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 an approach to leadership development that was based on developing a list of homogenized corporate leadership competencies and forcing them on everyone organization. As former GE coach and University Michigan Professor Noel Tichy has noted, “Despite millions of dollars spent on research, hundreds of books, and thousands of training programs, there is not a shred of evidence that this competency-based approach works.”

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 making a difference. I believe in the motto “Better leaders, Better world” and, that if we keep this wrong-headed leadership development paradigm, we will not see much progress.

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.

We gave a Masterful Coaching Certification class this past week in Boston around my dining room table. It’s based on realizing an impossible dream through 12 catalytic coaching conversations. Executive coaches in the making from Halliburton stood out, as well as coaches of Smith Barney and Bank of America. At one point, we got into a nifty dialogue about how executive coaches, using the MC method, should plan to divide up their time over the course of a one-year coaching engagement with their client.

Here are the four major categories for spending your time:

Spend 25% on coaching the client to come up with an Impossible Future, winning game plan and execute it

The key here is to make sure the client comes up with an Impossible Future that sounds like “Putting a man on the moon,” rather than, “We want to be the best provider of XYZ services in the world.” Hello!? How will you ever know you achieved that? Once you get the Impossible Future down, do a “What’s So” process to assess the gap between the dream and today’s reality. This gap can only be filled when you identify what’s missing, that if provided, could make a difference. Most coaches and clients struggle with distinguishing the difference between “what’s missing that would make a difference” and “what’s wrong.” What’s missing is a new idea, fresh approach, innovative solution.

Spend 25% (or more) on Mastering the Political Chessboard

Coming up with an Impossible Future and game plan may actually be the easy part. Mastering the political chessboard may be the tough part. As soon as you figure out the Impossible Future, take a day to map out the political chessboard (supporters and opposers), as well as to develop a campaign strategy. For example, with respect to your bold vision, think about whether or not you want to let all the cats out of the bag all at once. Abraham Lincoln stole the Presidential election from his rivals because he talked about saving the Union vs. abolishing of slavery. Think about what Truman said: Politics is the art of getting things done. Ask the client: What you could actually get done this year? I suggest taking account of the vagaries of the political chessboard monthly, as things are subject to change. Early supporters have a way of becoming opposers when they feel threatened by change. If you are really up to a big vision, there will be people who want to deal you, your client, and your initiative a death blow, and these people may be hidden in plain view. Watch out for Mr. Mustard, in the drawing room, with the lead pipe.

Spend 25% on helping clients recognize and disperse defensive routines

When a coaching client pushes for an Impossible Dream, each step they take to realize their goal will create both support and opposition. Unfortunately, fierce opposition can cause the coachee to head for the bunkers or reactivate old defensive routines. For example, I spent a year coaching a client in the defense industry with a world-shaking vision that involved Smart Power. However, when some bad apples who opposed the vision started to attack (bully) my coachee, instead of fighting back, my client went into a flight mode which was to “just ignore them.” The bullies took this as a sign of weakness and came on even stronger. I spent a good part of the year getting this person to recognize and disperse this one defensive behavior and to stand up for himself.

Spend 25% on helping the client break the grip and excel beyond their winning strategy

Each of us has a winning strategy that is the source of our success, but at a certain point becomes a limitation. I have discovered that often the winning strategy that has taken us to where we are today (current successes), won’t take us to our Impossible Future. For example, most executives get to the top through a winning strategy of being dominant, being the smartest one in the room, or using force of argument or pressure. This may be effective in clawing your way to the top, but most big visions and game plans require being collaborative vs. being dominant and listening loudly vs. always putting out your infinite wisdom. This shift is a tall order for a lot of execs. We usually open people’s eyes to their winning strategy and how it helps and hinders through the MC 360 interview process. Helping people break the grip and excel beyond their winning strategy remains a focus throughout the year. I suggest revisiting the 360 feedback and especially the winning strategy on monthly basis, in light of what’s happening. Use this leadership declaration to promote new ways of being and shed old ones: I am committed to the possibility of…; I am committed to giving up…

Honda has taken a page from my book with a “Dream the Impossible” video series. The videos focus on setting big goals with impossible deadlines.

