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Success Labs

From leadership development and succession planning to team building and executive coaching, Success Labs is your Baton Rouge training solution.


From Barrymore to Business: Professional Actors Help Teach “Critical Coaching Skills”

Nick Cardona has been involved in nearly 90 stage productions as either actor, director or producer on stages all over the greater Baton Rouge area as well as in Florida, South Dakota and Nevada. He often works at the Baton Rouge Little Theater where he has received three Best Actor Awards. One of his most challenging roles is portraying John Barrymore in a one man screen play. (shown below)

 
Nick Cardona portraying John Barrymore   Nick Cardona as a resistant employee
helping to teach coaching skills


Success Labs has recently recruited Nick and a variety of other talented local professional actors to help us teach “Critical Coaching Skills” to business leaders. Using actors has added a whole new dimension to the learning.  Not only is it a lot more fun to work with the actors it challenges managers to really deal with those difficult employees responses and ultimately that makes them more skilled and confident when they lead and coach their own employees. 

Additionally, we are using actors in online training modules to portray proper coaching techniques. Click on the link below to take a look at one of our online training modules. Imbedded in this module is a scene where Nick Cardona and fellow actor Yohance Miles act out what a successful coaching session involving “Confronting Direct Reports” should look like.

Click here to see our “Confronting Direct Reports” online training

 

Competency Based Case Study:
Emerging Leader 

“Set yourself apart by working on next level competencies.”

Situation:

An individual contributor from a local company participated in one of our recent Management Incubator Series. His company was considering him for a supervisory position within his current department. Here’s a case study on his Development Plan and results.

Development Plan:

During the individual coaching sessions with his coach, the participant expressed an interest in creating a Development Plan to match the competencies he would need to focus on in the new supervisory position, if he were chosen, rather than continuing to work on competencies related to his current position. As a result, he and his coach chose the following competencies: Technical/Functional Skills (including training others), Building Effective Teams, and Managing Vision and Purpose.

As one of his action steps, he identified mentors within his company to meet with to discuss ways to build effective teams and share the vision of the company with his department, as well as to discuss other skills needed to succeed in the supervisory position he was interested. While presenting his Development Plan to his manager, it was evident that his manager was quite impressed with the competencies he had chosen. His manager commented that he presented himself as if he was already in a supervisory position.

Results:

Several months later we received a phone call indicating that he had been chosen for the supervisory position! He set himself apart by working on next level competencies prior to being chosen for the position.

The Management Incubator is a leadership series designed to allow participants an opportunity to perform and hone key leadership skills in both a group workshop and team project setting. It has a good track record of attendees either being promoted or deciding management is not for them.

 

Featured Coach: Jim Roberts

Jim has a BA in Psychology from The University of Louisiana in Lafayette, LA as well as graduate work in Counseling.

He has a background in training and development and extensive experience in management for the State of Louisiana where he was Employment Services Director. His experience includes:

•Management of the Job Service office and Rapid Response Team for Louisiana.
•Developed specialized training and certification programs to meet the training and development needs of the healthcare and oil industries.
•Industrial Coordinator for the Louisiana Technical College – Ascension Campus.
•Coordinated employment services during the shut down of England Air Force Base.

Jim is a member of the PCS Nitrogen and CF Industries competency based development coaching teams and is a Lominger certified coach.  


Feedback: Too Little, Too Late

Recently, a colleague in California called to let us know she had accepted a new position. Interestingly enough, she told us that when she resigned, her employer not only expressed shock but heaped praise on her about what a good job she had done and how much she would be missed. In reflecting on the conversation she said –“Gee, if I’d known they liked me that much I might have stayed.”

There lies a core issue in leadership today: Lack of feedback. Many employees don’t know where they stand; whether they are doing a good job or not; or whether they are valued. There is too little coaching and feedback.

Coaching is a major buzz word in organizations today, but more than 60 percent of employees — especially younger ones — say they don't get enough feedback. Lack of feedback is the number-one reason for performance-problems. Many managers just give feedback once a year — at performance appraisal time, which is like a basketball coach telling his players at the beginning of the season, "You're going to go out and play 30 games, and at the end of the season, I'll evaluate your performance." How many games get won with no coaching, no feedback during the course of the game? (Leigh Branham, The Seven Hidden Reasons Employees Leave, EXECUTIVE UPDATE, February 2005)

Part of the issue is that too many managers have never been well coached themselves. Lacking a good role model, they either give no feedback and coaching at all or revert to the "YST" model — yelling, screaming, and threatening (see Ferdinand Fournies' Coaching for Improved Work Performance, McGraw Hill, 1999). Most managers fear giving honest feedback, mainly because they haven't been trained to do it well.

Tips for giving feedback:

  • • State observations, not interpretations.
    Example:

    Right: "I noticed that you were ten minutes late on Monday and Wednesday.”

    Wrong: “You are always late.”

    Right: “Today you didn’t answer the phone to take customer calls until reminded to do so.”

    Wrong: “You have been moody and uncooperative today.”

  • • Take ownership. Be direct when delivering your message and avoid giving mixed messages
    • Timing of feedback should be as soon as possible and frequency of feedback should be on an ongoing basis.
    • Ask the employee about their perspective. “What’s going on?” don’t assume you know what happened or what their perspective is?
    • Work together to find a solution or build a game plan to address the issue