Mike Hohnen

Coaching for personal growth, change and development

Learning

A great course gives you just 10% of what is needed to grow the team.

By

Participants attending the GROW leadership course

Quite a few years back now, the Center for Creative Leadership developed the 70:20:10 model for learning and development. The research behind the model shows that most of our learning (70%) stems from hands-on, on-the-job experiences. We mainly learn from what we do.

When we learn from others, it is typically in the form of coaching, mentoring and various forms of collaboration. This accounts for roughly 20% of our learning, and finally, the last 10% of our learning is based on courses, books, lectures etc., what we also call formal learning.

This then raises the question: Should we just forget about the formal part? Are courses and books just a waste of time?

If we look at the research on how high performers learn and develop, it becomes clear that there is a pattern.

High performers are typically quick to grasp the basics and when it comes to new learning, they often get this in the form of more formal structured courses, training or books.  The 10% is their foundation. That is what they use to build their development on.

What makes them high performers is that the new knowledge inspires them and drives them to want to practice. They spend hours trying out their new learning. Through trial and error, self-testing and feedback, they gradually improve their capability.

They are also not shy to seek the support and help of colleagues. They may even take a coach for a period in order to make sure that they really get to master whatever the new skill is (Just look at any top performer in music, acting or sports and you will see exactly this pattern). They are not born like that, they work hard to get there.

It is their drive to improve that makes them high performers.

So back to the question about formal courses. Do we need them?

Yes, we do.

Because we need that basic input, that initial inspiration. But we must understand that if we do not reinforce the message and help set the scene for the additional 70% on the job learning and the 20% collaborative learning or coaching, then we have wasted our time and efforts. 

That means that if you, as a manager, have had one of your team members on a course, you need to think about how you are going to support that person in developing and improving their skills, building on the foundational knowledge that they have acquired on the course.

Most of them are probably not what we would define as high performers, they are just great team members. And therefore, they do not have the drive or natural inclination to do this by themselves.

The knowing-doing gap
The first step in that process is to have a follow-up conversation with your team members when they return from the course.  What have they learnt and most importantly, where do they see the knowing/doing gap? What is it that they now know, but that they are currently not doing?

How can you then, as this person’s manager, make sure that your team member gets to practice these new aspects? This takes us back to our famous GROW model.

If you have forgotten what that is about, check it out here.

You multiply the value of the course experience by at least 10 times if you help them actually implement what they are learning. But don’t forget, no feedback, no learning.

If you want to further maximise their learning, make sure that they team up with one or two others who also did the course and have them form an action learning triad or let them have the support of an experienced coach. That way you will also make sure you have covered the 20% that comes from collaboration and/or coaching.

In my experience, this is the way to create sustainable change. The key is not the learner as much as their immediate supervisor.

In this context, the immediate supervisor comes in one of two basic types: the ‘Multiplier’ and the ‘Diminisher’. Being one or the other makes all the difference, as I will explain in next week’s post.

This the tenth blog post in a series where Mike is exploring: Why is it important to develop not just yourself but also the people around you? You can read other posts in this series on Mike’s blog.

Building capacity is at the heart of the Service Profit Chain. If you are not familiar with the intricacies of is model, don’t forget to check out Mike’s online courses where you will find a lot of great tools, resources and knowledge on Leadership Development and The Service Profit Chain.

How to replace the drama with real learning

By

Have you found yourself binge-watching the Netflix series or impatiently waiting for next week’s Scandinavian Noir episode to come on screen?

If you have, it is probably because you were attracted by the unfolding drama.

So let me quickly show you how it is done.

All the great stories are built on the same principle. You need three elements. A victim, someone who get into trouble. And in order for that to happen, we need a persecutor, someone or something that does the bad stuff. And then of course, we need someone to save our poor victim, a hero.

That in all its simplicity is the mechanics of the drama triangle. And if you pay attention, you will see that many of your favourite books and films follow that structure.

Now if you would like to spice this up a bit and make it run forever and ever. You let the participants change roles. Suddenly the hero is the victim. The persecutor becomes the new hero and the former victim is now the persecutor. If you have ever had the opportunity to watch Elisabeth Taylor and Richard Burton in “Who’s afraid of Virginia Woolf”, then you will recognise that this is what unfolds for the two riveting hours the movie runs. It is a masterful demonstration of the drama triangle.

Great entertainment, emotions all over the place, but no learning and no solutions.

Unfortunately, many of us chose to play out these drama triangles in our own lives with the same result. Lots of emotion no solution.

