Leading for Engagement: Building Capacity Effectively

Is there a gap between how people are managed and how they want to be managed in your organization?

Unfortunately, this may not be working very well for your people or for you as a leader. We need to find effective ways to build more capacity in the people who report to us. In doing so, we then develop more capacity ourselves to engage in the high value work we were hired to do.

As leaders, one of our goals should be to transform our business communications so we may create more engaged, productive individuals and teams.

How can you do this? If you’re like most leaders, you feel there are not enough hours in the day to accomplish your own objectives! In addition, you’re probably facing the following challenges:

1. You feel constant pressure to deliver results under a seemingly ever-increasing workload. Your work can feel all-consuming. Finding the time to prioritize your commitments can be a challenge! Between your daily demands, countless meetings and solving day-to-day issues, you feel you are not only working too hard but also not as effectively as you could be.
   
   
2. You would like to spend more time on strategy and the big picture but find yourself getting pulled down into the day-to-day operations far too often. You sometimes feel frustrated because you are not spending enough energy on the kind of work you feel you do best and what you were hired to do. You have far too many interruptions and people at your door asking for advice or for help in putting out fires. You hardly have time to get your head above water, never mind getting to the work you love and that would have greater value to the organization.
   
   
3. Leading change with courage. Organizations are in a constant state of flux. There have been acquisitions, down-sizing, right-sizing, lay-offs, hiring freezes, mergers and somehow you are expected to lead with courage through these changes.
   
   
4. You need your team members to be more productive. You find yourself doing a lot of problem solving and decision making for your team members that they should be doing for themselves. You also need to delegate more work. You find it easier to just do the work yourself rather than delegate it, but this will not get you out of that vicious cycle you’re in now keeping you from doing high value work.

You may really enjoy the people side of management or you may find it really challenging to effectively develop others while you’re also trying to get all your own work done. Regardless, what you really want is an effective way to engage your people quickly around your objectives.

In other words, what you really want is to:

Find an efficient, effective way to develop your people – everyone on your team has unique needs and challenges. You want to be able to communicate in a way that zeroes in on the real issues and quickly, creating clarity for both you and them. Then you want to leverage their thinking so they formulate their own solutions and take ownership of their own work.

Take the load off your shoulders – you want to take the pressure off yourself to be the expert “go to person” or the one solving everyone’s problems. You want to delegate more work in a way that builds capacity and competency in your people but doesn’t leave them feeling unsupported or unacknowledged. People will be frustrated if over-managed or under-managed; find the sweet spot.

Develop a more self-reliant team – you want to develop your people so they solve their own problems now and in the future. You want them to make better decisions. You want to accelerate their learning so they feel engaged, stimulated and approaching their work from a position of confidence and empowerment.

Increase creativity and innovation – you want your people to think bigger, consider more options, see more alternatives versus just settling for the first idea that comes to mind. You want to be able to generate many more effective ideas quickly and have your team members do the same.

These objectives are within your reach when you implement a simple, practical approach to communication with your people that can greatly leverage a 5 to 10 minute conversation.

The Solution? Leading for Engagement: Building Capacity Effectively

This comprehensive program gives managers the skills to provide valuable coaching to their people in a way that creates clarity, expands awareness of possible solutions, has them formulate action plans and take more ownership for their outcomes. This approach is how people want to be managed and thus stimulates people’s thinking while building engagement.

This program provides a no-nonsense model for the coaching conversation that is straightforward and immediately applicable in the workplace. This approach has a proven track record of success that has been delivered worldwide to over 80,000 people.

The program begins with 2 days of facilitation upfront and is followed by extensive practical support in the form of 1-1 coaching, partner coaching, the coaching gym (group teleconference sessions) and a final 1-day wrap up program.

Benefits of this turn-key Coaching System include:

A practical and simple 5 step model for Coaching that can be used immediately in the workplace. This model makes so much sense and is so easy to implement that you’ll see results instantly with your people; you will see the “lights” go on! Any manager can do this, you don’t need years of practice or the “right” personality to utilize this model and get immediate results.

Real coaching for real outcomes. There is so much confusion about what coaching is or what it isn’t in organizations. This no-nonsense coach model cuts through all the commotion. It eclipses the belief that coaching is “soft”. Believe me, coaching is all about generating tangible, measurable results efficiently.

Focused conversations on the things that matter. Conversations will focus on what is important to the organization and the “coachee” for optimum results. A reduction in the amount and frequency of unproductive “coaching conversations” where commitments are made but not met.

Build more collegiality and trust. Since this is the way people want to be managed, this approach greatly enhances communication. It also makes it easier to engage in constructive feedback or potentially stressful performance reviews because the approach works in a variety of applications: delegation, mentoring, performance management, giving feedback and conflict resolution.

Effective with individuals and with groups. The coaching conversation initiates clarity, focus and the next steps to be taken from individual team members very quickly (5-10 mins). This same approach is equally effective for mobilizing clear, focused action from your team.

Hands-on Interactive Approach. You will be amazed at how well this works as you practice using the 5-step model by coaching others and by being coached on real life business challenges you bring to the workshop. You will not be bored! This approach is highly engaging, stimulating and eye-opening:)

This workshop has been delivered to over 80,000 people in medium and large corporations around the world in countries such as North America, Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America.

