“Bob, I’m a little shocked!” This is how my executive coaching client, Danny, the Vice-President-Production Operations with a large energy firm in the oil patch responded at the beginning of our conversation when asked, “How are things back at the ranch?” He went on to explain that when he had been nudged by their Human Resource function to get a sense of forecasted turnover over the next few years through retirements, attrition, etc., his people had collectively come to the conclusion that 70% of the staff in Danny’s division would turn over in the next 3 years. “Well, what are you planning to do to prevent the potential adverse consequences?”, I asked.

In response, Danny stated, “We clearly have to start identifying successors to the key Production Operations leadership positions, and in parallel with this identify and accelerate the development of High Potentials.” “What are your other glimpses of the obvious?” I asked him. “That’s a darn good question. I guess we’ve got to review other critical roles and specifically any flight risk staff!” 

“What generally would be the outcomes you and your leadership team would likely look for by doing this?” I asked again. He quickly responded with increased energy, “Well for one, identify key talent at the senior levels of our division, get a solid sense of our bench strength, get those we identify to be clear on their needed development activities, and agree with our senior team as to what exactly the key succession management metrics should  be!”. Danny had quickly created excellent strategic direction around this challenge that’s common to most private and public sector organizations.

When asked, “What’s really driving all of this?”, Danny said “That’s another great question. We’re anticipating continued strong growth once the economy gets back on its feet and obviously anticipating turnover of our key people. The increased challenge of filling these key roles along with our questionable current bench strength and readiness to backfill are clearly wanting, as well as our lack of being able to identify HiPo’s right now and having them ready to step into senior leadership roles when we need them to surface. I think these are the real concerns here.”

“How do you feel about all of this?” I asked. “Quite frankly, I’m disappointed, mad as hell for allowing ourselves to get into this position, and I’m damned anxious about what might happen if we don’t get on top of it . . . and yesterday! It’s now one of our top priorities!”

“So, what do you want to do about it?” I asked him. “Well, it’s clear that we’re engineering experts and not Human Resource experts so we’ll need to get together with HR and soon. I’ll put this at the top of the list at our next Production Ops executive leadership team meeting this coming Tuesday.”

“If you thought you knew what needed to be done in terms of the overall process for moving this forward quickly, what might that be?” Being the quick thinker he naturally is, Danny stated, “OK, do you just make these questions up? Well first, I would think that we need to scope out what actually needs to be identified through our succession management initiative. Second, we would no doubt have to assess and review our current engineering talent for levels of performance and potential. Third, we’d obviously have to start figuring out what key leadership and individual-contributor engineering roles need to be replaced and when. Last, I’m thinking it’s about making sure we have a top notch development action planning process in place that can be quickly designed and implemented. Does that make sense?”. “More importantly, does it make sense to you?” I responded. “You know, it does. Thanks.”, said Danny.

“So what’ll your next steps be given what you’ve said so far?” I asked him. “Again, the questions Uncle Bob!”, Danny said jokingly. “Well let me see. I’m thinking we start right away by initiating a succession planning meeting between us and HR early next month to agree on role expectations, determine critical roles in the Production Operations division, identify high impact engineer flight risks and begin a talent review to develop a list of HiPo’s.” “Then what?”, I asked. “OK”, Danny said, “Later in the month, we’ll make sure we have a talent replacement plan in place. In the following month we can shoot for having a development plan nailed down, and the month after that have our succession metrics in place with a solid progress plan established. Yeah, that’s sounds like it would do it.” 

Lastly I asked Danny, “So how will we know you’ve done what you’ve said?” “Again, with the questions!” he responded tongue in cheek. “I’ll send you a one page copy of our general plan for making this happen with target dates. I’ll send you an email once I believe each of the key milestones have been achieved. We can also carve out a small portion of some of our future executive coaching calls for us to discuss what’s happening. Will that work?” “It’s sounds like a plan my friend.” said I.

What insights in the foregoing were there for you? What one word captures your reaction? How do you feel about the subject of talent management and succession planning. What do you want to do with it? I would love to receive any gems this may have conjured up for you. For those interested, a wonderful book on this subject is ‘The Leadership Pipeline: How to Build the Leadership Powered Company’, by Ram Charan, Stephen Drotter and James Noel. Take care and have a great day!

Well, it’s no secret that The Benwicks are huge animal lovers! To build on the current theme of Bob’s recent blog on Beau Benwick, I would like to share another perspective on leadership based on the human interaction with canines as we seek to establish the “leader in the pack” not unlike establishing our role as leader in any organization or community.