We make victims of ourselves as we complain about traffic, the boss or the weather. We call our best friend each Friday evening and once again ask so how is the job going, well knowing that it will be the same sob-story as last week (The job is a disaster, the boss is an idiot etc.) but we satisfy our inner hero by encouraging our poor friend to tell that story again and again.

Or even worse, we give space to our inner persecutor by criticising a spouse or colleague only to turn around the next minute and be their hero by telling them not to take it so hard etc.

On and on it goes, you probably have your own version.

Just watch in your next management meeting, how this unfolds time and again, and how you already know who is going to play what role. Only here there is not much entertainment because we know the script and it is so, so boring.

We need to break the habit and stop playing this game with each other. The trick is to make a conscious decision to GROW out of it. There are no constructive solutions in a drama triangle. And the way to stop it is to ask yourself or your colleague the magic question: What would you like to do about it? Or what do we need to achieve?

This is where the GROW coaching process comes in handy. It is your magic wand that instantly dissolves the drama triangle:

  • What would we like to achieve? (Goal)
  • What is the current Reality?
  • What are our Options?
  • What are we going to do now? (Will)

Every time we find ourselves in one of the three drama triangle roles, we need to apply this simple but powerful process. It stops the drama, creates solutions and furthers our learning and development.

And all it takes is one simple question: What would I like to create?

This the eighth blog post in a series where Mike is exploring: Why and how to develop not just yourself but also the people around you?

Building capacity is at the heart of the Service Profit Chain. If you are not familiar with the intricacies of the Service Profit Chain, we have a special treat for you:

For this month only, you can access The Essential Leadership Instrument course on Mike’s training library for FREE using this coupon A2A3HUVRWV. It is only available for the first 50 people so first come first serve! Sign up HERE!

Honest feedback that propels you forward!

By

There are many ways to make sure that you learn and develop. Last week, I wrote about setting up a mastermind group as one way. This week, I would like you to consider coaching.

Great coaches can do much more than just influence behaviors; they will be an essential part of the leader’s learning process, providing knowledge, opinions, and judgment in critical areas. Which brings us back to the key issue of honest constructive feedback. For many managers, their coach may be the only place they get totally honest unfiltered feedback, from someone who only has their best interest in mind

To begin this process, you need to start the search inside of yourself. No amount of coaching is going to do you much good unless you are highly motivated to change, develop and or learn whatever the case may be.

Part of motivation includes being very clear with oneself that the only time any real learning and development occurs is when we are slightly outside our comfort zone.

“Executives who get the most out of coaching have a fierce desire to learn and grow.”
– HBR survey

Bottom line, do you really want to change and are you prepared to suffer a bit as you do?

If not, forget it.

Assuming that you are ready, you need to be very clear about what it is you would like to be different.

What is the challenge that you are facing? Is it a skill set your need to build? Is it behaviour that you would like to change? How will you know that the coaching has been successful?

Most good coaches work with a specific methodology and within certain fields, and the more clear you are about what it is you would like to work on, the better the chance of finding the right ‘specialist’.

Where are the good coaches?

I have still to come across a good web based ‘find a coach’ service (There are endless directories/listings but that is not much help. What is needed is a review based neutral service, a TripAdvisor for coaches if you like; if you know of one please do let me know). So as with so many things, you need to use the word of mouth method and start asking around.

Reach out to people you know and trust who might be able to recommend a good coach. Ask friends and colleagues, post on Facebook and LinkedIn. Once you start getting some names, you check them out in more details for fit.

A few good questions to ask the person referring a coach:

  • What specific things did their coach help them do?
  • Was there goal setting and were those goals clearly met?
  • What was the most valuable (or a couple of the most valuable) thing they got from the sessions?
  • Did they see a direct impact on their business because of the coach?
  • Did they genuinely enjoy working with the coach and if so why?

Eventually, you end up with maybe 3-5 possible names.

Then you schedule a first conversation with each of them. Most coaches worth their salt will give you a first conversation or shorter session for free. The reason the good coach will do that is that they too need to assure themselves that there is a good fit. (Personally, I turn down as much as 25% of the requests I get because I am unsure about the fit.)

“Good chemistry is a decisive factor in establishing a productive coaching relationship.”
– HBR survey

Online or face-to-face coaching?

Five or ten years ago it would have been a no-brainer. Coaching was almost per definition a face-to-face process. Today that is no longer the case. Face to face is still great but there are a huge amount of people out there who are benefiting enormously from coaching that is either done via SKYPE or even phone.

The perfect coach for you online/phone is in my view still much better than a so-so fit that you can meet with personally.

From a financial point of view, it is also my impression that you get more coaching for your money when you go online as the coach does not have to calculate travel time and expenses into their fee.