There are a handful of examples featured in these great videos, including what Honda engineers did when given the job of coming up with a hybrid car that ran on a fuel cell. They were given less than a year to do this, and used the time pressure as a friend vs. an enemy.

Another vignette features two thirty-something, rock stars of talent, film screen writers who were thrilled to get the job of the recent Star Trek remake. Upon taking the job, they received a poster in the mail to be widely distributed in movie theaters... “Star Trek, Fall 2009” (just a few months later). Instead of complaining to the Hollywood producers, they consciously used the incredible time pressure to fuel their creativity and effectiveness.

There are other interesting examples too of setting high goals and racing against time, including a race car team that had to be brought together in a hurry to win a big race, and a champion skate boarder who had to come up with a new trick, the 900, in the breath of time. The series is definitely worth checking out.

This prompted certain undertakings by us at Masterful Coaching. First, last summer, I began working on a book Your First 100 Days, which will eventually be published by our new company Masterful Coaching Press—incorporated last July.

Second we began building a “My First 100 Days” micro-site for leaders who are looking for: 1) ideas, 2) coaching, and 3) online courses on this topic. This site is now up and running.

The difference between a regular website like MasterfulCoaching.com and a micro-site like MyFirst100Days.net is the difference between a department store and a specialty boutique.

At this site, we will focus on the issues and opportunities new executives face in their job. For example: 1) successful executive onboarding; 2) setting the stage for realizing an Impossible Future; or 3) turning what could be a so-so job into a truly transformational assignment.

By the way, you can download the introduction to the book Your First 100 Days, by going to MyFirst100Days.net and registering.

The idea for the program originally came from John Young, Undersecretary of Defense for AT&L, who at the time was in charge of a budget of close to $300 billion dollars. Mr. Young saw Masterful Coaching’s involvement as a way to significantly improve the performance of the Pentagon PEO’s and program managers. “Get Defense Acquisition programs delivered on time and on schedule” was the mandate.

Mr. Anderson, President of DAU, a former flag officer in the Air Force, made the Executive Coaching Certification Program a top priority, seeing it as a way to establish a coaching culture at the Pentagon. He not only engaged me in an executive coaching relationship, but saw to it that both Deans and top faculty members were enrolled as Masterful Coaching Certification candidates and ready to participate 100%.

The requirements were rigorous, starting with each of the 10 candidates enrolling two high-level Pentagon program managers, many of whom were former Generals, Admirals, as well as SES’s or Senior Executive Officers. It also involved each executive coaching certification candidate agreeing to spend up to 400 hours on their coaching commitments over the next year.

Each coach and coachee then joined together in going for an Impossible Future that represented playing a bigger game, as well as the need to bring about transformational change in their area. The commitments usually involved dramatically improving the performance (cost and schedule) of key Pentagon programs, like the Joint Strike Fighter.

We met for four days in a classroom setting at DAU, in Fort Belvoir in Virginia, simulating a flight school atmosphere based on study and practice. The participants would study one of the12 Masterful Coaching Catalytic Conversations and then practice it with their clients in real situations, in real time, with real goals.

They were supervised in this process by their flight school instructor, either myself or Master Level Coach, Carl Kaestner, through a series of coaching calls. We would start these coaching calls with comments like: “Tell me about your coachee’s Impossible Future,” or ask something like, “How are you going to make the 360 process a transformational experience?”

One of the interesting aspects of this group is that all the executive coaching candidates had leadership backgrounds, and well-developed coaching and counseling skills to begin with. Yet as many of the participants told me, “I love the Masterful Coaching Method, because it gave me a flight plan and allowed me to take my coaching skills to a whole new dynamic level.”

Said one Dean, “What’s different about the Masterful Coaching approach than most coaching programs is that it provides a methodology to instill a higher vision, while impacting urgent and important bottom-line results. Shifts in thinking and attitude are brought in through the back door.”

