Dr Choi is one of the people in the world who I truly admire and respect as a coach and mentor, and someone who has my complete listening. Dr. Choi and I had breakfast soon after I arrived and he asked me what I was up to with respect to Masterful Coaching.

I told him that I was thinking about doing some coaching programs that were more business applications oriented--to help companies establish a growth trajectory again after the economic crisis. I talked about things like a Blue Ocean Strategy, creating a Revenue Storm, creating a new product development pipeline

Dr. Choi is a gentle man of wisdom, so when his eyes briefly looked down toward the tabletop, I knew he was not fully onboard with what I was saying. “Dr. Hargrove,” he said, “you should be coaching Presidents of countries, not just leaders of business.” You are a world authority on leadership, a noted scholar on executive coaching with your books, and a vastly experienced executive coach.

They say that Masterful Coaching is being able to say the one thing that makes a difference to someone, and in this case, Dr. Choi said something with respect to presidential coaching that completely elevated my motivations and aspirations.

In essence he was telling me that at this stage of my career, I needed to be thinking in terms of playing a bigger game—coaching newly elected presidents of nations (particularly in Asia), like President Lee of Korea, President Kan of Japan, Prime Minister Lee of Singapore, and President Triet of Vietnam.

These leaders are in the position to make a difference in the lives of millions of people, not to mention the global economy. He was saying that coaching CEOs and business leaders was fine, but too small a game for me to focus exclusively on.

I was of course flattered by Dr Choi’s coaching, but I soon tried to change the subject, to give myself a chance to think about the question. “Can I really coach presidents of nations?” Fortunately, he wouldn’t let up on me and pursued the topic for the next 30 minutes or so. “Dr. Hargrove,” he said, “if you coach only one president a year, you will put yourself in the position to not only make history, but a great deal of money as well.” (Tell me more!)

He also mentioned that nation presidents, unlike CEOs of big companies, are in the public spotlight all the time, making it much easier to uncover information about the burning issues that are really on their minds, issues they may need coaching on.

“Further,” he said, “presidents have a lot at stake in keeping their jobs and they are always in a survival situation. There is always the next election, where they could be replaced, or mid-term election where there party could be voted out of office, thus crippling their efforts.”

Dr. Choi also suggested that I begin writing a book on Presidential Coaching, as well as begin writing letters to newly-elected presidents and told me not to be surprised if I get a welcomed response. I thanked him for his encouragement and promised to give it a shot. In truth, he had captured my imagination and I was ready to jump into action. More in next blog… discussion with presidential historian, James MacGregor Burns.

In the past, if you asked an executive, teacher, or family member whose opinion you respected for career advice, they would probably say: Definitely get into an Ivy League college, join a Fortune 500 company, and join a posh country club for social networking.

In today’s high tech, global economy, where talent rules, your advisers might tell you something entirely different. Drop out of school, go start your own company, and get yourself on Facebook or Ladders to make the right contacts.

As an example, I came across an interesting article in The Wall Street Journal in which Bobby Kotick, chief executive of Activision Blizzard Inc (video game maker and publisher), shared some personal details about his career. Here are some excerpts from a recent interview:

WSJ: What’s the best career advice you’ve gotten, and why?

Mr. Kotick: I’ve been very, very lucky, because I’ve had so many great mentors. Very early on when I was in my twenties, I met Steve Jobs who convinced me to quit college. He talked to me after I had spent about a year in Michigan studying the history of art. I don’t think he would even remember some of the things that he said. They were so insightful.

One thing he said was, “You’re studying the history of art. You don’t even get to see the paintings. Why would you be doing that? You have a company, you’re making Apple software, and you’re an entrepreneur. Don’t waste your time on college. Go, run your company.” And that was really good advice. I quit college and I started this company, so that was great.

I think Steve Wynn, who was like my mentor and a second father, has been a great inspiration. He’s a great mentor, because he’s a guy who’s had great business success, but also has always been driven by creativity, and inspired creativity. He always said, “If you create great experiences, the business model will follow.”

Read the entire article in the WSJ here.

Unfortunately, even the most talented executives can find themselves stuck on the same rung for years (decades) due to leadership blindspots, or ignorance of how to master the political chessboard. If this situation describes you, than I would like you to invite you to read this series of blogs: Getting to the Top—Ten Tips for the Effective Executive.

Tip #1. Get The Kind of 360 Feedback That Rips the Blinders Off. One of the biggest issues that all upward bound executives have to deal with is the phenomenon of blindness. It’s possible that right now you are blind to or underestimate the strengths that you have that can help you get to the top. It’s also possible that you are blind or underestimate the weaknesses that can present a real barrier to your getting to the top. In both cases, it’s essential to get some meaningful 360 feedback that will help you to rip the blinders off and then take whatever appropriate action is necessary.

Feedback gives you an essential baseline for developing your own personal development plan, as well as for working with a coach or mentor. I have heard people say after getting their feedback: Hey, I am an environmental engineer, but I just found out that I am a born marketing maven and social networker. Or, I learned from some feedback I got that while people in my group see me as leader with great upward potential, the executives at corporate headquarters office don’t even have me on their radar screen.

Forget the kind of 360 that comes in the form of computerized tick sheets, check-the-boxes-one-to-five. In my experience, these are about as effective as going to an online Numerologist. They may give you a percentile ranking for how you stack up against others according to a homogenized list of corporate competencies, but they will not tell you very much about yourself.

Frankly, these kinds of 360 tick sheets are transactional in nature, designed to give hundreds of people in an organization feedback for a few dollars a head. The results are equally transactional. Part of the deal people make in having a job in a big company is to agree to do such things as filling out the feedback forms and reading the results from them… “I need to lead or collaborate better,” ho hum!

I always tell my coaching clients that we are going to be engaging in some 360 feedback interviews that are designed to rip the blinders off. Clients provide me with a list of ten or more people they would like to get 360 feedback from—bosses, colleagues, direct reports, etc. I then go around and fully engage people in an indepth dialogue about my client’s strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, and so on. I tell people giving the feedback that the intention behind it is transformational (big change) vs. transactional (little change).

You can tell right off the bat that people giving this feedback aren’t doing it in a transactional way because its part of what they are paid to do. They are doing it in a transformational way providing it as a gift to the person.

