Developing Critical Velocity Through On-Board Coaching

On-board coaching helps newly hired individuals expedite their assimilation into an organization and become productive earlier. I like to say it develops “critical velocity.”

In many ways, the process of bringing a new executive into an organization is a significant investment. Not only are there financial costs, such as search fees and relocation expenses, but there also are intangible, strategic costs, such as the time senior management invests in the interview and selection process.

If it takes an individual six months to a year to become fully productive -- or, worse, to find out that a match made in heaven was really made somewhere else -- then the cost of bringing that executive on board goes off the charts.

On-board coaching can cut that time radically, by a half or more, so that individuals are fully up and running sooner -- and the organization begins to achieve an earlier return on investment.

It’s relatively easy for a newcomer to join an organization and learn the reporting relationships, the budgeting processes … all the structural things. It’s not as easy to go in and learn the organizational culture … how to communicate and work effectively with a new boss and peers.

For example, if you have to give your first presentation at a monthly business review meeting, you need to understand how those meetings operate. Are they simply for sharing information, or is there interaction? Do the meetings tend to stay on a rigid agenda or are they more free-flowing? If you are scheduled at 10:30, do you have a high degree of certainty that you will actually be speaking at 10:30? And how should you structure your presentation at that meeting so that it both is effective and makes a good impression?

Very often, newly hired individuals can cover ground like this on their own, but the presence of a coach helps them address issues like this sooner and in a focused fashion. This accelerates their assimilation into the organization and, ultimately, their productivity.

A coach can also help identify how an organization measures success by asking questions like, “What have you noticed about people who have succeeded here? What have you noticed about people who failed here?” The answers to questions like these can provide broad brushstrokes of how things work in a new organization.

One of the principal benefits of on-board coaching is clarification of expectations on the part of both the executive and his or her boss. What does the boss expect from the new hire in the first 60 to 90 days, six months and first year? What does the new hire expect in the way of access, work style and authority?

How do the work styles of the two executives compare? How closely to they mesh? I recently worked with an executive and boss who had almost diametrically opposite profiles on the Myers-Briggs personality assessment tool. The upside is that they complement each other's strengths. The downside is that if the two executives don't understand those differences, misunderstanding and miscommunication are possible … and perhaps even likely.

In today’s highly competitive business environment, individuals and organizations can always apply more capital or more technology to a given situation, but there is no substitute for time. On-board coaching creates time by building critical velocity to enable newly hired executives to assume their positions more rapidly.
 

At one time or another during their careers, most executives have been asked to complete questionnaires that identify their preferences for gathering information, making decisions and performing other tasks essential to success in business. Known as personality assessment tools, these instruments -- when used in concert with 360-degree interviews and other techniques -- enable psychologists and executive coaches to help executives reconcile differences between how others see them and how they see themselves.

What can we learn from personality assessment tools?

Assessment tools are very useful in a number of situations. I like to say that they show an individual’s “hard wiring, ” or built-in preferences for dealing with various situations and other people. Combined with 360s, they can give us a fuller picture of someone and show if other people see the same traits in themselves that others see. For example, someone who is innately shy might actually appear aloof to others, and understanding how this trait is perceived can be valuable in helping the individual adjust his or her behavior.

What are the major assessment tools in use today?

Two of the most widely used assessment tools are the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and the 16PF. The Myers-Briggs uses four scales that measure opposites. Each end of a scale is represented by a different letter, so there are 16 possible combinations. Some executives have taken the Myers-Briggs before and will tell me, “Oh, I’m an ENTJ.”

The Myers-Briggs has been around for decades, so there’s an established data base to compare results with and WJM Associates is able to provide those comparisons because we have used this instrument with a large number of executives in many different industries. In addition, some larger organizations have been able to build up their own data bases of results, so they can compare results among their own executives from different functional and geographic units.

What do each of the scales measure?

One scale measures how individuals relate in the world, where they get their energy, and whether they are introverted or extroverted. It’s not always obvious who’s an introvert or an extrovert. Just because you have good social skills, you could be someone who gets energy from reflecting on ideas (introverted). It therefore takes a lot of energy for an introvert to go around and be social that way. And that’s important for people to know, because if they assume you’re an extrovert and you withdraw sometimes, or you go into your office, then they may presume that has something to do with them.

Sensing vs. intuition is the scale that measures how you become aware of information. Sensing means you’re interested in what your five senses can show you, what exists in the present, people who are more grounded in reality. Intuitive people are more inclined to use their imagination, see new possibilities, and trust interrelationships. High-level strategic thinkers tend to be high in intuition.

The third scale is thinking vs. feeling. These are types of judgment or decision-making. So a thinking person would base her decisions on logical objective analysis; a feeling person makes decisions more with their values and emotional considerations for other people.

The final scale is judging vs. perceiving. Essentially, this reflects how you live in and deal with the world. More judging people like things decided, planned and are rules-oriented. More perceiving people don’t want to miss anything; they’re spontaneous, flexible, they go with the flow.