Cesar Millan, is an incredible animal behaviorist. You may have seen his show on the National Geographic Channel…. The Dog Whisperer…. I tend to tune in the wee hours of the morning on those nights when sleep escapes me – too much late night caffeine! I always get “take aways” from each show….not just in regard to our canine house mates, but I see such parallels to leadership amongst human kind. Cesar’s coin of the phrase “Leader of the Pack” has great meaning regardless of what species provides the context.

While several leadership pathways emerge from observing and reading about Cesar’s choice of methods [read Be the Pack Leader, Millan, C. & Peltier, J.(2007)], I am taken with the emphasis demonstrated on the value of calm assertive energy as a means to bring about desirable outcome…..in canine world this showcases the need for self regulation of the leader’s energy as dogs are all about reading this. It is what they respond to. If we as leader exhibit anger, excitement, anxiety, and/or fear while working with our canines, what will we bring about for them? Clearly we are modeling unbalanced behavior of which they will emulate or respond to. Watching those on TV who reach out to Cesar to bring solution to their canine problems, he is very clear as to who needs the help….the leader! It is interesting to note that those coming from a leadership position that demonstrates anxiety or excitable behaviour also tend to struggle to achieve the bottom and top line results, results they are looking for as their messaging. Just as with canines, they will often come across to others as perhaps reactive and confusing, or unpredictable, intimidating, lackluster and incredulous, often eroding that most important aspect…..trust! 

So what does this mean for us homo sapiens? In our human experience under conditions of stress (that’s constantly around us), the question is, ‘as leaders how do we show up for others and what messaging are we sending to those that we lead? If our anxiety, anger, and/or fear are not well self-regulated, particularly in these challenging times….. can you, the organizational leader, really expect to get desired contribution and performance from your people once you’ve made key decisions? Under continuous growing demands from all around you, in such a state can a you, as leader, clearly produce the best balanced decisions for the organization and its constituents? What tools could your organization provide you with to fully support you to better self-regulate, thus maximizing your leadership effectiveness and providing the leverage for you to become a highly respected “leader of the pack”? 

And….to Cesar Millan, …… it would be a sincere pleasure to eventually have the opportunity to meet a true developer of leaders!

Are there any Cesars in your organization? Are you one? What do you need to say yes to in order to create the possibility! What do you need to start saying no to in order assure its happening?

“Given the current market and the organization’s poor revenues over the past year, I wasn’t surprised when they gave me notice of termination.” Tony, a senior marketing executive with a large petrochemical firm had just been let go after 15 years with the organization. “So how are you feeling in this moment?”, I asked. “Well, even though I had guessed my number was coming up, it still came as a complete shock. Not only to me, but to my family as well! It’s been a long time since I’ve looked for a job and I’m not sure where to start.” “Well based on what I know about you so far, I’m confident you will do well in promoting yourself, and strongly believe that you’ll succeed in your campaign to find a new job!” I continued, “Let’s really drill down and build a solid foundation for you to move forward confidently and powerfully.”

“What is it you believe you need to do to succeed?” I asked him. Tony is a very outgoing individual with a naturally positive outlook that he would have to lean on as he moved forward with his career transition. “Well, there is no doubt that the way I will look at this whole situation will form the foundation of my job search campaign and probably be the reason why I’ll succeed at it. Plus, I’d like to make solid progress toward landing on my feet in another position as soon as practical and bank as much of my severance as possible!” he said with conviction.

“How do you plan to navigate through the forthcoming job search challenges and implement a powerful campaign for yourself?” I inquired. “I probably need to start at the beginning!” he said facetiously. “Say that again?”, I responded. “Seriously, I sense that I need to begin taking some kind of inventory of my strengths and get clear on the work I truly love to do, getting some clarity around what it is I want to really achieve, and preparing to package and market myself.” Tony stated.

“It appears that you already have good clarity and a great jump start on how you plan to market yourself and build a strong network of contacts”, I commented, and went on, “What else do you need to focus on?”. “For sure, I’ll need to also take a hard look at my interview and negotiating skills. I just know, there’ll be no room for laying back and taking it easy, not until I’ve nailed down a good opportunity”.” So, how do you need to be as you move forward?”, I asked. Tony, quickly responded with a resounding, “I need to be thoughtful, thorough and persistent in everything I do from here on in. I also need to be physically, psychologically and spiritually at my best!”