It’s inspiring to observe people put aside all other distractions of phone calls, emails, meetings, and take 30 to 60 minutes to tune into my client’s whole way of being around the job and come up with some powerful and profound insights that will help them not only to realize their personal and organizational ambitions, but also perhaps to make them a better human being.

For example, as one CEO said of his direct report, “Everyone knows Jim, our EVP, can get results, but what we don’t know is whether or not he has a big enough vision for this organization that would make us put him forward as the CEO. Also, we don’t know whether he can build positive energy to build a team vs. negative energy to scare people into doing what he wants.” When Jim heard this feedback, it turned his whole world view upside down.

When I was doing feedback inside the Pentagon for the Assistant Secretary of the Navy, people told me, “This person is a great at making deals and doing all kinds of transactions. Yet he hasn’t shown up as a real leader, as evidenced by the fact that he hasn’t provided a winning game plan for transforming this organization. People have to read the tea leaves to find out where he is going.” My client didn’t necessarily like hearing this feedback, but taking it on board proved essential in getting a promotion 1 to 2 years later to Assistant Secretary of Defense, in charge of all Acquisitions with an annual budget of $350 billion dollars.

So do yourself a favor, even if you have had 360 feedback in the past based on 360 feedback tick sheets, do what you gotto do to hire a coach who can give you the kind of 360 feedback that will allow you to put together a great personal development plan, and accelerate your climb up the corporate ladder and your ability to make a difference in your world.

If you can’t afford it or don’t have the budget to hire a coach, just try going around and getting your own 360 feedback by interview 5 to10 people yourself: What do you see as my potential? What do you see as my strengths and weaknesses? What do I do that will help me get ahead here? What’s holding me back?

Ten Leadership Blindspots that can keep you from getting to the top...

1. Not taking a stand
2. Getting discouraged by the complexity of the situation
3. Bogging down in eleaborate planning and preparations
4. The Lone Ranger Syndrome: no team or network
5. Being insensitive to your impact on others
6. Avoiding difficult conversations
7. Blaming others or circumstances
8. Treating commitments casually
9. Conspiring against others
10. Tolerating "good enough"

Next week: Tip 2. Getting to the Top: Developing Executive Power Presence

It’s been said that every leader should have a magnificent obsession, a big goal, or world shaking problem that they are totally immersed in almost 24 /7. One of the things I noticed when I started doing leadership coaching was that it was actually hard to get people to talk about a magnificent obsession on any consistent basis. If people were obsessed with anything, it was talking about “the boss.”

One of the conclusions I quickly arrived at was bad bosses create a toxic environment that is highly stressful to employees. In fact, a recent British study shows that people who don’t like their bosses not only have significantly higher blood pressure levels, but are more prone to both heart attacks and depression.

Samuel A. Culbert, a clinical psychologist who teaches at the Anderson School of Management at the University of California, throws a spotlight on one of the culprits of workplace stress in his new book: Getting Rid of the Performance Review! Performance reviews are often done in a completely arbitrary way, the outcome often depending on how well an employee sucks up to the boss.

In my opinion, the issue is not the performance review itself, but whether the boss is coming from being a cop or a coach. If the boss comes from being a coach, the employee will tend to look forward to an upcoming performance review as a gift—an opportunity to grown and learn.

If the boss is coming from being a cop, employees will tend to dread upcoming performance reviews and see them as a threat, an event where they will most likely hear about everything they have done wrong and perhaps even lose their bonus or job.

One of the areas we are going to be focusing on with Masterful Coaching this year is a program called “The Leader as Coach” designed to help managers and leaders make the shift from cop to coach, as well as to equip leaders at all levels with coaching skills and attitudes.

We believe this program will not only help leaders and organizations to be more effective, but also help to eliminate the highly stressful, toxic environment that seems to plague too many organizations.

This morning I received a letter from Rubi Davids, a coach and mentor in South Africa. It really inspires me to get letters like this from people who have read my books and are applying it to make a difference in their world. So, if you are out there, I would love to hear from you. I would like to share Rubi’s letter to me and my response.

Dear Mr. Hargrove, I have been involved in coaching, counseling, and mentoring for many years now. I reside in Cape Town. There has been a significant increase in depression in teen girls especially, so that I decided to design a mentoring program - older women mentoring teen girls. This program has been accepted by many Cape Flats Communities and has had a great positive impact in the lives of these teen girls. This year I have embarked on a certificate course in Coaching at the University of Stellenbosch and as a practical book assignment, I chose to read your book "Masterful Coaching." It has really given me a deeper insight into coaching and I am really inspired by the work you have done. I have just learned about your new book and will be investing in purchasing one. Kind Regards, Rubi Davids

Hello Rubi, Thanks for writing me. It’s great to hear my message about Masterful Coaching is getting out there in the world, and especially South Africa, a country I visited, several times and have a fond regard for.

I did a coaching program in the Northern Transvaal 10 or 15 years ago called “Battle of the Races” trying to build shared understanding between blacks and whites in that area. It was very rewarding personally.

Several people have written me about coaching and mentoring with respect to SA Street Kids, but you’re the first who wants to do something for teen age girls. (BTW, I have three teenage girls in my own house and self esteem is an issue, even with all the advantages.)

It seems from the ten or so letters I have received from people in South Africa that the country is one that is very receptive at least to the whole idea of coaching.

Several people have asked me to come to SA to lead a Masterful Coaching Certification Program but they couldn’t find a sponsor who could put the finances together to make a trip by me possible. Others have wanted to come to Boston to take my program but in the end couldn’t afford it. I wish there was something we could do, as I really do love the country and its people.

Anyway, please do invest in a copy of the third edition of Masterful Coaching. It is by far the best and has 12 catalytic coaching conversations that will guide you in a year long coaching program. While it’s written with executives in mind, you can easily interpret it for any audience. I think it will really help you. All the best, and again, thanks for writing. It’s really appreciated. Robert Hargrove

Strategic thinking and inspiring leadership are in as biz digs out from the turmoil

At Masterful Coaching we take into account that you’re not going to get very far as a coach if you don’t have anyone to talk to. That’s why in the MC Certification Program we talk to you about your marketing efforts first and coaching methods second.

One good clue is to focus your marketing on companies that have a proven track record both in investing in leadership develop and in delivering bottom-line results.

I came across a 2010 report from the Hay Group recently that identified the top 20 companies for leadership development that you might find useful. For what it’s worth, I know for a fact that most of these companies use executive coaches. See study.