I was thrilled when after about 6 to 7 months into the program, one of the Deans told me that the program had been transformational particularly around realizing that you don’t have to be at the top to be a change insurgent. You can mount a change insurgency from wherever you are.

Said another participant, “I used to work in the Pentagon, and though I had a fairly high level job, the way I was thinking about things made me feel fairly disempowered. I also was like the gold fish in the water of the Pentagon bureaucracy, that couldn’t see the water. Now as a Masterful Coach, working with a top PEO, I am able to stand outside the system, yet at the same time impact it. I feel like I am finally empowered to make the difference I have always wanted to make.”

To find out more about the Masterful Coaching certification for your Corporate University, HR group, or internal consultants, contact Susan Youngquist at Susan.Youngquist@rhargrove.com.

There it was…Eeeyewww! In the process of brushing my teeth and rinsing out the foamy white toothpaste, I noticed the dreaded blood-red streaks indicating a gum condition. It was then that I decided to do what in dentistry is called a Deep Cleaning, the usual cure for this condition.

I first checked with my local dentist and was told that the procedure would cost $1775. Wow!!! To clean my teeth and gums! I decided on the spot to check with the dentist in China, which I would be visiting shortly thereafter.

Once in Shanghai, a family member with pull took me to a local dental hospital which was a real symphony in cultural differences. There were throngs of people everywhere lining up in front of a window that looked like the ticket booth of a movie theater. There people were getting appointments for that day (not weeks from now), as well as paying bills for the procedure to be done. Instead of having to fill out the usual 5 pages of forms, I was simply told to come back at 11:45 for the deep cleaning.

In the West, dentists usually go through the three step process: cleaning, x-rays, and a quick exam with a pointy metal stick which culminates in “displaying the case” or THE LECTURE. You are going to have to spend $5000 to $10,000 for root canals, crowns, periodontal work, or lose your teeth! This is in large part a scare tactic designed for the dentist to extract as much money from you as possible.

When 11:45 rolled around, I showed up at the hygienist’s cubicle. She was obviously very professional. She asked me to sit down and began the procedure with the latest high-tech equipment, a combination of pressurized water and ultra sound. About an hour later she was done and my gums have not shed a drop of blood since.

Amazingly, the total cost of this procedure was $40 USD. Even if you take labor cost and currency differences of the Chinese RMB to the dollar into account (1 USD = 6.67 RMB) and multiply the cost of $40 by 6.67RMB, it comes out to only $266. The Chinese save people money in other ways as well. For example, no private offices, no secretaries, no answering services, and no insurers to pay.

The experience of going to the Chinese dental hospital made it vividly clear why USA healthcare costs are so out of whack. They are set up for doctors, dentists, and hospitals to make huge profits, rather than to simply make sure that the general public receives the necessary dental and medical services they need.

If you think my experience was based on limited data points, consider the fact that Juris Ozols, a friend of mine, was told by his local dentist in New Hampshire that he would need a root canal and crowns for a cost of about $1500. He decided to fly home to his native Latvia where there is a government run healthcare program.

“The USA healthcare system is largely based on BS-ing, and lies,” he told me. The reason for such a strong statement? An examination by a top specialist in Latvia revealed that Juris didn’t need a root canal and crown at all. All that was required was to close a crack in a back tooth by filling with some ceramic material. The total cost to Juris was $200.

Had a great meeting with Thee Woon Goh from Singapore the other day. Thee Woon took the Masterful Coaching Certification program with me last spring. And we have since struck up a robust relationship which I will share more about in ensuing blogs.

Thee Woon shared a great quote with me that represented several golden nuggets. It involved John Doerr, one of the great venture capitalists of Silicon Valley, suggesting to Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, to hire a coach.

John Doerr is known to be a legendary moneyman with a Midas touch. Every time he invests in a company, it seems to turn to gold. That he puts so much stock in coaching really caught my attention. Could this be one of the reasons for his Midas touch?

When Eric Schmidt was asked what the best advice he ever got during his tenure at Google was, he replied that it came from John Doerr in 2001 who said, “My advice to you is to hire a coach.”