With this, Tony and I coached and collaborated around key steps in his career transition plan that would be needed to assure his success. The following capture what we coached around and Tony made happen. 

1. Completed A Full Inventory of Himself: Identified his past successes, current strengths, over-all work and leadership styles, and personal preferences and became expert in the product – himself.
2. Clarified His Career Direction: got great clarity, became focused and realistic all based firmly on his key strengths.
3. Professionally Packaged & Presented Himself: developed powerful résumés (professional brochures) that showcased him professionally.
4. Developed a Laser-Focused Marketing Campaign: created a clear strategy for going after those industries, organizations, roles and key decision makers in a way that took full advantage of his limited time, available resources and assured a successful outcome of his market campaign. 
5. Created A Powerful Strategic Network: engaged in a highly planful and results producing Business relationships building campaign that was vital to his job search success. 
6. Designed Highly Influential Campaign Correspondence: designed and developed a range of professional search campaign letters from introducing himself to following up on key opportunities. 
7. Partnering with His Coach, Practiced His Interviewing and Negotiating Skills: deepened his emotional intelligence that included his self-regulation, communication (particularly asking and listening) skills, and his empathy accuracy and compassion abilities that proved essential to converting opportunities into ready job offers. 
8. Assured His Success In The New Job: We worked together to assure successful leadership transition into the new role by taking steps that would accelerate his transition from being an initial net consumer of the new organization’s resources to a net contributor in as short a time as practical.

Tony was amazingly thorough and persistent in managing his job search campaign. He worked as hard for Tony Inc., 5 days a week, 8 hours a day, as he had for his previous employer. This dramatically contributed to his achieving, and even exceeding, what he truly wanted. In his case it took him five and a half months. He was eventually offered and accepted a position more senior and at a higher total compensation level than where he had been previously working. Nothing to sneeze at! I loved partnering with him as his career transition coach during that part of his life’s journey.

What were the blinding glimpses of the obvious for you in Tony’s experience? What would you add to the foregoing? What part causes you personal trepidation? What would you do differently if you were to do this?

 ”For some reason when I tell them what I want accomplished, I simply don’t appear to be getting the results!” stated Barbara, my executive coaching client. “So how do you feel about that?”, I asked. “Frustrated as hell, impotent, and powerless to make things happen!”, she replied. She went on, “I thought I understood this leadership and power stuff, but I think I’ve missed the boat somehow.” We engaged in some solid discussion and coaching around what power is and is not for her. From this Barbara mined some great insights and confidently identified what she needed to start, stop and continue doing as a leader to improve her ability to enhance her relationships and dramatically increase her group’s strategic contribution to both her Division’s and the organization’s success.

As we coached, she quickly became more aware that she can’t just power someone, she can only influence them. However, she also realized that she needs power in order to effectively influence others to do want she needed done. She noted in our coaching discussion that power for her was in fact an essential leadership resource. She also quickly ascertained from our exchange that there are basically two sources of power that are available for her to tap into: organizational position power that came with her role, and her own personal power.

As we explored sources of position power, Barbara concluded that this came from her access to the formal power essentially her right to command. She also noted that with her role came the ability to use rewards, be they financial or non-financial rewards. She quickly added to the foregoing her ability to use coercion to get want she wanted from others, be they threats, denial of rewards or even the use of punishment. Although she tried not to use these, she felt some folks may have seen it more often than not. After further discussion, she concluded that other sources of her position power might also include her control of her function’s business processes, access and control of key information, and the power to represent her strategic business unit. Although, all legitimate, she was very clear that these should be used with considerable forethought, sparingly and by exception. Unfortunately, in hindsight she confided that she was concerned about her inappropriate use of some of the foregoing and wanted to modify related behaviors.

We continued with our discussion around those sources of power. She emphasized a desire to increase her ability to get results through others, whether they reported directly to her or not, and assure that they would also be highly satisfied with their working relationship with her. She felt if she could achieve this the result would probably be higher motivation on their part, resulting in generally increased effort to make things happen and thus support successful achievement of her and their overall performance  targets.

This then lead to more coaching around Barbara’s sources of personal power. These tended to include her expert power such as her specialized knowledge, experience and judgment that the others needed access to because they didn’t have it themselves. Another source was her ability to rationally persuade others that the goals she wanted achieved were desirable and the way to achieve them reasonable. And last, but not least, was what we both agreed was absolutely one of her greatest sources of potential power and that was her ability to influence others because they genuinely like her and want to identify with her. Barbara knew that would be possible only if she takes the time to invest in relationships with key others and allows herself to withdraw when needed to get critical results accomplished.