2009 TOP 20 BEST COMPANIES FOR LEADERSHIP

1. General Electric
2. Southwest Airlines
3. 3M Company
4. Procter & Gamble
5. Accenture
6. Wal-Mart
7. Nestle
8. Coca Cola
9. McDonald’s Corp
10. Infosys Technologies
11. IBM
12. Cisco
13. United Parcel Service
14. IKEA
15 ABB
16. Zappos
17. Hewlett-Packard
18. Goldman Sachs
19. Unilever
20. General Mills, Inc

Among the study findings: Strategic thinking and inspiring leadership are the most valued qualities in leaders this year, indicating that businesses are starting to dig out from the turmoil and are thinking more about their future long-term growth again.

Other areas were these companies excel compared to all respondents are:

- Actively manage a pool of successors for mission critical roles,

- People stay at the organization primarily for growth opportunities,

- Use corporate social responsibility to recruit employees,

- Have a high proportion of women in senior leadership, and

- Have a sufficient number of internal candidates ready to assume open leadership positions.

Note: The list was based on a survey of over 1000 companies world-wide, from 98 countries.

GE is a company world famous for its leadership pipeline that turns out world-class CEOs, not only for GE but for other companies. It started back in the 50’s when GE CEO Ralph Cordiner decided to decentralize GE into a 150 operating units, each of which would require a CEO in its own right.

This led to developing a top down, centralized approach to leadership development made famous by Jack Welch and copied by many firms. Its hallmarks include coming up with a list of GE leadership competencies, sending high potential executives to the GE leadership center at Crotonville, and a month-long yearly talent review known as Session C, culling the bottom 10% of the management ranks.

However, there are signs that the basic paradigm of leadership development that GE made famous is about to change. It started when CEO Jeff Immelt was faced with the impact of the global banking crisis on GE Capital. This reduced the company’s net worth from something like $500 billion to $250 billion, and led to a precipitous drop in the stock price from $29 a share to about $6.

Up with CEOs Coaching High Potentials; Down with the Corp U

After going through what he termed as a period of “self reflection on steroids,” Immelt started re-visioning GE’s top-down, centralized, leadership development paradigm. To paraphrase his comments in a recent Businessweek article: Someone at GE Capital must have been thinking ‘Aren’t we overly invested in subprime housing shares?’ If they did, why didn’t they tell me? What kind of leaders are we developing around here?

Further, Immelt may have gotten wind of a quiet revolution brewing amongst GE executives who have started to question the wisdom of marching people off to abstract training programs and spending so much of their time away from the business and customers.

Today, Jeff Immelt’s new approach to leadership development looks much more like personalized coaching and much less like the top-down, centralized approach of yore. A few months ago, Immelt started what he calls a “sleep over” program. Each month, he holds 10 personal one-on-one dinners at his house with the top GE leaders.

Invest in Relationships with a Pivotal Few vs. Marching 100s Off to Abstract Training Programs

The typical evening involves a few drinks, a plate of pasta, and conversation focused on getting to know each other. At night, Immelt stays home and the executive goes back to the GE Conference Center. The next morning the executive returns and the two have something like a real coaching session on everything from leadership development to strategy, to current problems.

Immelt has also brought in (for the first time) to leadership coaches for many of GE’s top 150 leaders to work on their leadership and business challenges. In the past, coaching was reserved for remedial efforts. Immelt doesn’t quite say to fire the GE training department (the whole nine yards), preferring to say things like Crotonville, Session C, and Boca Raton meeting are cauldrons: “We have to change what happens in them.”

Focus Coaching on Real Goals, Not Artificial Leadership Competencies

However, my thought is that, if you keep these cauldrons, everything will take the shape of the container. I have been told many times by company Chief Learning Officers that they need to bring in coaching. The next thing you know, they invite me to do a 1 day training program on coaching versus actually pick a few executive as guinea pigs and provide them executive coaching.

Every company thinks they need a leadership development department, but I fundamentally question that assumption. The job of developing leaders in this approach is offloaded to HR or corporate universities, who for the most part, don’t operate in the world of business, customers, or results. On the contrary, I have seen first-hand the power that comes from a handful of executives declaring an Impossible Future and then deciding to take on the task of coaching the high potentials to help realize it.

That’s why I suggest throwing out the old top-down, centralized leadership development paradigm and the corporate universities and training departments that foster it, and replace it with something much more effective. To me, this looks like CEO’s and executives getting personally involved in setting high goals, hiring top talent, and then coaching people to accomplish what really needs to be accomplished.

Google's "Hire a Coach"

There are some signs that I am not alone in this thought process. Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, has said that the best advice he ever got when he became CEO was from the famous venture capitalist John Doerr: “Hire a coach!”

Google has a philosophy of hiring the best people, bringing them into a hot project, and setting them free. Google has no list of homogenized corporate leadership competencies, no formal leadership development program, and no culling of the bottom 10%. Why do that if you go to extreme ends to hire the most talented people in the world? However, Google does encourage high potentials (just about everybody) to get personal coaches.

Cathy Pacific's CoachingOurselves

Other companies, like Cathay Pacific, are experimenting with self-directed leadership development methods that smack of coaching, not the old training methods. Their Chief Learning Officer, Graham Barkus, has adopted an approach created by McGill University Professor Henry Mintzberg.

It’s called CoachingOurselves and is used for team learning. Each month a group is given a topic to learn about that has been thought through by a noted professor. For example, “leading change, by Harvard’s Joseph Kotter.” The participants come to the CoachingOurselves session, sans facilitator, having read the material and engage in a 90-minute dialogue.

The idea is for each student to reflect on the topic in light of a recent management experience and share their thoughts with the group. This leads to some very powerful and profound conversations.

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall. - Che Guevara

When I wrote my book Masterful Coaching in 1995, I had spent years criss-crossing the globe on business trips. I often sat next to executives on flights who would voice their disappointment with both leadership training and management consulting. The typical comment was: “We spent over a million on a McKinsey study last year and not a single recommendation was ever implemented.”

I heard similar complaints about leadership training: “Every year we march thousands off to abstract leadership training programs, but what’s the impact on bottom-line results?” I had my own well-established leadership training and consulting business, but I couldn’t keep from asking myself: What’s missing from this picture?

