“IF a miracle occurs while you sleep and you wake up the next morning to find everything working according to plan, what would you see, hear and feel? First they ask you this question then they charge you RM500 an hour!” This is how a senior administrator described his coaching experience to me.
Yesterday, as I worked through a negotiation between two parties, the CEO… the one who obviously needed to step up and deliver, blurted: “I don’t need coaching.”
A stand-off ensued.
“I can’t understand the fuss about KPI. It’s like my parents are watching over me,” lamented an industry leader.
What makes us dislike following through on the detail? Or we procrastinate. How come so many of us talk but fail to do? I’m sure these considerations have influenced the consulting, training, coaching and mentoring of leadership development and performance management… and our government’s use of KPI.
“Key Performance Indicator” is a statement that describes our goals and objectives. KPIs demand tangible, measurable signs that indicate the achievement of our goals.
As we aspire to 2020, increased competitiveness and self-actualisation (fully living our potentials to realise our dreams) we must work to keep translating great ideas into actions and outcomes. More than that, we need to coach these behaviours into our neurology, so that they become our habits, our automatic way of being in the world.
Sometimes the outcomes we want aren’t a direct result of what we do, but rather as by-products of actions we take over time. For example, courage, confidence and freedom only result from ongoing effectiveness. Of course we could imagine these from our living room armchair, but in reality, we’d be operating in theory.
The real miracle question is elegant in its simplicity: What do you want?
Is that all? What else? What do you really want by wanting that? In what context do you want these, by when? Will these arise directly from what you do or will they come to fruition as an after-effect of certain accomplishments? Have you got everything you need to create the results you want? How will you know when you’ve achieved your desired outcome?
This KPI thing isn’t as easy as it sounds. The big question is, what will we do to make this plan real and actual? It goes beyond core competencies… KPIs demand that we coach emotions and personality because KPIs also refer to people’s level of engagement, their passion, values, and work ethic. As the 1Malaysia concept states: More than justice, equality and tolerance, we want acceptance, appreciation, and mutual respect. More than education, we want loyalty, resilience, wisdom and integrity.
The guy who discounted his coaching session probably wasn’t engaged in a dialogue that cut to the heart of the matter. It was probably just a casual chat — no one was accountable to any outcome. Coach and client’s conversation wasn’t likely to have addressed understanding, motivation, decision or inspiration, resources so crucial for facilitating implementation and producing quality outcomes.
So how do we manage KPI around leadership, entrepreneur – development, confidence, responsibility, trustworthiness and other intangible characteristics? The skill is to benchmark behavioural indicators of those traits. Here’s how I would facilitate.
So you want more (confidence). Great! With whom specifically? Anyone else? In what type of situations exactly?
Have you experienced confidence? Wow! This means you’ve achieved things that resulted in your feeling confident. So you have the ability to do it again… and again.
How confident are you now on a scale of 1-10?
Describe what confidence means to you... how would I be able to see, hear and feel that? What else would confirm that you’re a confident person? Anything else?
How much do you want confidence? Really? That much! How is confidence important to you? If that’s true, are you prepared to do whatever it takes to have it? When do you want this confidence by?
What else can you get from this newfound confidence? How else would it serve you to be more confident? Could being more confident hurt you in any way at all?
What would be the most important thing we could work on today so that you really feel our time and effort are well spent? How much would you appreciate having us resolve these issues that stand in the way of your being confident?
From the list of things you mentioned, could you do all that? Right... by the end of this hour, would you have decided on at least three ways to sort those issues out? Would those be realistic solutions for you?
So by our next session can we review the progress you’ve made? Now are we ready to get started?
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