Fitness and Leadership

by Seth Sinclair

In October 2014, the Harvard Business Review published an article by management consultant Ron Friedman entitled “Regular Exercise is Part of Your Job.” Friedman lists the physical benefits of regular exercise including lower blood pressure, better heart health, and an improved physique. 

The author also lists the cognitive benefits of regular exercise, including improved concentration, sharper memory, faster learning, prolonged mental stamina, enhanced creativity, and lower stress.  Exercise can also result in an elevated mood, which is critical in the world of a leader who is constantly communicating and collaborating.  He argues that for managers and leaders exercise is a necessity, not a luxury.

When you are evaluating yourself as a leader and looking for ways to improve, ask yourself if your health and fitness are in a good place.  If not, how might this be holding you back?  Getting control of your health is important for a lot of reasons, but it can actually make you more effective at your job.

There is scientific proof of this.  A 2011 Dutch study published in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine looked at 10,624 European workers.  The study found that those who engage in unhealthy habits such as smoking, eating poorly, and not getting enough exercise are less productive on their jobs, have a greater need for sick leave.  They also take longer periods of time off from work when they do take sick leave. 

“More than 10 percent of sick leave and higher levels of productivity loss at work may be attributed to lifestyle behaviors and obesity,” one of the researchers told U.S. News and World Report.

The researchers found that 56 percent of the 10,600 Europeans they surveyed had taken off at least one day in the year before the survey because of poor health.  Obese workers were 66 percent more likely to call in sick for 10 to 24 days than those of normal weight—and 55 percent more likely to take off 25 days or more. 

Those who smoked were 30 percent more likely to take off 10 to 24 days because of poor health.  Interestingly, though, those who drank 10 or more glasses of alcohol per week were less likely to take time off for poor health. (No, the study did not recommend heavy drinking as a fitness aid.)

The team concluded that primary interventions on lifestyle might significantly contribute to maintaining a productive workforce.  This means not only that leaders should be mindful of their health, but that their organization can benefit from them encouraging others to do so as well.

Another Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health article, this one prepared by researchers with the State of Minnesota’s Center for Health Promotion, looked at lifestyle-related health risks that can be modified by changes to behavior such as physical activity, heart fitness, and obesity.

The research team asked 683 workers in a variety of occupations about their sick leave usage, the quality and quantity of their work, their relationships with their co-workers, and how they rated their overall performance.  They found that when employees get more physical activity, their work performance improves.  They also found that fit workers are likely to be physically stronger, have greater endurance, and are less likely to feel fatigued.

The data indicated that higher levels of physical activity improved both the quality of the work people did and their overall job performance.  It also showed that workers who exercised regularly were more likely to rate their job performance higher; that cardiovascular fitness reduced the amount of extra effort workers needed to do their jobs; and that obesity made it more difficult for people to get along with their co-workers—and severe obesity related to a higher level of sick leave usage.

In summary, getting healthy and fit might be a game changer for those looking for ways to improve professional performance.  It’s a great asset for people who want to do well at their jobs.  In future posts, we’ll talk about ways to improve your personal health and wellness, and how leaders and managers can encourage and support their teams to do the same. 

Coaching Leadership Skills

by Seth Sinclair

In my last post, I discussed six leadership styles identified by psychologist and writer Daniel J. Goleman, with a particular focus on coaching leadership style.  In this post, I will go into detail on the four tools a coaching leader requires to be successful. 

A coaching leader guides his or her employees through a learning process.  This process begins by creating awareness, which involves helping the employee identify and gain clarity on their strengths, weaknesses, and goals.  The coaching leader builds on this by helping the employee explore what is possible and then commit to taking action. 

The result of this process is that the employee learns from the experience and develops independent critical thinking skills.  Some of the specific skills a coaching leader uses to foster this approach are listening, asking powerful questions, direct communication, and designing actions. 

The first skill, listening—is essential to developing trust.  Most people don’t listen very well, but listening is a skill that can be practiced and learned.

The three levels of listening include:

1)    Self-focused listening, in which people may hear the words of others, but are primarily aware of their own feelings, and are really paying attention to their own interior dialogue.  They are thinking about themselves, not the person they are listening to.  Self-focused listeners relate everything back to themselves, interrupt frequently, and make quick judgments.  They hear, but don’t really listen.