I got interested in “coaching” because it was distinct domain with a long tradition in sports and the performing arts, and to some extent business. It seemed that coaches in these fields were expected to expand people’s capacity to realize an Impossible Future for themselves and their organization, something that could only happen if the people involved grew by leaps and bounds in the process.

By contrast, consultants are only expected to deliver reports and recommendations, and leadership trainers expected to deliver the course material and receive happy sheets with high marks by participants at the end of a typical three-day training program.

I wrote about all this in Masterful Coaching. My basic paradigm of coaching was that extraordinary leaders develop in the process of producing extraordinary results. Though this sounded good on paper, it wasn’t until I actually started practicing executive coaching with a handful of clients that I discovered that I had stumbled onto to something with revolutionary game-changing potential.

My first clients not only declared an Impossible Future, but also made giant strides in realizing it by delivering on extraordinary and tangible bottom-line results. At the same time, they were calling this work “the ultimate self-development and growth experience.”

I began to have dreams at night of starting a coaching revolution that would ultimately overthrow the tyranny of management training and consulting, and replace that with Masterful Coaching. This was over a decade ago and at first glance, it seems that great progress has been made in that revolution. Many Global 1000 firms hire executive coaches on a regular basis. The ICF claims to have almost 20,000 members and the Wall Street Journal has reported that coaching is a billion dollar industry.

Yet for all this noteworthy progress, I believe that the real revolution in coaching has yet to get underway. Consultants still do what they have always done – reports and recommendations. Trainers still do what they have always done – teaching homogenized corporate leadership competencies. At the same time, I have run across many HR managers, ICF Chapter leaders and other members of accrediting organizations who have yet to recognize that coaching takes place in the domain of accomplishment, not therapy.

It is time now to jump start a coaching revolution which seeks to overthrow individuals or certifying bodies who are fostering a coaching mindset and practices that are bound to misfire when coaching executives on the front lines of business, government, or other fields.

It is time to start a coaching revolution by first establishing a vision of coaching that is all about helping people realize an Impossible Future and accomplishing what they really need to accomplish, not just about personal growth and development in isolation.

The coaching revolution must occur in four key areas of professional practice and I will be writing blogs on each in the coming weeks. Taken as a whole, these blogs will represent the Masterful Coaching Manifesto:

Start a coaching revolution in management! Stop focusing on the leader as a steward of the past polishing up grandma’s china; start focusing on the leader as coach whose job is to realize an Impossible Future.

Start a coaching revolution in training! Stop thinking that extraordinary leaders develop by studying homogenized corporate leadership competencies; start thinking that extraordinary leaders develop while producing extraordinary results.

Start a revolution in consulting! Stop flying in at 50,000 feet with a nifty report or recommendation and then fly out in a cloud of dust; start sticking around to coach people on the vagaries of implementation.

Start a coaching revolution in HR, your Corp University, or Coach U! Focus 80% of your budget on classroom training for the many; focus no less than 20% of your budget to coaching the pivotal few on real goals and real problems in real time.

Why the attitude? Hey, they just don’t get it. At Masterful Coaching, we believe that coaching takes place in the domain of accomplishment. Coaching people to accomplish an Impossible Dream or big change allows for and pulls for them to grow and develop by leaps and bounds. At Masterful Coaching, we put results in the bow of the boat and everything else follows. This paradigm is totally validated by a long tradition of coaching in business, sports, and the performing arts.

ICF, an organization whose purpose it is to advance the profession of coaching and which boasts having over 20,000 members, has successfully marketed itself as an organization whose accreditation on your resume qualifies you as a coach. While this is a sincere and honest intention, I am sure the ICF seems to promulgate a paradigm of coaching that is totally wrong-headed.

I don’t know what the ICF official position is, but I run into a lot of ICF refugees, who tell me things that are a bit scary. 1) Most of their coaches don’t show up like business executives interested in building winning teams, but more like Dr. Freud with a pointy white beard who wants to put you on the couch. 2) The prevailing belief is that the coach should not offer a teachable point of view, but just ask questions. 3) The idea of the coach making self-development a subset of pursuing bottom-line results is something close to blasphemy.

I have been hearing a lot about an insurgency movement within the ICF that its leaders ought to be concerned about. For example, the boss of a big ICF chapter in Texas told one of its members, “What you will get from ICF is a psychologically-oriented approach, which will teach you to shut up and listen.” If you want to do business coaching, take the Masterful Coaching Certification program.

This past week, Sheri Mackey, a former top executive at Cisco Systems and now CEO of Luminosity Global Coaching, participated in the Masterful Coaching Certification program and got me riled up when she told me how shocked she was when she attended an ICF Global Conference in Florida this past year.

Sheri said that she was attracted to the Masterful Coaching approach because it focused on helping clients realize an Impossible Future and because it focused on the scoreboard. When she got to the ICF conference, she was stunned by the demeanor and attitude of the people she saw there.

She was told in one session that a coach should speak at his or her own peril and should stick to asking questions. Sheri’s response was, “If I hired an executive coach and they had nothing to say that could add value, I would clear them out of my office after one session.”

Later she had a conversation with another individual at the conference concerning coaching results. The conversation went something like this. Sheri’s question: “How do you quantify the value that you as a coach bring in terms of ROI or hard metrics?”

The response: “If a business demands that, than they have brought in coaching for the wrong reasons.”

Sheri, stunned by this remark said, “I am a business person, and business is about results.” She confided that it appeared that most of the people she talked to at the ICF Conference had pretty much the same attitude. “Not surprisingly,” said Sheri, “Most didn’t expect to make more than $20,000 a year coaching.”

Sheri put it well when she told me: “You need to have a strong business case to justify the change of direction that the Impossible Future suggests. People need to see how the Impossible Future is going to either bring dollar value or some other measurement (e.g., brand capital). Furthermore, you need to have a strong business case to justify getting paid as a coach.”

A Transformational Coaching Tale

I was riding the Long Island railroad the other day and heard two guys across the aisle talking about the fact that Blockbuster video was going bankrupt. This was no surprise to me, as I converted to Netflix about a year or so ago, which does web-based, instant streaming movies. I saw a great film on Netflix, five star in my book, called As It Is in Heaven, directed by Kay Pollak and starring Michael Nyqvist and Frida Hallgren. It was a box office hit in Sweden and was nominated for Best Foreign Language Film at the Hollywood 77th Academy Awards.