Doerr told Schmidt that the coach he should have was Bill Campbell. Schmidt tells how he initially resented the advice… “After all,” he said, “I was a CEO. I was pretty experienced. Why would I need a coach? Am I doing something wrong? My argument was, how could a coach advise me if I’m the best person in the world at this?”

Schmidt went on to discover that that was not what a coach does. “The coach doesn’t have to play the sport as well as you do. They have to watch you and get you to be your best. In the business context, a coach is not a repetitious coach. A coach is somebody who looks at something with another set of eyes, describes it to you in [his] words, and discusses how to approach the problem.”

Thanks Thee Woon!

The furor in America around President Obama winning the Nobel Prize was really maddening and saddening. Instead of cheering for our leaders to elicit their greatness, many American’s tend to foolishly diminish them. Rush Limbaugh said when President Obama got elected, “I hope he fails.”

My view is that right or wrong, he is the President and that those who do the tearing down seldom do the building up. How does Limbaugh justify his $200 million a year contract as a professional provocateur? It seems less a statement of Mr. Limbaugh’s good judgment and more a statement that many Americans seem to feel the need for someone to package their hatred and evoke the negative ions already swirling in their brains and blood.

It’s very hard to understand how conservative talk show hosts, like Laura Ingram, not only decry the President winning the Nobel on the one hand, but also cheer when the city of Chicago fails in its bid to hold the Olympics on the other. Am I missing something here?

I wasn’t an early fan of President Obama, but with time, I have become one, especially with his Smart Power foreign policy initiatives. How wonderful it was to hear the President addressing the graduating class of the Naval Academy saying that when you land on a foreign shore, you are not only there to express American military power, but to embody the values in our constitution – liberty, equality and enduring hope.

More…

• How inspiring it was to hear the President addressing the Muslim world from Cairo saying we respect you and your contribution to civilization vs. rail on about seeing the Muslim world as the womb of the evils of terrorism.

• How intriguing it was to see Obama extending an “outstretched hand to the Iranians” vs. the “closed fist” that was extended in the Bush administration.

• How fascinating it was to see Obama shake hands with one of our greatest detractors in South American, Hugo Chavez.

These small events may be more symbolic than substantive, but they do represent a shift in the wind in the way America sees its leadership role in the world, from big-stick unilateralism to speaking more softly and winning the hearts and minds of those who we previously spoke to as enemies, and who in turn often acted as such.

Even though we don’t normally think of it that way, the most successful people on earth are successful because they have become a brand in their own right. Think Donald Trump, Richard Branson, Calvin Klein, Oprah.

It pays to consciously and intentionally create what Tom Peter’s calls a Brand Called You. Here are three tips:

1)  Stand out from the crowd. Brands differentiate one person (product from the next). Vive la difference! Think about the people in your profession or occupation. What is it about you that is dramatically different? For example, you are Super Smart, Very Entrepreneurial, High Energy, Trustworthy and Reliable, A Creative Force.

2)  Share of voice. One of the things that make a personal brand great is when people talk about the person. This is called share of voice. Think Obama, Paris Hilton, Oprah. What can you do that will get people talking about you?

3)  Trustworthiness. David Letterman having sex with his staff. Lehman brothers crashing due to the greed of its execs. GM going bankrupt. Businessweek recently reported in an issue on the 100 top brands that trust has become the dominant factor in a brand’s fortunes rising or falling. What mistakes have you made that could erode trust and how can you correct them?

Washinton, DC Metro Station on a cold January morning in 2007. The man with a violin played six Bach pieces for about 45 minutes. During that time approx. 2 thousand people went through the station, most of them on their way to work. After 3 minutes, a middle-aged man noticed there was a musician playing. He slowed his pace and stopped for a few seconds and then hurried to meet his schedule.

4 minutes later: The violinist received his first dollar: a woman threw the money in the hat and, without stopping, continued to walk.

6 minutes: A young man leaned against the wall to listen to him, then looked at his watch and started to walk again.