So what is holding you back?

Ask yourself that first crucial question. If I was reflecting on this a year from now and looking back on the year that had just passed, what would have happened this past year in order for me to feel that I had made serious progress?

And off you go…


This the seventh blog post in a series where Mike is exploring: Why and how to develop not just yourself but also the people around you?

Building capacity is at the heart of the Service Profit Chain. If you are not familiar with the intricacies of the Service Profit Chain, we have a special treat for you:

For this month only, you can access The Essential Leadership Instrument course on Mike’s training library for FREE using this coupon A2A3HUVRWV. It is only available for the first 50 people so first come first serve! Sign up HERE!

How are you getting your feedback?

By

In my previous posts, I have been stressing the importance of feedback and reflection. In a nutshell, you can say that without feedback, there is no learning or progress.

So if you are interested in the people around you actually growing and developing, you need to give them feedback.

But what about you, where are you getting your feedback?

If you are very lucky, you have a great boss who understands all this and who provides both coaching and mentoring for you.

Alas, for many of you, that is not the case.

What about the team then? Only in the best of cases can you rely on your followers to provide feedback in the positive, constructive way that you actually need to improve at anything. Ask your followers: “How am I doing as your boss?” Put your people in a very difficult position, unless there is an exceptionally high level of trust. The one question that sometimes produces relatively honest feedback is: “Is there anything in your view that I could do differently and that if I did would make your life/job easier?

But most of you will need to source your feedback in other ways if you want to make sure that you are continuing to learn and grow.

As one manager said me to yesterday, “It’s frightening I just realised that at some point, way back, maybe 10 – 12 years, I stopped developing and growing as a leader. Since then, I have just been in firefighting problem-solving mode, basically using the same approach day in and day out. Lots of management, very little leadership.”

Bingo. And he is not alone.

“Anyone who stops learning is old whether at 20 or 80. Anyone who keeps learning stays strong.” — Henry Ford

So what are your options?

Start a mastermind group. This is one of the most effective ways to support your now development. Find 2-3 other people either within your own company or from other companies that are also interested in developing as leaders and set up a group. This can be a physical group or it can be in a virtual group working online. I have tried both and both work well.

In my view, a mastermind group is very similar to an action learning group (‘Mastermind’ somehow seems to be the flavour preferred at the moment). The principles are the same, you get together with a small group of people who are all committed to supporting each other’s learning. Each of you formulates a leadership challenge that you would like to work on.

The group needs to agree how often it will meet and for how long and over how many weeks/months. I have participated in many variants, 90-minute meeting every other week, half-day meeting once a month or any other variation that would work for you. What is important is that there is a regular rhythm to these meetings and that they are not canceled or postponed. If you sign up for a mastermind, you also commit to attending, come hell or high water.

It is a good idea to agree upfront on how many weeks this will run for so that the session have a natural ending. Otherwise, they tend to go stale. My preference is the 90-day model. I generally like to work in 90 day ‘years’.

Mastermind groups can be facilitated by a coach or they can run as self-organising. As a facilitator/coach, I run a number of these groups online and it works very well. Drop me a line if you are interested in learning more. New groups will start this summer.

There are many ways to run a mastermind group. This is how I do it:

  1. Agree the time. I.e we will be working here for the next 90 minutes (These meetings should not be allowed to just run on endlessly. They have a start and a finish time).
  2. Check in. Each participant takes 2-3 minutes to respond to the question: How is life and what would you like to talk about today?
  3. Depending on the time allocated, the remaining time is divided into equal chunks, and that is the time slot for each participant (If you are self-organising, the timekeeping is the most difficult and should be assigned to one person or your take turns. But it is important to avoid that the last person is left with 7 minutes).
  4. Take turns in the hot seat. Each participant starts out by describing the issue that she would like to discuss. The other participants try their damnedest TO NOT GIVE SOLUTIONS but to stay curious and ask plenty questions. A good framework to have in the back of your head as a participant is the GROW Model. As that person’s session comes to an end, ask the person in the hot seat: What are you going to do next? What is your commitment until our next session? If there is a facilitator, it can be a good idea to make a note and follow up with participants at the next meeting.
  5. Close the session by doing a quick check-out round answering the question: What was your key takeaway from today?
  6. Confirm or reconfirm the next session

It’s a simple process, but you will see that it is incredibly powerful. Not only does one learn and grow, it makes a big difference in moving difficult projects and challenges to a conclusion. Try it! You will see for yourself.

If mastermind groups are not for you, you could consider finding a coach or a mentor. I will develop ways to do that in next week’s post.

