Resources

How business coaches get their clients to perform their best
(Princeton Business Journal - Business News - SPECIAL ISSUE -Continuing
Education Fast track to success: August 10, 2004

By Melinda Sherwood, Business Editor

A MBA can teach you the fundamentals of running a business; a professional development course can get you up to speed on changes affecting your industry.

But when it comes to solving the trickier issues that emerge in our professional lives - choosing a suitable career, picking a compatible business partner, firing employees - there are no classes and no easy textbook answers.

Enter the coach.

For decades, coaches have played an important role in American business as mentors, trainers and confidantes to some of the most successful Fortune 500 CEOs.

And more and more, they're helping ordinary people achieve lofty goals, with methods and techniques as varied as the business people they help succeed.

Staying on Track

When Larry Parsons, a certified financial planner with A.G. Edwards, realized his relationship with his business partner was falling apart, he turned to Helene Mazur of Princeton Performance Dynamics for help.

A former Merrill Lynch employee, Ms. Mazur specializes in clients working in the financial services industries.

"I was attracted to her because of what she said in terms of business planning made sense to me, and if I hired her, I didn't have to educate her about our industry," said Mr. Parsons.

Ms. Mazur practices a goal-oriented approach to coaching.

"I believe so strongly in the concept of strategic planning," she said, "and for me it's really figuring out where you want to get to, and then looking at a lot of data about your business, yourself, what's going on in the market and focusing on where you want to be in three years, a year, and setting goals."

As a result of his consultations with Ms. Mazur, Mr. Parsons realized that he needed to find a new business partner.

"She did a personality test and out of that it became clear that I really needed to find another partner," he said. "So I found someone who I felt I liked, had him tested, and it turns out we're compatible, and we're unique. We're very similar but we have some complementary talents."

All too often, said Ms. Mazur, even the most ambitious people lose sight of the big picture, which is why a business coach can be helpful.

"Especially small-business owners don't do planning," she said. "They're totally stuck in the depths of the business and they don't get that bird's eye view."

Mr. Parsons agrees.

"It's good to have somebody that is familiar stand back and look at what's going on - bring in fresh ideas, a fresh perspective," he said.

Finding the leader within

Some coaches concentrate on the nuts and bolts of their clients' businesses. Others believe in a more reflective, introspective approach.

Stephen Payne, a leadership coach who works with upper-level executives looking to expand their businesses, believes the key to peak performance is understanding what kind of leader you are - and then deciding what kind you want to be.

"I believe how you lead yourself has a big influence on whether you're successful or not," says Mr. Payne, whose self-published book, "The First Rule of Leadership" (2004), outlines some of the common pitfalls of leaders.

And because he is a former CEO, Mr. Payne says his clients trust him and use him as a sounding board.

"The greatest leaders or the high-achieving leaders realize that some of the greatest blockages to growth can lie within them," he says. "As they say, it can be quite lonely at the top."

When Herb Greenberg, CEO of Caliper, had to break off a consulting relationship earlier this summer, he was glad he could turn to Mr. Payne as a sounding board.

"Every human being has core strengths," says Mr. Greenberg. "We're all geniuses in some areas, bums in other areas. When you're in a fairly high level of responsibility, there are going to be areas of your job that are going to require some of your weaker skills."

An oft-quoted expert on the qualities of good leaders, Mr. Greenberg admits that disciplining employees is an area where he has always been weak.

"Firing still remains the most traumatic thing I ever do," he says.

Since working with Mr. Payne, however, he says, "I've gotten better at it, without a question. I've gotten better at making specific demands. Functionally I do what needs to be done in my job so much more than before. And I overall feel more comfortable in my job, in my role."

Being comfortable in your leadership role starts with being comfortable in your own skin, according to David Prescott and Ted Ryan, founders of Tarxien, a new leadership enrichment practice based in Hopewell.

"Our focus is really on the notion of leadership as an expression of authentic personhood, so we work with people who want to enrich their personal lives and deepen their leadership practice," says Mr. Prescott, an attorney and former executive vice president for the Gund Investment Corporation in Princeton. His partner Mr. Ryan has a degree in organizational psychology.