10 minutes: A 3-year old boy stopped but his mother tugged him along hurriedly. The kid stopped to look at the violinist again, but the mother pushed hard and the child continued to walk, turning his head all the time. This action was repeated by several other children. Every parent, without exception, forced their children to move on quickly.

45 minutes: The musician played continuously. Only 6 people stopped and listened for a short while. About 20 gave money but continued to walk at their normal pace. The man collected a total of $32.

1 hour: He finished playing and silence took over. No one noticed. No one applauded, nor was there any recognition.

No one knew this, but the violinist was Joshua Bell, one of the greatest musicians in the world. He played one of the most intricate Bach pieces ever written, with a violin worth $3.5 million dollars. Two days before, Joshua Bell sold out a theater in Boston where the seats averaged $100.

You may be a Joshua Bell singing in the subway. You may want to ask yourself: How am I going to brand my talent? How am I going to market it? How am I going to get people’s attention?

● Believe it or not: The People’s Republic of China (1948-2009) is just 60 years old.

● Believe it or not: China’s economic miracle (4th largest economy in the world) started just 30 years ago when Deng declared, “It’s good to get rich.”

● Believe it or not: China’s economy has been growing at over 10% a year for 30 years.

● Believe it or not: In the last 30 years, China has brought over 300 million people out of poverty.

● Believe it or not: The per capita yearly income has quadrupled in the last decade and a half.

● Believe it or not: The USA economy, in the middle of a financial crisis, is being floated by China’s ownership of over 2 ½ trillion in government bonds.

● Believe it or not: Much of the developing world looks to China, not the USA, as its role model -- there are a million Chinese professionals in Africa alone.

● Believe it or not: McDonalds and KFC make more profits in China than in the USA.

Congratulations to China for a truly historic achievement. National Holidays is really a cause for celebration!

As you drive down Shanghai’s Nanjing Road, you can’t help but notice what a high-tech, modern nation China has become. To the naked eye, China looks as successful, well-managed and orderly as countries like the USA, France, or Belgium.

Pudong Airport makes JFK look like a flashback from the 50’s. There are skyscrapers shooting up everywhere, expats from global 1000 companies in every Starbucks and Chinese fast-food joint, and traffic wardens on every street corner.

Yet, there is one pivotal difference. China has emerged as one of the 21st century’s leading nations, not through the often dysfunctional two-party democracy we have in the United States, but through a pragmatic, one-party system where leaders actually have the power to make decisions and implement innovative solutions to complex problems.

Most Westerners might come to China with preconceptions about one-party rule, but if you're like me, driving through Shanghai and seeing signs of burgeoning prosperity everywhere, you have to admit to yourself that the leaders of the Communist Party have done a great job.

If you take the American example, it reveals that democracy worked brilliantly in the context of building a new country from scratch, one that is endowed with great open spaces, fertile land and rich resources. But, what if you are rebuilding an old country, mired in endless poverty, complex problems, and scant resources picked over for hundreds, if not thousands of years?

In such a case, it is obvious that you need strong leadership based on the notion that someone has to make the decision. It’s hard to believe that China could have transformed itself after a century of humiliation at the hands of the West from a backward-looking, medieval country to a modern, economic miracle in so short a time with the kind of two-party dysfunctional democracy we have in the United States.

Can you imagine how conservative Republican senators might have trashed Mao’s Bare Foot Doctor program – an attempt to bring healthcare to the countryside – as wrecking the existing healthcare program, or how talk show hosts, like Rush Limbaugh, would have attacked Deng Xiaoping’s economic recovery program to bring 300 million people out of poverty at lightning speed? What would these pariahs have offered in its place?

Is the rosy picture of China and “The Chinese Century,” as reported in the Western press, too good to be true? In fact, the answer to that question is “yes.” For all its new found success, China is still in many ways a poor country. Executives walk the smooth pavement at Nanjing road, but a few streets over one can still see broken sidewalks with coolies carrying buckets on either end of a stick and be exposed to foul smells.

Yet, despite all this, there is no escaping the fact that the entire country is moving speedily to a new future.