Coaching

Managing Leadership by Bot

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Tatiana Shepeleva/Shutterstock

Two of the essential objects of employee training include the development management and leadership skills. As noted from our textbook, management development is ‘complex’ and leadership qualities are those which are meant to ‘inspire others’. For the lucky few, it may appear that their management and leadership skills come naturally. For most people taking on the role of supervisor or boss, these skills need to be nurtured and honed in order to assume the characteristics of an effective leader.

Traditional management training programs have provided the context and support for this type of development in the past. We do not live or work in traditional times any more. With the increasing influence of artificial intelligence in the workplace, management and leadership training can now be delivered directly to employees on the job through their personal technical devices.

The influence of leadership apps, such as ‘Coach Amanda’ and ‘Humu’, are explored in a recent article posted in The Wall Street Journal.

Click here to read the article.

As outlined in the article, these types of coaching apps provide prompts or ‘nudges’ to evoke constructive leadership behaviour. The apps are designed to give feedback and repeated reminders of appropriate supervisory or leadership behaviour. On the positive side, this kind of prompting does provide guidance from a neutral space. Most employees are not comfortable telling their direct supervisor something negative about their behaviour that needs to change. Supervisors have often been promoted into their new roles, with little guidance or direction when needing to deal with day-to-day challenges. A personalized and direct coaching app may offer an alternative to what would otherwise be a difficult conversation to have with one’s boss, or (as is usually the case) the negative behaviours for a new supervisor are just not addressed at all.

The fact that a prompt provided by artificial intelligence (AI) is needed in order change human behaviour is more than a bit ironic and, as the article suggests, just a little bit creepy. No matter what one’s perspective on the influence of AI may be, the reality is that it is here to stay and our working world has changed, for better or for worse.

Let’s make sure we program the apps for the better.

Discussion Questions:

  1. Based on your own internet search, how many leadership coaching apps are you able to source?
  2. How does an app, such as ‘Coach Amanda’, influence management development?
  3. Would you use a coaching app for your own leadership development? Explain your rationale.
  4. How does ‘micro-learning’ influence on the job management development in a positive way?

Smart tips for HR professionals

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Developing employees is a critical skill set for all HR professionals. But how do you know which system is the best to develop your employees?

There are many different performance management systems. Like any other complex organizational issue, there is never one right answer to an HR problem. Most of the time the right solution is dependent on many organizational factors. The best an HR professional can do is to learn and analyze many systems, and then make a judgement call on what is the best intervention for their organization at that moment in time.

You may want to start looking at what is happening in performance management trends. It seems that many HR professionals and organizations are rethinking their annual performance review systems.

Jason Averbrook in his new book called, the Ultimate Guide to a Digital Workforce Experience – Leap for a Purpose, shares this thought with us: “Employees don’t want feedback, they want attention.”

The once-a-year performance review does not give the employee enough attention. Averbrook goes on to say that 60 percent of companies are beginning to reshape their performance review systems.

Click here to read more about Jason Averbrook’s ideas. 

For decades, organizations have been using the traditional annual reviews that rate and rank employees. These annual rating and ranking systems seem to be of less value as time moves on and as organizational needs and employees’ values change.  Traditional performance review systems focus on the employee’s past behavior, and not their current behaviour. Today’s organizational deliverables are changing rapidly; looking back over the last year of an employee’s behaviour adds minimal productive value to the HR equation and therefore adds little to the employees’ or organization’s performance.

If the annual employee performance review systems are no longer viable, HR departments must begin to implement new modern day performance measurement systems that meet the needs of the employees and the needs of the rapidly changing business world.  Here is a list of the some of the recent trends in performance management:

  • Frequent real-time feedback instead of one-shot annual reviews
  • Decoupling performance reviews from administrative practices such as annual merit pay or bonuses
  • Dropping the ranking systems: think of what an employee can do, not what they have done

Employees want more frequent and focused attention to help them develop and perform. HR needs to investigate these new trends in performance management, and then begin to implement new methods to keep improving performance results.

Discussion Questions

Research and identify three large organizations that are moving away from the annual performance review system, then discuss what they are using to replace it.

The Direction of Organizational Learning

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In the 1990s, Peter Senge’s book, The Fifth Discipline, the Art and Practice of the Learning was ground breaking, and was instrumental in changing the world of organizational behaviour and development.