This is a film about Daniel Daréus (Michael Nyqvist), a successful and renowned international conductor whose life aspiration is to create music that will open people’s hearts. His own heart, however, is in bad shape. After suffering a heart attack on stage at the end of a performance, he retires indefinitely to Norrland in the far north of Sweden, to the village where he endured a terrible childhood of bullying.

He takes over the job of head of the church choir with a small group of people. This is a inspirational story about how a great maestro (masterful coach) not only makes great music, but has a totally transformational impact on the choir, the lives of the people in it, and the village itself. This is not a nicey-nice story; there is plenty drama, excellent character development, even a healthy dose of sex and violence. I highly recommend it.

One of the areas we will be breaking ground in this year at Masterful Coaching is a new program for entrepreneurs called Mastering Entrepreneurship. This one-year coaching program is designed for entrepreneurs who are in the start up phase, or small business owners who wake up every day staring at a wall and want to break through.

In the program, I will meet with a small group of budding CEOs (five people), four times a year, backed up with individual monthly coaching calls and a monthly group lunch for team learning. In conjunction with this new program, Vivian Song, President of Masterful Coaching Global, will be heading up a new chapter of the Boston Entrepreneurs Club, in part to launch this new venture, which is based on a whole new concept.

Why is coaching entrepreneurs relevant today? For one thing, entrepreneurship is a great way to create jobs in a sputtering economy. It also is a critical aspect of the trend towards globalization with $3 billion new capitalists. Interestingly enough, Congress is even considering passing a Start Up Visa Act to help foreign entrepreneurs with hot ideas and $250k to invest to come to America and go straight to Silicon Valley. The proposed act is being backed by Republicans, Democrats, and 126 venture capital firms. This is a great expression of globalization, and we want to be a part of it.

Beyond that, one of the main reasons we are starting this program is that the rate of “necessity entrepreneurship” (people starting businesses because other income opportunities are gone) increased to 24.7% of new U.S. ventures in 2009, up from 16.3% in 2007. For some of these entrepreneurs, getting laid off has presented them the opportunity to pursue business ideas they have long had, but didn’t try because they were getting a paycheck. These newly minted CEOs not only need help in launching their new business ventures, but need to generate a cash flow before their money runs out.

In our view, the MC Entrepreneurship Coaching Program will add tremendous power and velocity to the process of launching a new business, much more so than your typical three-day program, in part because instead of just focusing on teaching theory, we actually roll up our sleeves and work hand-in-hand with people over the course of the year to get their business off the ground.

Today, over 2000 B-schools teach classes in entrepreneurship, taking all comers: corporate refugees, striving immigrants, bored housewives, social workers, musicians. While there are a lot of people studying entrepreneurship, a new study by the Kaufman Foundation indicates that most of the B-schools haven’t figured out how to teach it. As evidence of this, less than 2% of the graduates of Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business Entrepreneur program actually start their own business. The same pattern follows with other schools.

In thinking about the Masterful Coaching Entrepreneurship program, we asked ourselves: “What’s missing from this picture?” First of all, most B-schools and adult-ed programs tend to focus on coming up with a great business idea. While this is obviously important, the Masterful Coaching program will focus on follow through. We believe that coaching people in the process is the fastest, most powerful way for people to start their own business or achieving a business breakthrough.

It’s been my experience in working with hundreds of entrepreneurs that the acid test of whether a new venture is going to fly or not is not how great the business plan is (although this is important), but whether people get out of their chairs and take immediate action. The role of the coach is to create a climate of accountability and breakthrough that gets people into action that results in a rallying momentum.

If you or someone you know would like more info about the Entrepreneurs Club or who would like to participate in the Mastering Entrepreneurship Coaching Program, please contact Vivian Song at Vivian.Song@MasterfulCoachingGlobal.com.

Dear HR Exec,
When I wrote my book Masterful Coaching in 1995, I ranted about a schism that took place in the history of management, which involved taking business results and putting it in the hands of the P&L managers and leadership development and putting it in the hands of HR.

The result was a wrong-headed approach to leadership development that was based on developing a list of homogenized corporate leadership competencies and forcing them on everyone in the organization. In my book, I was in effect attempting to rectify this wrong-headed paradigm. I wrote that leaders develop in the process of going for an Impossible Future and achieving extraordinary and tangible results. Since that time, executive coaching has really taken off.

I received a letter this morning that indicated that certain HR execs are becoming very threatened by the dramatic growth of the coaching movement. Further, they not only want to control coaching in their organizations, but make sure that it fits their worn-out, burned-out leadership development paradigm. This letter came from a person who was very excited about the MC Certification process, but who suddenly dropped out due to the threat of an HR Inquisition.

Please read the letter and then think about how you would handle a situation like this.

Hi Robert,

My apologies for the delay in responding to my earlier communication to you regarding my decision to defer the Masterful Coaching Certification process. Unfortunately, my communication with you coincided with a difficult work time and demanding travel schedule.

While I am still personally and professionally committed to learning and applying the Masterful Coaching process, I will likely need to find alternative options to practice it. The political chessboard here is requiring that I deviate from the process to a degree that I am not comfortable with, and I would not waste your time in trying to resolve.

For example, I am not allowed to use the word “coaching” in my efforts; whether it be in how I present myself or in the documentation I share during the process. Coaching is falling under the control of HRD and is being tightly controlled, with a primary focus on coaching to competencies.

Additionally, we could not use the 360 feedback process, which I think is critical to the coaching process. Corporate HRD is developing a company standard for 360 feedback, again revolving around defined “leadership competencies.” There are similar roadblocks along the balance of the process.

I was attracted to the process you developed based on my experience of what works and doesn’t work in trying to lead people through significant change efforts. I believe your process has integrity and I don’t want to spend my time, or yours, trying to adapt it to a highly restrictive environment that will build an “impossible future” around a narrowing set of constraints.

I will continue to explore opportunities to practice as much of the methodology as possible in this environment, while searching for opportunities (clients) where I could focus on truly learning and applying the process as intended. Be assured my interest in and commitment to learning the process is intact, but I will need to pursue other avenues toward certification. This decision may well take me down external paths for an environment supporting this expectation.

I wish you well and appreciate your guidance to date.

