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Your Final Performance Review

March 9, 2012 By Leave a Comment
Patriarchy

I get some great ideas from my clients. In a recent coaching conversation my client and I were strategizing about how to fire up an employee in his 60's with about two years left before retirement who was slacking off.. I suggested he challenge the individual to make the choice to make his last two years his best two years. My client liked the idea. After pondering it for a moment he said, "What if I were to invite him now to draft what he would like his final review to say, the one that will cover his last year of service?" What an intriguing idea! I mean, we've all probably been asked, in some career or life planning exercise, to write out our desired obituary. This is what jumped into … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Building Accountability, Employee Engagement Tagged With: , ,

Want to Collaborate? Choose Your Level

September 19, 2011 By 1 Comment
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We hear so much about collaboration these days. Our work is more complex. The best solutions require input from diverse perspectives. We at Fulcrum Associates have just started working with a fascinating simulation learning event, Friday Night at the ER. In it participants experience the challenge of working in a system where the unit managers must ultimately collaborate in the interest of the whole system. Otherwise, when one unit/part gets the best results for itself, other units–which, make no mistake, are connected in a process–suffer serious quality and financial shortfalls. The folks at FNER use a simple model that lays out five levels of collaboration. Each level involves a … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Building Accountability, Communicating, Team Performance Tagged With: , , , ,

What’s Your Ask/Tell Ratio?

August 22, 2011 By 1 Comment
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Do you ask your employees as often as you tell them what to do and what you think? In my experience, most managers don't, not even close. Elsewhere in this blog I have offered four reasons why this is so. But if you have no answer to the above question, I invite you to spend a week or so watching yourself–as a third party would–as you interact daily with your staff. If your employee is struggling to collect more accurate data for his weekly status report, do you jump in with your advice or ask what he has tried or what he could try? If your employee's performance falls off, do you tell her HOW she has to work differently or do you get her to come up with some … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Building Accountability, Leadership Tagged With: , ,

TW 2010 Global Workforce Study-Comment #2

May 24, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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One of the themes that emerge from TowersWatson's latest survey is around Self-Reliance. Three quarters of respondents agreed that they are ultimately responsible for their financial and career security. This is a good thing. It indicates a tacit willingness to accept accountability. Here's the challenge for employers around this, to quote TW… How much responsibility and risk can reasonably be shifted to employees without impeding their productivity? And what can organizations do to equip individuals to be more self-reliant in owning and managing their own performance, career, financial security, health and well-being? A core teaching in our management development programs at Fulcrum … [Read more...]

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Is the Coaching Client Ready?

February 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Coaching Client

James Prochaska and Carlo DiClemente (University of Rhode Island) developed a Stages of Change Model that for 30 years has helped therapists and counsellors work effectively with clients with addiction. Here are the six stages: Precontemplation (not yet acknowledging a need for changed behavior) Contemplation (acknowledging the need but not yet willing to proceed with the change) Preparation/Determination (ready to make the change and gearing up for it) Action (engaging in the new behavior) Maintanence (sustaining the new behavior over the long term, hopefully permanently) Relapse (returning to the old ways) What intrigues me here, in the context of executive coaching, are … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Building Accountability, Coaching, Leadership Development Tagged With: , , , ,

The Paradox of Who Makes the Decisions

February 22, 2010 By Leave a Comment
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Leadership Coach and blogger, John Agno, recently laid out eighteen  lessons on leadership from Colin Powell. One particularly caught my attention with its application to the non-military organizational environment: The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you have stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership. As John mentions, sometimes leaders foster a culture that asking your boss for help is a sign of weakness or failure. This can have really negative consequences for the organization because employees will not tap into the experience and wisdom of their … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Building Accountability, Performance Tagged With: , , ,

Make it Safe to Take the Risk

February 1, 2010 By Leave a Comment
standing_out

In a recent workshop I ran on Interaction Styles. I had the group working collectively at a case problem to solve. There was a lot of information and idea sharing and a lot of cross-talk, some of it in sub-groups around the table. At times it became rather chaotic and the effectiveness of the group's process dipped. Nevertheless, they persevered and managed to complete it accurately just as allotted time expired. During the facilitated debrief discussion an interesting issue emerged. One woman said that, when the process seemed to hit its highest point of chaos, she sorely wanted to get up, grab a marker, approach the flip chart, and start leading her colleagues by capturing what they … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Building Accountability, Communicating, Performance, Team Building Tagged With: , , ,

Have Your Employees Take a Fresh Look at their Jobs

December 10, 2009 By Leave a Comment
Employee engagement and employee accountability

So many people–some studies put the number as high as 50%–are not happy in their current their job. Almost all of these, I reckon, believe that their job is cast in concrete, that it can't be changed. In fact that's not true, for the vast majority of jobs. Are you looking for new ways to help your employees boost their level of engagement and motivation in their work? Here's a new process (and accompanying tool) you may want to check out. It's called "Job Crafting." What it enables your employees to do is take a fresh look at their job duties and priorities and better align them with their: Motives – outcomes they would like to obtain (for them and for others) from their … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Building Accountability, Coaching, Employee Engagement, Employee Motivation Tagged With: , , , ,

Resist the Temptation to Tell…Ask Instead

October 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment
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In a recent Business Week article entitled Leadership: How to Ask the Right Questions, coaching expert Gary Cohen makes the statement: Before getting into answer mode, ask "Whose decision is it?" If it is your decision to make (based upon your job description), ask questions that will help you arrive at the best answer. If it's your co-worker's decision to make, ask questions to help him or her–referencing his or her particular skills and tendencies. What a great filter–Whose decision is it?–for a manager just about to open his/her mouth and EITHER tell an employee what to do to solve a problem OR get the staffer to come up with a solution. Pretty well all managers who attend my … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Building Accountability, Coaching, Communicating, Leadership, Performance Tagged With: ,

Article – Choice & Accountability: The Bedrock Of Superior Performance

October 17, 2009 By 2 Comments
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So, you want to be a success? And you want those who work for you to succeed? Then you might as well know the (bad ?) news. Successful, effective people are courageous people! Aristotle said courage is the primary human virtue. And the ultimate courage is to accept what philosopher Peter Koestenbaum calls life's "dirty little secret"—that we are all free to choose. We are all free to decide what we desire, how we act, how we feel and who we are. "Successful, effective people are courageous people!" Many poor-to-moderate performers I see in organizations simply refuse to accept accountability for their job and career. Ask them what they want—besides more money—in their … [Read more...]

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Fulcrum Associates is a leadership development firm that helps organizations improve performance by expanding the impact of their managers and their teams on the results that employees deliver.

Through highly interactive workshops, one-on-one coaching, keynote presentations and facilitation services, we help managers become better leaders, foster commitment and accountability in their staff, and generate consistently high performance.

U.S.A.
1711 Pine Valley Drive
Vienna, VA 22182-2339
Phone: 703-255-4605
CANADA
250 The East Mall, #1232
Toronto, Ontario, M9B 6L3
Phone: 888-385-2786