Tag Archives: development

Strengths Based Teams

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You work as part of a team. There are times when everything flows smoothly and you are amazed at the productivity. Other times the wheels come off, and you can’t figure out why. Leadership StrengthsFinder Matrix

Our matrix combines the unique strengths of each team member into one graph, allowing you to see at a glance where the TEAM Strengths gravitate, and where there is reduced or no emphasis. This does not mean the team cannot accomplish these tasks or function in these ways, but simply that it will not come as easily or naturally. It also suggests that future team development will benefit by filling in the present gaps.

StrengthsFinder can help you understand how you function best – the areas in which you are naturally gifted AND which energize you. Let us help you develop your own leadership and your team functioning for peak performance across all your key metrics.

GROW

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This is a useful acronym for a basic process of coaching. You can use this with yourself, in a group where you are a member, and in coaching others.

Goal – What is the desired future state toward which you wish to move?

Reality Check – What is currently going on? What are the feelings, thoughts, actions that brought you to this present, and are keeping you here? What strengths and deficits are part of that picture.

Options for steps forward – What can I/You/We do to move from our present reality to our preferred future? What else? And what else? This is the brainstorming session of the process, where there are no silly, dumb or bad ideas. The more we limit ourselves during this phase, the less our prospect of reaching our goal with success and significance.

Will – “What will I do?” This is the place where I choose a path forward, from all the options identified above. Between “Options” and “Will” critical evaluations and discernment will be made. We also recognize that trial and error, failure and trying again are critical to the process of development.

“Getting to ‘NO'”

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I am looking forward to leading the 2pm workshop for the DFW International Facility Management Association (IFMA) FMEXPO at the Irving Convention Center at Las Colinas. Dale Hansen is the keynote speaker, so I guess I’m like the warmup band?

Excited about the topic: “Getting to ‘NO'”: “Learn to have productive conversation around difficult issues, enable all parties to feel that they have been heard, and then say, “No.” For many, one of our first words was no, and yet we often have trouble saying it. Understanding the factors behind our own resistance will equip us to develop confidence and collegial humility in our interactions with others when we need to say no, as well as when we are told no. The goal is to maintain good working relationships while pursuing the needs of all interested parties.”

Facility Managers are the folks behind the scenes that keep everything moving. Pulled in multiple directions from top, bottom and horizontal, they have to maintain an even keel, balance competing wants and needs, and as often as possible leave folks feeling that they’ve been heard and their interests matter. This is a difficult task under any circumstances. I’m excited to offer them some additional resources and help them practice to further enhance these skills.

GETTING TO NO

William Ury wrote The Power of a Positive No as a follow-up to the original Getting to Yes, cowritten with Roger Fisher, and ten years later Getting Past No. His premise in the most recent book is that it serves as a prequel to the earlier two, laying the groundwork for the entire endeavor. Getting to Yes focuses on the outcome, Getting past no focuses on the objections of the dialogue partner, while The Power of a Positive No focuses on the self. Getting to no requires, according to Ury, understanding what our highest goals are, what we most want in the long run, rather than what we want in this moment. Acknowledging these Yeses enables us to prioritize toward needs over wants, away from immediate gratification, and to choose response over reactivity.

WBECS Coaching Summit

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I’m writing this because I know you value life-long learning and sharpening your own leadership and coaching skills.

The World Business and Executive Coach Summit (WBECS) begins on June 12th.  There are very few companies in the world that give away as much complimentary content as WBECS does, they do so because they have a commitment to the development and success of the coaches across the world. You can probably feel their passion.

Now is the time to make a decision on whether you are committed to:
a) Your development as a coach.
b) The development of your clients.

If the answer is yes, then please purchase your early bird ticket here: https://modernmethods.infusionsoft.com/go/2013ticket/kckc
Highest quality of training for all levels
WBECS offers high standards of training for coaches of all levels, with specialist focus on growing your client-base, increasing referrals, improving your coaching skills and transforming your business by delivering significantly better results for your clients.

Specifically, the Summit is designed for coaches that fall into any of these groups:

*The Start-Up Coach: You’ve just begun your coaching journey and are looking to develop your coaching curriculum, method of delivery, and marketing system.  At the Summit, you’ll learn how to reach critical mass fast.

•The Break-Even Coach: You’re at a point in your coaching career where losing a couple of clients means trouble, while gaining a couple of clients means comfort. You’re looking at growing from being a good coach to a great coach. At the summit, you’ll learn how to stop the ‘feast or famine’ cycle by learning how to deliver higher quality coaching, helping you acquire and retain clients more effectively.

* The Next-Level Coach: You’ve already built a successful coaching business, and now you want to leverage your experience and content. You are looking for advanced coaching skills that take your clients to the next level and in the process take your 6 and multi 6 figure income to a high 6 and 7 figure income.

When you register for a Full Event Ticket you gain access to the entire two-week Live Online Event PLUS recordings of every session to watch offline or download and watch offline. You also get all materials for each session that applies: including transcripts, audio, slides and you also will be able to network virtually inside the member portal.