Best Regards,
John

I am often asked by people in our Masterful Coaching Certification program, “How do you tell if someone is a good candidate for coaching?” This is a great question, as picking the wrong person to coach can lead to a very frustrating experience. Start with the right mindset: the coach must choose the people they work with based on a set of selection criteria vs. the other way around.

One of the things I look for in selecting coachees is someone with a big ambition, both personal and organizational. If a person has no ambition except to retire in a couple of years and be a high school teacher or curio shop owner, they are probably not the right person.

First I look for someone who has a big ambition for themselves personally. For example, even though we may not think of them that way, our greatest presidents—Washington, Lincoln, FDR—were all highly ambitious.

Washington had a special military uniform made for himself that made him look like a great decorated general, even when he was only off fighting Indians in the Virginia militia.

Lincoln wanted to become President because he wanted to prove to himself that someone from dirt poverty could reach the top. In China, Mao Tse Tung did just about every ruthless thing you can imagine to get to the top.

Having said, that it’s important that the person not only have a big personal ambition, but that these are wedded to strong organizational ambitions consistent with fundamental human values. Mao Tse Tung wanted to take China from being a backward feudal country to a world power.

If the person’s outsized personal ambition dwarfs their organization ambition, you wind up with a dictator like Idi Amin, Saddam Hussein, or Adolf Hitler. I would advise early in the coaching relationship (or even before it starts) to just ask people: What is your biggest personal ambition? What is your biggest organizational ambition? The answers should tell you a lot.

My Advice to Wei Cheng: Make the Shift From Cop to Coach

I had dinner this past week at my home in the Boston area with Wei Cheng, Chief Regulator for China’s SOI’s (the top 128 companies to be exact, 1/3 of China’s GDP). He is a very smart guy, with roots in a humble farming family. He struck me as one of China’s future leaders, who at 38 or so was well on his way to making his mark.

I had heard Wei Cheng speak to a group of entrepreneurs at a Chinese New Year’s Gala the previous week about business opportunities in China. He emanated a kind of gravitas that captivated people’s attention. You could have heard a pin drop in the room.

As we sat around the coffee table in my living room, he said he heard about my work as an Executive Coach and talked to me about the possibility of working together. “I like your idea of Better Leaders, Better China,” he said, “help me to make better leaders.” (I wrote an article with this title a few years ago. If you would like a copy, let me know.)

I asked him to explain his goals and challenges in his job, and he pulled out a notebook and spoke to me courageously in English (much better than my Chinese). He said he had the power and influence to create an Impossible Future for many Chinese companies, but given the large number, his direct impact was limited.

He explained that one policy he had attempted to institute was that every big Chinese company have a strategy for becoming a global brand outside of China itself. He explained that most the CEOs of these companies had made a “commitment,” but there is a difference between commitment and mere compliance.

When I asked him what recourse he had, he replied that he could fire these CEOs if they didn’t comply. Then he back tracked by explaining the conundrum he faced. If he took the route of chopping CEOs’ heads off, they would only see him as a cop. Yet if he did nothing, they would not take the policy seriously.

I suggested he make the shift from thinking of himself as a Cop (regulator) to thinking of himself as a Coach, whose job was to bring out the best in these CEOs and their respective companies. He seemed to light up when he heard this, so I made a few other suggestions as well.

I said, “Over the course of the next year, instead of focusing on all 128 Chinese companies, why don’t you and your team focus on coaching 10 of these companies that really have the chance to become a global brand?” Finally, I suggested, “You could also set up a coaching process for recruiting, developing, and retaining board members for your companies.”

It was an interesting evening and we are exploring the possibility of working together.

Masterful coaching is like dancing with the stars. You have to teach talented executives to do something they are totally unaccustomed to doing. First you have to get people to step out into their Impossible Future. Then you have to get them to shift their weight to the opposite foot and make sure they do what is necessary to keep their day job. Finally, they have to keep practicing this until they can do it with so much style and skill that their performance wows those watching.

What makes this so challenging is the incredible number of demands coming at executives and the level of change and complexity they usually have to deal with. It’s easy, despite good intentions, for something related to their vision or their day job to drop through the cracks.

If this is an issue for you as coach, I suggest picking up a copy of Dr. Atul Gawande’s book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. Gawande states that checklists can help anyone both prepare for the future and, at the same time, survive in their day job.

Gawande proves his point through a steady accretion of examples, starting with an Impossible Future at Boeing. In 1935, the company had staked its hopes on the B-17 bomber. However, the bomber crashed on its first test flight because it proved too complex for the skilled test pilot to manage.

The U.S. Army Air Corp ordered planes from Douglas instead, and Boeing nearly went bankrupt. But some test pilots believed in the B-17. They came up with a takeoff checklist to guide a pilot through all the crucial steps to get the plane airborne. Checklists in hand, pilots went on to fly the B-17 for more than 1.8 million miles without an accident. The Army ultimately ordered 13,000 B-17s, giving the U.S. a decisive air advantage in World War II....and pilot checklists became universal.

Gawande examines all manner of disparate tasks—from landing a plane on the Hudson River to building a skyscraper, to operating on patients—to show how checklists can improve outcomes. For example, he explains how a simple five-item checklist in the operating room can dramatically reduce hospital-acquired infections, which kill 99,000 Americans a year.

After reading the book, I was struck by a brilliant flash of the obvious: get each person you are coaching to create one five item checklist that pertains to their Impossible Future and which represents the bold and unreasonable actions that need to be taken in the next 30 days or so. Create another five item checklist that relates to repetitive (routine) tasks of the coachee’s day job.

Gawande says coming up with the right checklist isn’t always easy or obvious, but once you nail that, it’s a very powerful tool. As a coach, offer to be a thinking partner on this and monitor progress regularly.

Toyota CEO Akio Toyoda, grandson of the founder, became CEO of the company last June. He spoke of his a vision of becoming the world’s biggest automaker, surpassing Ford and GM, barely mentioning anything about quality. When signs of Toyota’s current crisis began to emerge in his first 100 days, his first reaction was to avoid the spotlight of the media and go into hiding. He sent American CEO Jim Lentz to make apologies. Meanwhile, he let serious product quality issues spiral out of control by understating safety risks and product problems. This left the media, politicians, and consumers to dictate the conversation, while Toyota fumbled the responses. (Subsequently, Mr. Toyoda has agreed to meet with Congress.)