2)   Attentive listening, in which the listener’s full attention is focused on what the other person is saying, and on their nuances and gestures as well.  Attentive listeners ask clarifying questions, paraphrase what others are saying to ensure they understand, and are curious about the opinions of others.

3)   Empathetic listening, in which the listener puts himself or herself “In the shoes” of the person he or she is listening to.  Listeners at this level pay attention to non-verbal cues such as tone, volume, body language, and energy level.  They are fully present in the conversation, and are comfortable with silence.

Coaching leaders must strive to at least demonstrate Attentive listening with a goal of more consistently becoming an Empathetic listener.  This is because the effectiveness of the coaching leadership style is rooted in trust and understanding.  Additionally, a Coaching leader must be curious about an employee’s motivation and perspective in order to create awareness; and empathetic listening is essential to developing this level of understanding. 

The second tool a coaching leader needs is the ability to ask powerful questions.  Powerful questions are questions that make the person who is required to answer them think and reflect before answering. 

Powerful questions generate curiosity, bring underlying assumptions to the surface, invite people to be creative, and move discussions forward.  Most importantly, they evoke additional questions from the listener.

Questions like “what is possible?” challenge the way things have always been done.  “What might we think about this five years from now?,” encourages others to take the long view of a situation.  “What would happen if we did this differently?” is another way to get people to think out of the box. 

Powerful questions are solution focused.  They examine possibilities, are forward looking, and facilitate action.  They promote ownership of problems and solutions.  They do not call for quick, easy, answers—and if an answer comes right away, it’s likely the question really wasn’t a powerful one!

When the coaching leader and employee identify an opportunity or challenge to explore, they use powerful questions to explore assumptions, hone in on the heart of the matter, clarify priorities, and generate forward movement.  This is especially useful when the employee is working through an issue that they have been “stuck” on for a while.  Well placed powerful questions may generate new levels of thinking and unlock previously unidentified courses of action.

Direct communication is a third skill coaching leaders practice.  Coaching leaders should strive to be clear, articulate, appropriate, and respectful..  Such direct communication minimizes confusion and leaves little room for interpretation.  In the context of coaching leadership, it is essential that the leader use direct communication when providing feedback, recommending action, and challenging the employee to commit to action.

An effective coaching leader will get to the essence of the communication instead of getting caught up in long, distracting stories (bottom lining); they set aside preoccupations such as the constant pinging of emails in order to be fully present in conversation (clearing); they address significant actions taken by the person with whom they are speaking (acknowledgement); they make others stretch and make commitment (challenging); and they don’t let people who are fooling themselves continue to do so (intruding).

Finally, coaching leaders look to move employees towards action.  They accomplish this by working with employees to co-design specific plans and then help them evaluate the plan to ensure it is realistic and comprehensive.  As part of this conversation the coaching leader may ask the employee to assess his or her role in the action, , consider risks they might face; help the employee prepare for resistance from others; and identify ways to get and provide feedback to foster progress and learning. 

A key to this approach is allowing the employee to own the ideas and do the heavy lifting in moving forward with actions; the coaching leader’s role is help set a foundation that will maximize the employee’s chance at being successful.   Regardless of the specific outcome, the coaching leader will provide constant feedback and support in hopes of advancing the employee’s learning process.

Will a coaching leadership style work in your organization?  If you’d like to give it a try, I encourage you to revisit the factors that lead to success (curiosity, confidence, emotional intelligence, and patience) to assess your personal readiness.  From there, test it out with a small group of employees who are receptive to suggestions for improvement and are willing to put in the work to learn and grow. 

Coaching as a Leadership Style

by Seth Sinclair

Click here to visit Part 2 of this Post - Coaching Leadership Skills

Leaders can successfully lead in many ways.  In 2002, psychologist and journalist Daniel J. Goleman identified six different leadership styles. 

Commanding and coercive leaders tell people to “do what I tell you to do.”  Visionary and authoritative leaders mobilize people toward a common vision. Affiliative leaders focus on emotional needs over work needs; democratic leaders focus on participation of the entire work force; and pacesetting leaders build challenging and exciting goals for staff. Good leaders know their own natural styles and learn to employ aspects of different styles at different times, for different purposes.

