

The current business environment, replete with downsizing, takeovers, restructurings, and outsourcing, no longer looks like a family model. Every employee is now, in fact, a consultant. With no guaranteed jobs, there are no predictable career paths. Managers face the difficult task of inspiring confidence and dedication while making no promises for the future.

For most employees and their managers, the loss of the family leaves a significant void. With the loss of the familial structure, workers must struggle with the cognitive dissonance created when their companies ask for loyalty and dedication. Most employees are too intelligent to take the leap of faith required to experience a sense of safety and contentment in a business environment which promises them nothing.

Managers are now struggling with the impact this reality brings to their jobs. The possibility for constructive team work diminishes as workers feel increasingly disenchanted with their positions and their companies. Passive and aggressive behaviors multiply as keeping one's job becomes the most important work of each day. Enormous amounts of energy which could be directed toward team work and organizational productivity are therefore diverted in other directions as employees focus instead on the impossible task of creating individual security.

These self-protective behaviors are completely normal human responses to the loss of a relatively secure familial structure. History and human developmental research show us that we focus our primary energy on securing basic needs. Beyond that, we focus on creating a sense of belonging to a group or family. It is only after these fundamental human needs are met by secure, ongoing means that we can focus freely on more intellectual and creative tasks. Providing the benefits of the family model was based on common sense: businesses could insure that their employees would have energy available to dedicate to the higher needs of the organization. With the loss of the family model, organizations are challenged to create environments in which employees can and will contribute their best efforts to the workplace.

An Intentional Community is such an environment. I developed and began to apply this as a workplace model after becoming familiar with the concept through the co-housing movement. Through co-housing, groups of diverse people all over the country are banding together to purchase land, then design and build small housing communities which provide individual, family, and community space. Co-housing is a structure which offers the support of an extended family: parents help each other with child care, elders gift the community with their experience and wisdom, and children benefit from a circle of friends of all ages. The community is fluid, with people joining and departing at times which reflect the growing or diminishing alignment of their personal needs with the community's needs.

In a workplace culture which is an Intentional Community, the word community signifies a group of people who work together for common ideals and goals. The word intentional implies personal consciousness and responsibility; that is, each individual is responsible for understanding the community's ideals and goals, and for contributing his or her efforts in exchange for the benefits offered by the community.

Employees come to an intentional workplace community anticipating a challenging and rewarding experience which may be short term or long term, depending on what they have agreed to contribute toward the needs of the community. While a lifelong career may evolve in a particular community, it is not expected. Employees must display not only the skills and willingness to perform well, but also the ability to understand and support the ideals and goals of the organization. Everyone in the community is expected to monitor and contribute to the infrastructures which support every employee's success.

To be intentional in our workplace community implies personal/professional responsibility in several forms:

to understand the goals of the community;
to support these goals by bringing expertise and energy toward meeting the goals;
to develop technical and communication processes and procedures, along with structures and benefits, that support individual and community goals;
to improve and refine our technical and relational skills;
to steward the inherent power of our positions rather than deny, abdicate, or abuse it;
to join with others to envision and plan for the ongoing well-being of the community;
to notice and accept when the community changes in such a way that it would be best for us to move on to another intentional community, either because personal goals lead us elsewhere, or because the community can no longer support our individual goals or abilities;
to encourage others in their ongoing definition and understanding of their roles within the community, and in their translation to other roles or communities when appropriate; and
to welcome the abundance of resources that manifests in a diverse environment where people from many backgrounds and with many perspectives can work and play together.

A community is bigger than a family - it spans the lifetimes of many individuals and families. My experience is showing me that the Intentional Community Model gives individuals and organizations a valuable metaphor for being and growing. Because the model acknowledges the very human needs for security, alliance with others, and self-actualization, managers who use it can say with pride, "Come join our community".