COACHING: Mr. Toyoda, I believe you need to realize that this is a leadership crisis, not a crisis of faulty accelerators. During Chrysler’s 1980’s crisis, CEO Lee Iacocca stepped up to the podium, restoring consumer trust and prosperity. When General Motors emerged from bankruptcy last summer, Chairman Ed Whitacre became the solid, trust inspiring, determined face of the company’s comeback. Mr. Toyoda, you need to show up in the same way—making a human connection with your customers.

How can Akio Toyoda get Toyota back on track? Harvard Professor Bill George has written a book on the seven leadership lessons for leading in a crisis that might be helpful.

1. Take responsibility…starting with yourself. Mr. Toyoda, I believe you should take personal responsibility by saying that you pushed too hard for growth and neglected quality. You should acknowledge that the real problem is not sticking accelerators, stuck floor mats, and panicky drivers, but that the Toyota quality system failed due to the wrong kind of leadership. Your job is to establish “true north” for your company again. Your Teachable Point of View: Toyota must live and die by quality.

2. Forget Atlas Shrugged…get the world off your shoulders. You cannot expect to solve problems of this magnitude yourself. Instead, you need a crisis team reporting directly to you, working 24/7 to get problems fixed—permanently.

3. Get to fundamental causes and solutions. When Toyota’s problems first came up, the company blamed a symptom—exonerating the accelerators and pointing the finger at loose floor mats. Instead, management should have required its best engineers to get to the root cause of this problem and every other quality problem being reported. This is basic engineering and quality discipline.

4. Get ready for a marathon. Mr. Toyoda, the seeds of the crisis your company is now facing were sown over the past ten years by placing growth ahead of customer concerns and quality. Mr. Toyoda, addressing those problems may take another decade to resolve. Toyota must be prepared to accept shrinking sales and slim profits for awhile and invest heavily in corrective action until public confidence is restored.

5. Never waste a good crisis. For all the agony that you and Toyota are experiencing, this crisis provides a powerful opportunity to make fundamental changes required to restore Toyota quality. Employees are ready for new direction and they are willing to make radical changes to renew the company. With your leadership Mr. Toyoda, Toyota automobiles can be restored to the world’s highest quality.

6. You're on center stage. In a crisis, people insist on hearing from the leader. You Mr. Toyoda can’t send out your American CEO or public relations specialists to explain what happened. You must come out of hiding, take personal responsibility, and subject yourself to intense public scrutiny. Then you should make a personal commitment to every Toyota customer to repair the damage, including buying back defective cars.

7. Go on offense; focus on winning now. GM and Ford are rapidly regaining market share, while the confidence of Toyota’s loyal customers is badly shaken. Toyota cannot wait until all its quality problems are resolved. It must play defense and offense at the same time. To win, Toyota needs to offer sublime styling, superior quality, better value for consumers, greater safety, and improved fuel economy. This is a tall order. People are saying that this crisis is a real test Akio Toyoda’s leadership. Are you and Toyota up to these challenges? Just remember, in every breakdown are buried the seeds of a breakthrough.

Hi Robert,

To start off I can say that I am thoroughly enjoying my work in executive coaching and consulting. Fortunate for me, my order book is now filled till September this year. I considered myself extremely lucky in securing engagements with three corporations on retainer.

Along the way, I am now acquiring lots of new learning besides sharpening up my old repertoire in organization change, corporate transformation, personal re-invention, leadership development, etc. I’m now into coaching senior executives about “creating the business” for start-ups in large corporations. Thanks to Robert, the term CTB (create the business) is the most powerful concept I am now using. The other powerful concept is “change yourself first.” Several executives talk about having to make changes … making others change. I now “show them the mirror” about changing self first. Encountered occasional tense moments, but I prevailed.

Another thing – Your Coach (In a Book) is an excellent resource that many of my clients enjoy, especially those who were assigned by their companies for coaching as part of leadership development. I get them to do some reading of the book and whenever we meet, we spend about 10 to 15 minutes as part of rapport building to talk about what they have read; and thereafter proceed into our coaching proper. Works marvelously with these Asian executives. Not only do they work on their issues creatively through coaching, they also acquire some new learning.

Thought I should update you about my progress. Regards, Thee Woon

There have been three great waves of USA domestic transformation. The first was FDR with the New Deal and the second was LBJ with the Great Society. You represent the Third Wave and have picked up where the others left off—healthcare reform and making America competitive in the global economy.

The issue, Mr. President, is that while people want these reforms, the economic climate at this time is such that they are not ready to pay for them. As a result, your Third Wave has been at least temporarily slowed down or at least flattened out, and with the election of Scott Brown of Massachusetts, you may be feeling pretty discouraged.

Take heart! You still enjoy tremendous personal popularity and I believe you can cause a resurgence of this Third Great Wave, if you keep the following Masterful Coaching TPOV in mind: Anything is possible! There is always a path forward! Every situation is transformable. And the actions are up to you. (Especially this last one.)

1) Anything is possible! You need to continue to hold out the vision of affordable healthcare for all. What American Democrat or Republican can disagree with that?

2) There is always a path forward. You need to create a visceral bond with the American public that change is necessary, and I would start to echo the public’s frustration with the rancor between Democrats and Republicans, and Washington’s bi-partisan gridlock and incompetence.

3) Every situation is transformable. Demonstrate through your own personal behavior several courageous acts of bi partisan political mastery that represent some small steps. For example, call a meeting of the two parties on healthcare and enthusiastically adopting two big ideas the Republicans are championing—frivolous malpractice lawsuits against doctors and lifting a regulatory ban on state experimentation in healthcare.

4) The actions are up to you. Stay focused on small steps that can build rapid momentum. How about passing 20% of your health care bill this year?

It’s my belief that, if you took this coaching to heart, you would not only maintain your popularity, but generate the political and economic will needed to cause a resurgence of this Third Great Wave of Domestic Transformation … and just possibly go down in history as a Great President.

Following the last session, I received an email from Paul Fisher, one of the participants from a Big Co. His email and my response might give you an idea of what happens in the coaching part of the program. Here Paul is making sure he has met the first test of certification...signing up 2 qualified coachees. (I have changed the names to protect the innocent.)

Paul's letter to Robert... Thank you very much for a great two days. I enjoyed meeting you and appreciate the dialogue associated with the Masterful Coaching methodology. The discussion approach really helped bring my reading of your materials together. I am going back over my notes and the materials to help make connections and reinforce the learning.

