cfergusson – TruScore

Turning Leaders into Powerful Mentors

cfergusson — Thu, 26 May 2016 17:22:08 +0000

I’d grab my notebook, dash out of the office bounce up the stairs, and enter the hall where my mentor’s office was. I’d walk in the office saying “Hi Linda,” and prepare for my one hour of enlightenment. We talked about the inner workings of the organization, what she had learned about working with one particularly difficult stakeholder, and how I might better handle a performance issue on my team. We met bimonthly until we started running out of topics. Then one of us would cancel the meeting because of more urgent priorities. Pretty soon the mentoring unintentionally faded away. The arrangement had been helpful, but not powerful.

Years later, I was the mentor and the same process was repeated. Luckily, my mentee and I became friends so we dutifully continued our meetings, but we weren’t always talking about work related topics. Those topics had dwindled. Looking at just the mentoring, I’d have to admit it was helpful, but not powerful.

Fast forward a few years and I’m once again a mentor. However, this time I’ve spent over twenty years coaching leaders, so when my mentee and I are done discussing the usual topics I can’t help but throw quite a bit of coaching into the relationship. I include a few assessments to help my mentee uncover his strengths and challenges. We have several very deep, insightful discussions; for both of us. He starts telling the organizers of the mentoring program how powerful his meetings are. They come to me and ask what I’m doing differently. It makes me ponder the differences.

Most mentoring programs are designed using a training paradigm. The expectations under this paradigm are that the mentor and mentee will discuss topics that will increase the mentee’s knowledge, skills, abilities and behavioral awareness. So the leaders dutifully discuss company politics, how to get things done in the organization, how to present to different stakeholders, how to work with a difficult leader, or how to manage a conflict situation. All of these and similar discussions cover important topics.

If we just keep to the training paradigm, the topics will start to wane in about 4-6 months. The discussions will become more forced as the partners search for things to talk about.

However, if we add another paradigm to the mentoring, we can create much more impactful experiences. By combining the training paradigm with a personal change paradigm, we add the expectations of discussing behaviors, beliefs, personal insight and awareness.

Ok, before you start squirming at the thought of having these discussions, recognize that they don’t have to be as subjective as you are probably worried about. Coaches have these discussions every day. They are based on data that the leader either shares or is shared through validated assessments. If the coach administers the assessment and talks to the person on how to interpret their results, it is a helpful discussion. However, if the coach has taken the assessment him or herself, has worked to improve their own behaviors, and has made significant change, then the coach can add a different dimension to the discussion and the conversation becomes powerful.

This is also true of leaders who serve as mentors. If the leader has done their own insight and personal growth work, they are a more mature and effective leader. They can share their journey of personal change with the mentee and guide the mentee through their own self-reflection and discovery.

Just as in any change model, the leader can only take others as far as he or she has gone in accepting change. If you want leaders to be powerful mentors it is important that they not only have the knowledge, skills, abilities and general behavioral awareness to be great leaders; it is also important that they are leaders who seek out feedback and challenge their own behaviors and beliefs. Not only will they share their skills, but they will also share their insights and encourage the mentee to look within for change.

To create impactful mentoring programs, start now by creating an organization built on both a training and personal change approach. Create a culture of feedback. Ensure leaders at all levels of the organization get both competency and behavioral feedback to make them amazing leaders and mentors.

Carlann Fergusson
Carlann Fergusson is owner of Propel Forward LLC (www.propelforward.com). Propel Forward LLC provides consulting, coaching and learning solutions on vision, strategy, organizational design, culture and leader capability. Carlann Fergusson has twenty-five years of experience with global Fortune 500 companies, privately owned businesses, state and federal governments, and non-profits. She brings proven diagnostic skills and keen insights to deliver a solution tied to your desired business results.

Do Generational Differences Affect Your Self-Assessment?

cfergusson — Tue, 29 Apr 2014 21:28:05 +0000

Written by Carlann Fergusson – Owner of Propel Forward
Too often I have heard from managers and recruiters who are Boomers or Generation X that Millennials have an unrealistic, inflated view of their capabilities. On the other hand, many Boomers and Generation X have a deflated perception of their competencies. Is this generational?

There are studies that would support that Millennials have an inflated view of their capabilities. A study of the generational differences in psychological traits of college students by Jean M. Wenge and Stacy Campbell, (Journal of Managerial Psychology, Vol 23 No. 8, 2008) found that the Millennial generation has the highest scores of self esteem and narcissism of any generation. Comparing scores of college-aged students on psychological inventories between 1950 and into the 2000s, the authors were able to track significant changes in generations. By the mid 1990, the average “Generation Me” college student had a higher self-esteem than 71% of Boomers. Narcissism scores also raised significantly. The average college student in 2006 scored higher in narcissism than 65 percent of students in the early 1980s. Specifically, a significant number of Millennial college students responded affirmative to questions such as “If I ruled the world it would be a better place,” “I think I am a special person,” and “I can live my life any way I want.”

You could interpret this to mean that Millennials will have an inflated sense of self when conducting self-assessments, but that is not always the case. Having coached thousand of managers I do see a pattern of how leaders assess themselves based on the type of feedback they have received from others. The more current the feedback and the more applicable it is to the specific behavior they are assessing, the more accurate is their self-assessment. This is regardless of generation.