However, there is a new concept on the block that is taking organizational learning theory to new heights. It is called Deliberate Developmental Organization (DDO). This has been created by a team of authors and researchers who comprise an organization called Way to Grow Inc.* This team, which includes faculty members from Harvard and a doctoral student from Stanford-PGSP, has produced a book called, An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization.

According to the research behind the book, the organizations that do well are ones that are deeply aligned with an individual’s greatest motivation, which is to develop within an organizational culture that supports growth. This concept expands on Dan Pink’s motivational theory that an individual’s greatest motivator is to develop.

The authors of An Everyone Culture posit that most employees devote a significant amount of energy to a second, unpaid, job – i.e., the work of covering their weaknesses and managing others’ impressions of them. They believe this is the biggest cause of wasted resources in most companies.

Their solution is the creation of an organizational culture that doesn’t waste energy, but focuses it on developing people. According to the DDO concept, employee weakness is a strength, and errors represent opportunities to develop.

Click here to read an extended whitepaper on this approach by Robert Kegan et al.

Imagine working for an organization where you could truly be your authentic self and continuously improve on your weakness. Would that be a dream job or a nightmare? Something to think about!

Discussion Questions:

— Having reviewed the extended whitepaper by Kegan et al., do you think you would like to work in a company with a well-developed DDO culture? Explain why/why not.

— Have you had an experience where you feel you had a weakness at school or work? What was the weakness? Were you allowed to expose it? Did you have support in overcoming it? If yes, what was the outcome? If no, what was the outcome?

* To learn more about Way to Grow Inc, visit www.waytogrowinc.com.

 

Pink Ops — Self-Leadership Gaining Traction

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Nestudio/Shutterstock

When you see the words “Pink Ops” you might think of some covert military operation that has a cute name to distract you from its real mission objectives. However, “Pink Ops” is what the Brenda Rigney, Vice President of Nurse Next Door Inc., a provider of home health care services, calls her department. It is an interesting term that includes people, marketing, operations, care services, and IT.

What is interesting about Brenda Rigney and her Pink Ops department is her philosophy on leadership, training, and employee engagement.

Click here to read about the Nurse Next Door Inc. self-leadership training.

To get a deeper understanding of Brenda Rigney’s philosophy we first have to look into her thoughts about active questions. It is that philosophy that leads into her company goal of self-leadership and employee engagement. Nurse Next Door believes in “intentional conversations”. According to Rigney, that means staff being trained to communicate with customers more effectively, and to listen to and connect with people better, rather than depending on managers to do it for them.

The above is really their core training outcome for their frontline employees’ self-leadership development and it seems to be working.

Rigney expands this concept of intentional conversation from her reading of Marshall Goldsmith’s book, Triggers, which advocates moving from passive questions to active questions. According to Goldsmith, organizations can achieve intentional conversations, which will create better employee engagement.

Click here to read Brenda Rigney’s summary on Marshall Goldsmiths’ active question technique.

Every year organizations spend millions of dollars on employee training — maybe it is time to consider moving from passive conversations to active conversations to get better employee engagement results.

 

Discussion Questions:

    1. In order to deepen your understanding of the power of active questions click on this link, watch the video, and try to answer Marshall Goldsmith’s daily questions. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWpUqXFe4Fw
    2. You have been asked by your VP of HR to create a short presentation about how to improve employee engagement using active questions. Create a five-minute executive summary on this topic.

 

Get Tough: How to Build Workplace Resiliency

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Resiliency: why do we want it and how do we get it in the workplace?

Perseverance and resilience green weeds grew in a waterless desert.
Belozorova Elena/Shutterstock

With the growing concern of mental health issues taking its toll on workplaces, HR departments are considering how they can respond. Can HR teach employees to have more grit or greater resiliency to workplace stressors?

What is workplace resiliency? It is the employee’s ability to bounce back or respond to workplace challenges, changes and setbacks.

Ernie Philip a Senior Vice President at Xerox Canada believes workplace resiliency training is key to an organization’s success. Many studies have illustrated that organizations with greater resiliency have lower absenteeism, better engagement and happier workers. According to Ernie Philip: “Resilient people are happier and have higher life-satisfaction.”

Click here to read about workplace resiliency from Ernie Philp’s perspective.

It may be time for HR Departments to consider resiliency training as part of the overall wellness initiatives.

Discussion Questions

  1. Develop a presentation on the components of a workplace resiliency training program.
  2. Imagine your organization has just implemented a resiliency training program. What matrices would you recommend to evaluate the resiliency program?