I met with Ben, my boss, this morning and we had a really good meeting about my next steps. I am remaining in my current role for now (his choice), which will let me focus on really learning and applying the Masterful Coaching process while I focus all of my efforts on helping him with his organizational objectives.

Ben has agreed to be a client and we discussed several members of his leadership team for coaching engagements. We discussed that this is not intended for “remedial” coaching discussions, but rather for leaders who are focused on accomplishing an “impossible future.”

The leaders on his team that we discussed are ones who have big objectives that they need/want to achieve, as well as ones who are either new to their roles or soon will be and will be in a creative mode with their teams. Any of these leaders will be “Principal (Senior) Managers” and direct reports to Ben.

One in particular stands out to me. He is the new Regional Manager for our Europe/Eurasia operations. He would be keen to engage in the coaching and is definitely focused on accomplishing an “impossible” level vision.

He is located in Aberdeen, Scotland, so I would envision us meeting face-to-face in early March when I will be meeting with him on a separate subject. We would conduct weekly calls for follow-up and focused calls as needed for specific development activities as we progress through the conversations. I would plan to meet personally either every two months or quarterly at a minimum.

Will this combination of clients satisfy the certification requirements of coaching two people with the MC approach, as well as the goals of the coaching?

Perhaps we could schedule a call where I could discuss my plans for the respective clients and my initial meetings with them. Thank you again for the learning, development, and contribution opportunity. Best Regards, Paul

Robert’s response…making sure coachees are on board with an Impossible Future and coaching contract

Paul, This is a great letter as it shows your seriousness about the Masterful Coaching Certification process. I am happy to hear your job situation will allow you to focus on the Masterful Coaching Certification process. I am not clear from your letter whether Ben has signed up for an Impossible Future or rather for help in achieving current organizational objectives. Perhaps you didn’t want to push him to this on the first meeting, but this is a very important point we need to clarify. Everything rests on this.

Also, as you are going to be working closely with Ben, did you have a chance to discuss a Chief of Staff role that we talked about in the context of helping Ben with this Impossible Future and day job? I think this would really empower you and I suggest bringing it up sooner rather than later, as you are still formulating your role.

As far as coaching one of Ben’s high-potential DRs on accelerated leadership development in the context of an Impossible Future, I think that’s a great idea and would meet the requirements of MC Certification, plus be a pre-emptive strike into the staff role. I have done many coaching jobs where I coached an EVP on an Impossible Future and one or two of his VPs. You just have to be two-headed and guarantee confidentiality. This, by the way, is how to get MC to take off in the organization.

Though I usually recommend a meet once a month, talk once a week set up, in cases where you are coaching a guy from a far-flung geographic region, I have myself done the every 2nd month meeting, but ususally with a twice weekly coaching call. It usually works out pretty well, but one note of caution, make sure the guy is a COMMUNICATOR--meetings, phone calls, email.

The key is to know which of the 12 catalytic coaching conversations are best done face-to-face. For example, building an extraordinary coaching relationship, source document and winning game plan, 360 feedback. Other conversations could be doubled up at face-to-face sessions and then reviewed on the phone. Also, you can split the travel-he can come to you or vice versa.

Let’s get the 6 MC Certification calls scheduled near term. I would like to talk to you at the appropriate time to make sure Ben is on board for an Impossible Future and knows something about what that is. I would also like to talk to you about the same with his direct report. Are both willing to sign the coaching contract, which implies 200 hours of coaching (or at least a lot of calendar time)?

Look forward to working with you, Robert

Our work at Masterful Coaching is to coach leaders who seek to make a difference in their world. I would love to have the opportunity to coach President Obama or the leaders of Congress in charge of passing a healthcare bill. The first thing I would talk about is an Impossible Future of affordable healthcare for all. Then I would talk about basing the health care system legislation on “First Principles.” For example, people and families getting the healthcare they need, not doctors and insurance firms getting rich.

Let me share with you a story from my personal experience that illustrates the above. We love our son’s physician, Dr. George Gallos, the bespectacled Hungarian whose eyes and gentle bedside manner harkens back to a Normal Rockwell painting of a country doctor attending to Tommy with his baseball glove in hand.

After visiting the doctor with our son for a slight arm strain, we were surprised to get a $245 bill. It turns out that we recently changed our heath insurance company and, while we were told that our new insurer, Fallon Medical, covered Dr. Gallos, he wasn’t covered in our Fallon Select Plan.

I called Dr. Gallos’ office to say that we were not too happy about this and they graciously made a $100 adjustment. However, I was struck by just how expensive a doctor’s visit has become in just a short time. A few years ago, I paid a York Maine doctor (where I have a summer home) only $30 for visit and a poison ivy shot.

It also became clear just how wrong-headed the US healthcare system is. It seems that the purpose has become to make health insurance companies and doctors rich. In China, Canada, England, Sweden, and probably 50 other countries, our son’s doctor’s visit would not have cost over the $30 dollars I paid years ago. The reason is that the healthcare systems in these countries are designed for the right reason, providing healthcare to the nation’s people. (See my block on China healthcare below.)

My family pays over $1000 a month for health insurance, an astronomical fee, and the services are very restricted. The insurance company told us when we called up to inquire that we could indeed see Dr. Gallos for the princely sum of an additional $200 more per month. No wonder we have 45 million people in this country that don’t have access to affordable healthcare.

This incident also caused me to reconsider my sentimental attachment for Dr. Gallos. His office is always packed with patients and he must be a very rich man despite paying for office rent and a receptionist. Our son’s visit lasted only ten minutes and cost $245. If you multiply $245 times 6 patients an hour, that comes out to almost $1500 an hour. I am all for free enterprise but…

I heard over the weekend that President Obama was inviting both Republicans and Democrats to a special White House conference in an attempt to get a healthcare bill passed that deals with the millions of individuals and families who don’t have it.

95% of the Republicans and Democrats think this healthcare gap is appalling. Everyone seems to agree on the What, but not the How. I suggest the first thing to discuss at this joint conference is something that’s called “First Principles,” or the purpose. Clearly, the purpose of the US healthcare system should not be to make doctors and health insurance companies rich, it should be to provide affordable healthcare to everyone in the country and any legislation should be derived out of that.