This the sixth blog post in a series where Mike is exploring: Why and how to develop not just yourself but also the people around you?

Building capacity is at the heart of the Service Profit Chain. If you are not familiar with the intricacies of the Service Profit Chain, we have a special treat for you:

 

No feedback, no learning. It’s that simple.

By


Imagine you were deprived of all feedback, no matter what you did you, had no way of knowing the outcome of your actions.

Terrifying, yes?

Without feedback, we have no possible way of improving what we do. We are flying blind. Everything we actually know how to do, we have learnt in incremental steps. Only by paying attention to the feedback have we been able to get better.

So as a leader, there are two implications to this that you need to be thinking about. And they concern you and ‘them’.

If you find yourself thinking from time to time that this or that person reporting to you could do better (and I know you have these kinds of thought from time to time because in my position as a coach and confidante of many leaders I hear this regularly), then you need to ask yourself how good a job am I doing in giving this person helpful feedback?

Oh come on, Mike…

I can sense you thinking… if you just knew how many times I have told that person that this or that is not working.

You may have told them. But is telling skillful feedback?

Not really, telling is probably the least effective tool at your disposal, yet it seems to be a tool of choice for many managers.

Sir John Whitmore, the creator of the GROW Model has a lovely video where he coaches a beginner in golf.

Notice that all he does is ask questions. What would you like to accomplish? How did that feel? What do you notice about your body? What would you like to do now? And slowly but surely, the power of the questions helps the novice golfer improve considerably in just a few minutes. Watch for yourself here.

What I find even more striking is the comparison with the other novice golfer who is being ‘told’ what to do by the more traditional instructor. The more he gets told, the stiffer and more awkward he becomes.

What is that telling us?

If you would like to see continuous improvement around you, you need to work on your feedback skills. If you feel team members could do better, that is valuable feedback to you. It tells you more about you than it does about them.

Next week, we will explore the other situation that is possibly even more terrifying than finding yourself in a black hole with no feedback. It is the situation where all the feedback you are getting is more or less fake or misleading, and that I am afraid is not as uncommon as you might think.

BestYou have been reading the fourth blog post in a series where Mike is exploring: Why is it important to develop not just yourself but also the people around you?

Building capacity is at the heart of the Service Profit Chain. If you are not familiar with the intricacies of the Service Profit chain, we have a special treat for you:

For this month only, you can download Mike’s book Best! No need to be cheap if … for FREE using this coupon JLXW8P9QSE. It is only available for the first 50 people so first come first serve.

Download the book here!

Some experiences provide more learning than others

By

Challenge

In our series on cultivating learning and development in yourself and others, we examined how we learn from experiences last week. If you missed it, you will find it here.

The next natural question to explore is: Then do we learn equally well from any type of experience?

Obviously not. Taking the bus to work each day is normally not a great learning experience, nor is doing the weekend shopping with the family, unless of course there is a challenge involved.

When something becomes challenging, we have a great opportunity to learn. And often we quickly solve the challenge and then pat ourselves on the back: “Well done, you are making progress.” Or we pat our associates on the back and tell them: “Well done! Nice job. I see you are learning a thing or two.” The learning that takes place here we sometimes also refer to as external. We are learning something about how the world outside ourselves actually works. This learning is often also context specific. Under these circumstances, this is what one needs to do. But when the circumstances change, as they have a tendency to do, then that learning is not always so useful.

So quite frankly these are not the challenges that maximise our learning. True learning begins when we hit serious resistance. Things are not working out the way we hoped. Maybe we are even experiencing serious setbacks and even failures. These situations provide some really interesting learning because of our lack of success.

These are the situation where we learn about ourselves more than anything else. And the learning does not arise for the external event but from how we choose to respond to whatever is going on.

This is where we learn:

  • To resist the temptation to blame others for the situation
  • We see how stepping back from the situation helps us gain perspective and as a result, we learn how we are possibly contributing to the mess that is being created.
  • How to develop resilience in moving beyond the unpleasantness or pain of the experience and commit ourselves to do something about our personal limitations
  • In short, this is where we learn how to grow.

Challenges that start out as failures and setbacks thus provide som of the richest learning environments that we can possibly encounter. Most of us get this on a personal level. “Makes sense. I screwed up on that assignment but I learnt a lot.”

But do we apply the same tolerance and understanding attitude toward the members of our team who screw up from time to time? Do we see that as a valuable part of their learning process or do we see them as a problem?

Maybe our learning should start there…

BestThis blog post is the third in a series of blog posts where Mike is exploring: Why is it important to develop not just yourself but also the people around you?