This program has also been customized to meet specific business challenges:

• During times of mergers or acquisitions in order to accelerate the development of a new leadership team
• In sales organizations in order to increase the effectiveness of the sales leadership team
• In Human Resource organizations in order to increase the coaching competencies of the Human Resource leaders
• To enhance or expand an existing leadership curriculum

Top 3 Key Foundations of the Program:

Stimulate Their Thinking and Results – This simple, easily applicable model for coaching is cutting-edge and in alignment with how people want to be managed in today’s workplaces. We hire people for their brains and talent; this is finally a way to engage them that works. These coaching conversations create clarity, stimulate possibilities and solutions and generate action quickly and efficiently.

The Coachable Moment – As leaders and managers, it is our job to create a workplace environment in which coaching can occur. Learn how to move from intention to action in creating this environment and how to recognize opportunities to coach, discovering “coachable moments” all around you.

Coaching Different Styles – Recognize your team members in this unique styles inventory, understanding how to coach different people more effectively based on their communication style. This will strengthen your relationships with your team members and their outcomes.

What you will receive:

Leading for Engagement: Building Capacity Effectively is a comprehensive program offered in-house for a group of up to 12-24 participants.

Phase 1: The Program begins with an initial assessment of coaching skills we are targeting to be measured and a follow up assessment upon completion of the program. Delivery of the core program begins with a 2-day facilitated session. This may also be delivered as four half-day sessions over a 1-month period. Participants will receive an all-inclusive binder of materials where they can do their work and take notes.

Phase 2: Following the initial program, participants will engage in two individual tele-coaching sessions. The skill of coaching is learned through practice and further integrated through the experience of being coached. Each participant will also be paired with a Coaching Partner to practice the skills from the workshop. The Coaching Partners will meet once per month to share successes, practice difficult coaching conversations and receive feedback. Participants will also participate in the Coaching Gym. The Coaching Gym consists of 2 teleconference sessions dedicated to fine tuning the skills participants have learned in the program.

Phase 3: The Art of Being a Coach is a 1 day workshop makes more “whole and complete” the knowledge base of proficiencies, frameworks and tools that participants have been practicing over the last 4 months. People have been practicing DOING coaching up until now. This workshop explores the BEING coach perspective, and what it really means to be a manager/coach. It speaks to the foundational principles behind the WHY of coaching. In addition, participants will create action plans to serve sustainable coaching success over the long term.

Phase 4: Post Workshop Coaching Skills Assessment 5-6 months after the completion of initial workshop in Phase 1.

Program Bonuses:

A laminated Coaching Conversation Card – a 'take it with you', easy to use reference card with great examples on the back for instant usability of the 5 steps.

Your Personal Coaching Styles Inventory (PCSI) tool – the only program that utilizes this valuable booklet with “guidelines in a grid” for how to flex your coach approach based on the unique communication style of your team member.

Organizational Benefits of Leading for Engagement:

• Establishes a strong, unified foundation for the coaching conversation that is shared organization wide (everyone shares the same language and tools).
  
  
• Allows the employees to have a common experience of coaching no matter what leader they have in the organization.
  
  
• Allows organizations to evolve into learning organizations as coaching teaches people how to learn. People develop their own processes to solve problems immediately and in the future.

Is “Leading for Engagement” right for you?

This program has been successfully delivered to over 80,000 leaders, managers and coaches worldwide in 8 different languages. This proven model and program track record has been effective in a large variety of sectors from medium sized to fortune 500 companies. Here is an abbreviated list of organizations that have participated:

Abbott Labs-Andersen Consulting-AT&T-Bank of America-Boston Scientific Corporation Campbell Soup-Children's Hospital–Cincinnati-Bell Telephone-City of Richmond, British Columbia Colorado Springs Utilities- DuPont -Federal Aviation Administration-Government of British Columbia-Hargrove Dental Center-IBM-Lucent-Merrill Lynch-Metropolitan Washington Airport Authority-Mobil-National Forest Service-National Institute of Standards and Technology - National Teachers Association-Puget Sound Energy-Proctor & Gamble-Shell Chemical-Southwest Airlines-Toyota Motor Manufacturing-United Way-University of British Columbia University of Texas-US Department of Labor.

Mastery of coaching skills is not dependent on previous managerial experience and managers at all levels of training and experience will find the coaching tools to be powerful and immediately useful. However it is also very valuable for individuals such as human resource, organizational development, and quality improvement professionals wanting to learn advanced communication and organizational leadership skills.

If you’ve read up to this point, you may be interested in taking the next step. If so, I invite you to contact me for a complimentary strategy session.

In the session we’ll discuss the challenges you or your managers are facing, what you’d like to see change and whether or not Leading for Engagement may be the right fit or not. Regardless, as a result of our conversation, you will be clearer about the issues and the next steps you will be taking to resolve them. This conversation will take about an hour and can be done in person or on the phone.

If you’d like more information about some of the ideas addressed in this program, feel free to download my report: “The 7 Ways Leaders Get in Their Own Way.”

Sincerely,
Mara Vizzutti

top