Don’t a lot of people reflect both ends of these scales?

People can be extreme on these scales or centered. When people come out down the middle, that’s often telling as well, because when you’re centered on characteristics, it can indicate that you are quite balanced. In other words, you have either end of the spectrum at your availability depending on the circumstances.

But sometimes if you’re too much in the middle and you’re gray on a lot of these characteristics, that can be really difficult for other people because they just don’t know how to predict how you’ll react under different situations. All the more reason to be increasingly open about who you are and help others understand where you do feel strongly about things.

What does the 16PF measure?

The 16PF is similar to the Myers, but it has 16 scales instead of just four. One scale measures whether someone is reserved vs. warm, another measures reasoning, such as concrete vs. abstract, and so forth. So we can see if there is consistency with the Myers-Briggs, and that is why it is valuable to use more than one type of questionnaire. The 16PF also adds other things. It rates people on emotional stability and emotional responsiveness, which are important factors. Do you remain calm in stressful circumstances? Are you aware of how your behavior affects others? It also rates how forthright you are with information. It gets into several measures that describe how you are emotionally, how expressive you are personally, how well you understand other people’s emotional states. It therefore adds a lot of social and emotional dimensions, what other measures call emotional intelligence.

What do you do if you see differences between the two assessments?

We sometimes do and it’s because of the breakdown of the individual factors. As I said before, introverted reflects several different things, so sometimes in the 16PF I’ll see that broken down more clearly. With the Myers-Briggs, more recently it has broken down each of the characteristics into five others. If you’re extroverted, you’ll likely come out high on the extroverted factors, but there may be one or more where you seem to fall on the introverted side. So that’s helpful in explaining the discrepancies that others might be responding to. I just don’t put a lot of stake in that particular characteristic if I see a lot of discrepancies because I would tend to think that that’s not a consistent characteristic.

So assessment tools help create an objective picture of an individual.

That’s the real value of having these instruments, actually, because a psychologist could easily just meet with the person and use his or her own professional judgment, impressions and instincts. But these are objective measures, and they can get to so many dimensions that you couldn’t capture in a single interview.

One of the biggest challenges facing business today is planning strategically for an orderly and productive management succession by identifying and preparing future leaders from existing talent pools.

Many companies have gone through a period of attrition over the past several years. By surviving round after round of job cuts, there is little doubt that the remaining talent pool is pretty highly skilled. And companies have not done a very good job in designing, delivering and implementing a structure for identifying future leaders in their organizations, in part because they don’t talk about it formally.

Too often, there are what I call “missing conversations” taking place. Instead of occurring in the conference room, they’re happening in hallways and on airplanes. Executives recognize the need for the process, and they talk about the need to develop strategic leadership competencies informally, but they’re not engaging in it in a formal setting.

There is the likelihood that someone on the leadership team is going to be afraid of revealing some of his/her own inadequacies. Unless there is a high level of implicit trust, and someone has the courage to put this on the table, those necessary discussions are not likely to happen in a group setting. And that’s a risk organizations must take if they want to grow. Support for the process must come from the top.

One way to approach this issue is to employ a leadership style of curious inquiry, which invites individuals to share their ideas for change without posing a threat to them and their position in the organization. Thus, instead of asking, “Why haven’t you developed such-and-such a competency in your operating unit,” a leader could ask, “What competencies do we need to achieve our goal? How might we best develop those competencies?”

Questions that begin with “what” and “how” evoke thought; questions that begin with “why” evoke emotion and often are threatening to people. They put them on the defensive and make people shut down.

If you ask one of your managers, “What can I do to support you in this effort,” you’ll get a very different answer than if you simply say, “Why haven’t you finished your assignment on time?”

I recently coached a chief executive who was fond of asking his managers a lot of “why” questions. Why is this report late? Why haven’t you met your sales targets for the quarter? I advised him to employ curious inquiry, to ask questions that invite people to open up more about the concerns that they had without having to face criticism. He called me after his first meeting using this new approach and was ecstatic with the results.

“We talked for more than two hours,” he said in his voice mail message. “It was one of the best meetings we ever had.”

We just wanted to remind you that WJM Associates will present “On-boarding Your Leaders to Achieve Success” at the 2004 Garden State Council - Society for Human Resource Management Annual Conference on Monday, Nov. 8, at 7:15 AM.

“Many organizations overlook the need to integrate new leaders, both internally and externally, into their roles,” says presenter Deborah Bernstein, Organizational Effectiveness Practice Leader for WJM Associates. “The common practice is to place a leader in a new role and get on with the business. Effective and comprehensive on-boarding increases the success of the leader and the organization.”

This program will explore how HR can play a critical role in this transition. Participants will discuss critical success factors for transitioning new leaders into organizations; identify critical leadership positions and career junctures where a formal integration process would be beneficial; and explore key components of an effective on-boarding program.

For more information on this and other events at the 2004 Garden State-SHRM conference, please visit http://www.gscshrm.org/Conference04/index.htm.