It became obvious that for her to achieve important results through not only her people, but also through her peers, boss and key others, personal power was the most critical area for her to continue to develop and enhance. She felt the focus would now be on developing her likeability—referent power. This is one smart lady and I know she will become even more powerful and influential in advancing her organization’s strategic advantage.

Based on the foregoing, what would you have added that could enable her to be a more powerful leader? What was the gold nugget for you in Barbara’s situation? Oh, the places she’ll go when she gets on top of this one!

Bill Fitzgerald, Principal with FitzDrake Search, is like a brother to me. Our friendship started when we partnered through Pepperdine University’s Master of Science in Organization Development degree back in the late eighties and has continued to grow from there. One of the brightest and most pragmatic people I know, Bill has a long list of writings and publications behind him. One of these is a synopsis of a recent article titled ‘What It Means To Lead’ that he has graciously allowed us to include on our blog. Enjoy!

“Now more than ever our country, our institutions and our communities yearn for exceptional leadership. Whether it’s the failing banking system, the rising cost of health care, shrinking state budgets or the fact that we are fighting two wars, the solutions we seek will require acts of leadership from many. 

This article presents a very pragmatic way to think about leadership that can empower many to lead. Everything we read in the popular press tells us that exceptional leaders are in short supply. A way to address this shortage is to have a clear picture of what we need and expect from our leaders. This will make hiring leaders easier and will also provide a road map for developing future leaders. With this as our guide, we may actually find there are more leaders among us than we realize!

To understand what it means to be a leader, it helps to define the specific tasks, or the “work” required to be successful as a leader. The “work” associated with being an effective leader can be referred to as the “7 C’s. The 7 C’s are highly interrelated and provide great insight into how effective leaders spend their time and attention.

1. Establish Clarity

Clarity of purpose is typically part of an overall strategy. An effective leader crafts a clear statement of purpose that defines a reason for existence that goes far beyond self interest or economic gain. It is a statement that speaks to a higher level calling and comes from the heart, not the head. It is a statement that resonates with customers and consumers and motivates employees to excel. 

2. Gain Commitment

Once there is clarity, the challenge facing all leaders is how to build commitment. Commitment cannot be legislated if what you seek is intellectual and emotional engagement. It involves being informed, involved, making a difference and having skin in the game.

3. Ensure Coordination

Coordination is about getting key stakeholders all pulling in the same direction. Effective leaders understand the systemic nature of organizations and know how to leverage their full potential by ensuring alignment and being “hands off”.

4. Build Capacity

Building capacity is how you create the capability to deliver results on a sustained basis. This notion of Capacity comes from the late Joel Henning and Jim Meselko. This involves building business literacy, having access to key information and resources, having choice and choosing accountability.

5. Facilitate Change

Effective leaders understand the dynamics associated with change and how to manage change to achieve their desired outcomes. They do this by building alliances and reducing resistance.

6. Demonstrate Confidence

Effective leaders demonstrate a confidence in themselves which gets expressed as respect for those around them. This is based on a set of beliefs and assumptions about people and organizations that are apparent in all of their interactions. These include a true belief in people, operate from a presumption of good will, make courageous choices, acting fully out of integrity, share enthusiasm about possibilities.

7. Apply Competence 

Competence as described here is not usually considered in discussions of leadership. Competence is the application of whatever technical or business skills are necessary to achieve results. First is context, wherein effective leaders bring or quickly acquire business, technical or industry knowledge that enables them to be effective. Second is the fuel, that is highly effective leaders also have a passion for results. 

The work associated with being an effective leader can be daunting. Being a leader is a demanding role that requires hard work and sacrifice. Stepping into a leadership role is a choice one should make with eyes wide open. Those who have already made this choice can use the 7 C’s to assess their own performance and identify areas to improve upon. Anyone in the position of needing to hire a leader can use the 7 C’s to assess potential and make a more informed decision. In either case, the 7 C’s outline a way of behaving that can lead us to the outcomes we hope to achieve.”

Thank you Bill for these powerful insights. If you truly take the foregoing to heart there is no doubt that you will be better able to lead your organization through these extremely trying times. Your people and organization are counting on you for just this! The question I want to leave with you is “What do I need to say no to in order to say yes to being an even more powerful leader?”.