Building capacity is at the heart of the Service Profit Chain. If you are not familiar with the intricacies of the Service Profit chain, we have a special treat for you:

For this month only, you can download Mike’s book Best! No need to be cheap if … for FREE using this coupon JLXW8P9QSE. It is only available for the first 50 people so first come first serve.

Download the book here!

Converting knowledge to wisdom

By

SAMSUNG CAMERA PICTURES

“What use is it to have a bellyful of meat if one can not digest it? If it cannot transform us, if it cannot improve us and fortify us?”

Wrote Michel de Montaigne back in the 16th century in one of his many rants against a French school system that “requires you to just parrot back everything you are told”.

So how do we actually convert knowledge into leadership wisdom?

The key word here is experience, experience not as in breathtaking customer experience, but learning from experience.

Because we all agree that we learn from our experiences, or do we?

If you have ever made the same mistake twice, you will have to agree that we do not consistently learn from our experiences.

When then do you learn from your experiences?

Elementary my dear Watson: Whenever you take the time to reflect on your experiences, you make deeper learning possible.

Reflection can be a personal reflection, or it can tackle the form of a team reflection.

Our reflection can be a surface reflection:

  • What happened?
  • Which actions were taken?
  • What were the consequences that we observed?

Or we can choose to do a deep reflection:

  • What did I learn about myself through this experience?
  • What are we learning about how this team functions and handles conflict through this experience?
  • What broader issue can we see arising from this experience?

Surface reflection helps us understand past actions and behaviours. Deep reflection helps us examine underlying beliefs and assumptions.

Both are important. But even more important is to start developing a practice of reflection. Make a habit of having a regular end of day/week or month reflection session with your team. Develop a personal particle of reflection. The best way to do that is to start a journal and spend just 10-15 minutes a day noting down your answers to:

  • What has been my focus today?
  • What have I observed?
  • What am I learning?
  • What will I focus on tomorrow?

Now your are on track to convert knowledge into wisdom.

BestThis blog post is the second in a series of blog posts where Mike is exploring: Why is it important to develop not just yourself but also the people around you?

Building capacity is at the heart of the Service Profit Chain. If you are not familiar with the intricacies of the Service Profit Chain, we have a special treat for you:

For this month only, you can download Mike’s book Best! No need to be cheap if … for FREE using this coupon JLXW8P9QSE. It is only available for the first 50 people so first come first serve.

Download the book here!

Why developing others should be high on your agenda

By

Learning

When implementing the philosophy of the Service Profit Chain, we often look at three core parts:

And all three are driven by the continuous development of your team.

Employee engagement is closely linked to job content. What do I get to do at work (the other part of a job is job context which is all about the condition you get to do your work in)? A key component of job content is the perception that I am growing and developing myself.

Any book or article you read about creating a customer-centric approach inevitably will talk about value. If we are not providing value, we do not have a business, not for very long at least. But values in a service business is a result of employee competencies. This has to do with the notion that services are asymmetric in their nature. What the client buys is not what we sell. The client has a need and we translate that need into our product. If you are going to do that better than your competition, it requires competent people.

And finally, customer loyalty is developed through skillful interaction that produces an emotional connection with our customers. Delivering the basic product according to specifications just ensures satisfaction; getting to loyalty requires so much more.

So you can do what many organisations do, hope that they will improve as they go.

Or you can do what the top performing service companies do, you can develop a culture of continuous improvement and learning that drives everything that you do.

If you are wondering what works best, let me help you…

Think about any type of human endeavour where we can observe that high performance is vastly different from just ordinary performance. Playing the piano, ballet dancing or competitive swimming just to name a few. In virtually every arena in which we observe excellence, we also see a commitment to continuous improvement…

We also know from research on learning that if you are good at something and you just do what you are good at every day, your performance will gradually deteriorate and get worse. Don’t believe me? So if you have had a drivers licence for more than 5 years, do you think you could pass a driver’s test tomorrow? See what I mean?

Only if you continue to practice can you maintain or even improve your performance.

So how do we build continuous perfomance into our day to day work? What can we do to make sure that our people are always learning and developing? That is going to be the theme for my next series of blog posts.

BestDuring the months of April, May, and June, we will be focusing human development. Why is it important to develop not just yourself but also the people around you? And what are ways to do it when we already have plenty on our plate as it is?

Building capacity is at the heart of the Service Profit Chain. If you would like the full concept served up in one go, you will find Mike’s book Best! No need to be cheap if… HERE.

For this month only, you can download the book for FREE using this coupon JLXW8P9QSE. It is only available for the first 50 people so first come first serve. Download the book now!