Tarxien is trying to help professional people abandon the notion of leadership as defined during the Fifties and Sixties, in which people were viewed as parts of a machine.

To do so, they conduct several "questing sessions" with their clients designed to get them to explore more deeply issues of identity, behavior and relationships.

"We sit down in a dialogue and have a conversation that we prompt with a series of deep questions," said Mr. Prescott.

The goal is to help people become confident and secure. "We have a quote on our Web site it says, 'You can't come back to a place you ain't been,'" said Mr. Prescott. "Leaders can't be authentic with others if they can't be authentic with themselves.

"You've seen people around who are not authentic people - they don't fool anybody," he continued. "Full authenticity is the basis of effective leadership. It's about being who you are and understanding yourself in the fullest."

Initiating change

Setting down goals, developing a business strategy and identifying strengths and weaknesses are all methods coaches employ to help their clients.

But when it comes to making real changes, many people don't even know where to begin.

The most important thing an executive coach can do is help people see alternatives to what they're doing, said Elizabeth Treher, founder and president of The Learning Key in Washington Crossing, Pa., a company that trains both teams and individuals, primarily in the pharmaceutical and high-tech industries.

"Oftentimes people in their career get feedback," she said. "It's another thing to come up with alternative behaviors and know what to do differently and that's where you can really help someone to make changes."

Among the many coaching tools she employs are the Myers-Briggs Indicator, a personality test, as well as the "360-degree assessment" - a series of interviews with a client's co-workers. She also has clients keep a daily log of their tasks to help them identify areas where they're spending unnecessary time and energy.

What she often discovers is that many successful people lack communication and interpersonal skills.

"A lot of people coming into the world of work have very specific knowledge about their field but they're not well trained in other kinds of skills," she said. "Certainly, they're better trained now in computer skills, but in terms of communication, leadership, some of the fundamental personal skills are not necessarily any better."

Successful people also tend to find it difficult to delegate, she continued. "Many people come to a role of leadership because they're very good at their jobs, and once they get there, they want to second guess everyone who's now doing their old job and unlearning some of those behaviors can be tough," she said.

Tough but not impossible.

Ms. Treher has several tricks to help people modify their behavior and achieve results over time.

For example, people who talk too much at meetings can learn to count to 10 on their fingers before they speak.

People need those types of tricks, said Ms. Treher, "something silly they can hang onto, some little technique to help them start modifying their behavior."

Moving beyond the self

Most people consult a business or executive coach because they want to see dramatic results in their own performance.

But the reality of today's workplace is that no one goes it alone.

Being a team player is just as important as being a leader, which is why team coaching is becoming an increasingly popular specialty within the coaching field.

"It's an area companies want a return on investment," said Edmond Antoine, president of the New Jersey Professional Coaching Association. "There are some companies that are shifting their culture, or their service culture, so team coaching is really creating a net which allows for the changes to take place."

In today's companies, hierarchy is not nearly as critical - the more informal networking and team work is what is really significant, says Donna Dennis of Leadership Solutions Consulting in Princeton.

"The day-to-day work that gets done in organizations is more teamwork oriented, not just my boss tells me what I have to do and go back to my desk and do it," she said.

A former RCA employee with a Ph.D. in organizational development, Ms. Dennis recently worked on a nine-month project for a major petroleum company that involved leading a team of people working in different geographic locations throughout the world via the Internet.

"It's just so much more complex and requires a different set of skills," she said.

Drawing on that experience, Ms. Dennis offer seminars to companies that need to get the most out of their "virtual teams."

There are several steps to maximizing the performance of virtual teams, but one area that is often overlooked is positive reinforcement. Because team members rarely meet face to face, and most of their work is conducted via e-mail or over the phone, there is a shortage of positive comments - a simple "nice job" can go a long way to letting team members know they're being effective.

"There needs to be more effort put into positive recognition for team members than you wold normally do," Ms. Dennis said. "The more that people used positive reinforcement they actually got better performance from the teams."

©PACKETONLINE News Classifieds Entertainment Business - Princeton and Central New Jersey 2004