Check out the full lineup and agenda here: https://modernmethods.infusionsoft.com/go/agenda/kckc

This is your last chance as the Early Bird Pricing Expires May 31st Register Now for Priority Access and Save $400

EXTENDED EARLY BIRD RATE BEFORE May 31st $297
REGULAR RATE AFTER May 31st $697

Who is presenting at WBECS?

The online coaching event of the year will be bring together the world’s best coaching specialists and thought leaders to help drive the coaching industry forward, raise ethics and standards and improve the success rates of coaches both in your country and across the world.

Experts include:

Jay Abraham,                Dr. Marshall Goldsmith
John C. Maxwell          Frances Hesselbein
Daniel H. Pink               Pam McLean
Brendon Burchard      Verne Harnish
Katherine Tulpa           Karen Kimsey-House
Mary Beth O’Neill        Damian Goldvarg
Ago Cluytens               Susan Meyer
Aileen Gibb                  Hendre D. Coetzee
Andrea Lages              Howard Morgan
Andrew Neitlich          John Leary Joyce
Ann Betz                      Joseph O’Connor
Barry Posner               Krishna Kumar
Brian Underhill            Marvin Oka
Darren Robson           Myles Downey
Drayton Boyleston      Michael Bungay Stanier
Donna Steinhorn        Natalie Tucker Miller
Gary Henson               Patrick Williams
Grant Soosalu             Renee Freedman
Taki Moore

*CCE units for International Coaching Federation members

56.5 Hours CCE Units  =  30.5 Core Competencies and 26 Resource Development.

Available for pre-summit and Full Summit sessions. CCEUs can be earned through recordings although Any Core Competency session watched as a recording earns a Resource Development unit. Watched live it earns a core competency unit.

Complimentary Pre-Summit Final Week of May 2013

There is still a final last week of sessions from May 27- 30, which are all complimentary. These free sessions are perfect for you to get a taste of the high level of thought leadership from our industry.  There are five free sessions to attend this last week of May. Attend them here https://modernmethods.infusionsoft.com/go/presummit/kckc

We have a commitment to your development as a coach. Be sure to have a commitment to yourself too and join us for the Full Summit in June

Purchase your early bird ticket here: https://modernmethods.infusionsoft.com/go/2013ticket/kckc

If you have any questions at all WBECS team is on standby for you. Email ben@wbecs.com, sherrie@wbecs.com or nina@wbecs.com with any queries you have.

The team at WBECS has an absolute commitment to having a profound impact on the success of Business and Executive Coaches the world over. Please give them the opportunity to have a profound impact on your coaching success through their summit, if they don’t you can ask for your money back.

Kind regards,

Ken Crawford
214-288-1663
http://www.SynchronousLife.com
LinkedIn: kengcrawford
Twitter: @KenGCrawford
Facebook: KenGCrawfordCoaching

Contextual Leadership Formation

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Leadership development is best done in context. We are formed as leaders through action and reflection, individually and in groups, with mentors and coaches who can guide us along the way and build into us capacities for strength and confidence in the midst of the incredible challenges that leaders face today. Internships provide leaders the opportunity to develop and refine their competence “in real time” with the supervision and guidance of skilled facilitators.

I spent the last several days with leaders from three different Christian organizations discussing and exploring the emerging “new monastic” expressions as a form of “contextual leadership formation” (my phrase). Ben Bohren and Patti Case from the National Benevolent Association met with Elaine Heath, Wes Magruder, Daryn DeZengotita, Justin Hancock and others from the Missional Wisdom Foundation and Jim Ellison with the Fund for Theological Education. At the lunch meeting Thursday this group led a conversation with more than a dozen Disciples of Christ leaders from the Christian Church in the Southwest, the North Texas and Trinity Brazos areas, Juliette Fowler Communities, South Hills Christian Church, Northway Christian Church, East Dallas Christian Church, and Ridgelea Christian Church, among others.

I have also been in conversation with business school leaders, including Paula Strasser from the SMU Cox School of Business and Brad Hancock from the TCU Neeley School of Business Entrepreneurship Center. I met with folks at Success North Dallas, an organization founded by Bill Wallace that seeks to deepen and strengthen leaders. And I got to have conversation with Candace Fitzpatrick, founder of Core Clarity, an organization that helps individuals and organizations thrive by understanding and focusing energy in the areas of greatest talent and strength.

One of the common threads in these conversations is the importance of quality contextual leadership formation that includes a coaching and mentoring components. Coaching and mentoring are different and complementary disciplines. Each have a place in leadership formation, at its initiation, and throughout our careers, regardless of our field – business, government, healthcare, academy, non-profit, faith based, congregational. Learning from books and lectures is immeasurably valuable, but limited. Much of the integration of this learning arises in the field, in context, and is facilitated by working with mentors and coaches. These experiences are often labeled as internships.

It is also most valuable to do this work in community, with a group of peers from the same or different disciplines, who can offer peer mentoring and coaching, support, encouragement, challenge and accountability. The best programs (like the ones mentioned above) combine these practices of individual and group mentoring and coaching.

When have you struggled for lack of this kind of support? What was that like, and what did you do about it?
Where have you experienced good mentoring and coaching, individually and as part of a group? How did those experiences help to make you a better leader?