If the Millennial grew up with the stereotypical “trophy kid” parents who doted on them, told them how special they were and that they could do anything, and if they went to a college where the instructors were told to behave in ways to maintain and enrich the students self-esteem, then we can expect an overly inflated sense of self-worth. This recent college hire is going to give themselves great scores on competencies which they actually have little proven track record on. However, if the Millennial has received more recent honest feedback related to real application of skills, and if they have accepted this feedback as accurate and not dismissed it based on an over inflated sense of self-worth then the ability to conduct an accurate self-perception is increased.

If a Millennial or any generation grew up in different circumstances with parents who gave realistic feedback of skills and abilities and was influenced by teachers, coaches and others who gave accurate praise and criticism, then the person will have a much more accurate assessment of their own abilities.

Likewise, if the person was raised with overly critical parents where nothing was quite good enough, they will tend to have a deflated assessment of their competencies and skills until they are able to get enough contradicting feedback to more accurately assess their capabilities. Unfortunately, quite a few Boomers and Generational Xs were raised in this environment. These individuals often need to learn to accept more positive feedback as accurate and not take corrective feedback as proof that they are still not good enough.

Before completing a self-assessment of your skills and competencies, ask yourself what pattern of feedback of influencing your perception of yourself. Let go of past images of yourself and dismiss feedback that is more than two years old and reflect instead on more recent feedback.

Carlann Fergusson
Carlann Fergusson is owner of Propel Forward LLC (www.propelforward.com). Propel Forward LLC provides consulting, coaching and learning solutions on vision, strategy, organizational design, culture and leader capability. Carlann Fergusson has twenty-five years of experience with global Fortune 500 companies, privately owned businesses, state and federal governments, and non-profits. She brings proven diagnostic skills and keen insights to deliver a solution tied to your desired business results.

Is Your Executive Perspective Broad Enough to Successfully Grow Your Business?

cfergusson — Wed, 29 May 2013 23:31:59 +0000

Written by Carlann Fergusson, Owner of Propel Forward LLC.
You read about it in the papers all the time. A successful entrepreneur is asked to step aside and let a CEO with more operational experience continue to grow the business. This move is neither a statement that the entrepreneur’s brilliance has diminished nor a statement that the leader didn’t try hard enough. Instead, it is often a reflection that the entrepreneur kept their sight fixed on the same levers it took to start the business instead of a broadening their perspective as the business grew and became more complex.

If founders want to remain with their company through the next big growth cycle they will need to prepare themselves for this leader-shift. The good news is the entrepreneur can capitalize on the strengths that made them a great entrepreneur. Those innate skills of picking up changing patterns and synthesizing information from numerous data points to identify future market needs, can be applied inward to their business to see the patterns and data points that tell them where they need to change their leadership strategy.

Common Growth Symptoms:

Here are five common symptoms they can look for:

The team is questioning the future direction of the company. There may be staff members who are pitching new markets or new products that may or may not align with the original start-up vision.
The culture of the company is shifting on its own. The addition of employees is creating a culture different from the start up culture. Longer-term employees are complaining that the culture is not the same.
People are unaware of what others in the company do. Conflicts may arise from duplication of roles or from gaps where no one is taking responsibility.
Informal communication is no longer working effectively. People tend to have different interpretations of the reasons behind key decisions or are not informed of key changes.
Managers spend the majority of time in tactical execution with little or no time for strategic activities. There may be routine staff meetings but meetings to monitor and address strategic initiatives that cut across groups are missing.

When patterns like these emerge in the organization, it is time to integrate a broader executive perspective and focus on building internal capability. The leader’s initial product vision, informal organizational structure and minimal process flows served the company well in start-up and in the initial phases of growth. Now, however, a broader vision of the company is needed and more formal organizational structures and processes are required to reduce the chaos of continued growth. Many entrepreneurial leaders erroneously assume that taking a more formal approach to strategic planning, process flow and systems is equivalent to adding bureaucracy. Instead think of it as expanding those initial steps you took to define your business to match the expansion of the business you have built. If done correctly and with a focus towards maintaining the company’s entrepreneurial spirit, bureaucracy will not result.

Where to Start:

To begin to build capability the leader starts with the first executive task cycle step of setting direction and strategic planning. The first step will be on setting a broader vision for the company that will serve as the foundation to everything else. Culture, organizational structure, and process flow should all align to the future vision. The strategies, actions and company success measures should likewise align to that vision. Meeting structures should ensure success to this future vision and not create unproductive rehashing of status updates.

Creating the vision, culture and strategies doesn’t have to equate with an expensive, tedious multi-day offsite meeting. The vision is not about wordsmithing a statement. It is ideas that connect to your passion and to your team’s passion resulting in a mosaic that drives energy towards a common outcome and incredible results. The process should fit your style and your company.

Valuing a corporate style of leadership as well as an entrepreneurial style can be difficult for the founder of a business. For some entrepreneurs the shift is too much of a departure from their own passion and they step aside to a Chairperson’s role or exit to focus on creating another start up. For other entrepreneurs it is an exciting challenge of continuous learning and change. Whichever path you choose, make certain it aligns with your personal vision.