Goleman’s sixth style of leadership is coaching. He describes coaching leaders as those who focus on helping others in their personal development, and in their job-related activities.  The coaching leader helps team members develop successfully, supporting and mentoring them to make sure they have the knowledge and skills to be successful.  Coaching leadership requires a confident and grounded leader who believes that employees are capable and willing to learn, even if it means making mistakes along the way.

Coaching leaders focus extensively on problem solving and feedback, help employees build organization-wide perspectives on their work, and identify the reasons they are doing what they do.  They also have a strong focus on helping employees grow within their organizations.

Coaching leaders are valuable, because they help meet the needs of today’s employees and organizations.  Younger employees, especially, expect more control and influence over their work and their organizations; coaching leaders offer them that opportunity.  Coaching leaders’ focus on developing staff means they delegate as often as possible, and they are willing to tolerate failure as part of a learning process.  Their outlook lends itself to flexible and innovative management thinking, and helps them thrive in situations in which their workforce is widely distributed and often virtual—which in turn, is linked with better morale.

Goleman believes coaching leadership works best when employees understand their weaknesses, are receptive to suggestions for improvement, and are willing to put in the work.  Those who effectively use coaching as a leadership style tend to be less judgmental than others, emotionally intelligent, curious, confident, and patient.  They work in organizations that support learning, and allow employees to test new ideas.

Goleman also believes coaching leadership is among the most effective of the six leadership styles he identified, but that it is also the least used of the six.  He argues this is because of senior leaderships’ tendency to want results quickly; because it often seems easier for leaders to step in and fix things; and because, when things go wrong, most leaders default to the commanding and coercive style to get things done.

Finally, Goleman believes most leaders don’t have the proper skills to fill a coaching role.  We’ve devoted many posts to the skills good coaches need to be successful—but in our next post we’ll focus on four skills specific to the coaching leadership style.  They are strong listening skills; the ability to ask powerful questions; the ability to communicate in a direct manner; and the ability to get employees to move from thinking about action to making a commitment to move forward.

How Coaching Helps Improve Morale

by Seth Sinclair

In my last post, I discussed the results of the 2014 Federal Employee’s Viewpoint Survey, which demonstrated that morale at federal government departments and agencies was low—and getting lower every year.

Low morale results in lower employee engagement with the goals of the organization—and employees who don’t feel connected to their organizations’ successes.  In an age in which ever-higher levels of quality service are demanded of all employees, including those who work for the government, lowered morale has the opposite effect and puts quality at risk.

As agencies throughout the government search for ways to turn things around, one approach is to invest in employee development, with individual and/or group coaching as a proven effective solution. Coaching is linked to better morale.  It fosters a learning and growth process that can help employees whose morale has been suffering to reconnect with their organizations’ goals and needs while advancing their own professional development.

Coaches are uniquely positioned to help employees at all levels define their personal and professional goals, improve self-awareness, understand others’ viewpoints, and ultimately increase their effectiveness.  They accomplish this by assessing individuals’ personality and leadership styles, and the ways in which they interact with others.  They use this information to create new insights and foster a learning process tied to specific individual goals. 

A good coach can get to the bottom of the reasons many respondents to this year’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey are unhappy in their work—and help employees choose intelligent and rational actions to reduce that unhappiness and make them once again engaged members of the workforce.  In times of stress, including those times when resources are constrained, coaches can help employees to focus on what they can control, instead of feeling overwhelmed by what they can’t. 

Coaches can help employees cultivate a positive mindset about the future, instead of dwelling on past negatives, and help them learn lessons about the past to create success in the future.  They help employers shape the future by increasing their ability to retain talented employees, and to retain and develop new generations of skilled employees.

Finally, coaches work with managers and leaders to improve others’ morale, by helping them explore and implement strategies to get their staffs excited, motivated, and energized about their mission.  

Great executive coaches are fully trained to help employees achieve all of these objectives.  I’ve written about the skills coaches bring to the table in many previous posts.  In our next post, I’ll talk about a different way to support morale in federal agencies and elsewhere—by training agency leaders themselves to act as coaches themselves, in addition to their other responsibilities. 

I call it “coaching as a leadership style,” and every leader will benefit by having the basic coaching technique I outline in his or her arsenal of leadership tools.

Results of the 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey

by Seth Sinclair

Every year, the Federal government surveys its workforce to measure Federal employees’ perceptions of whether, and to what extent, the conditions that characterize a successful organization are present in the agencies they work for.  The results of the survey provide managers throughout the government with insight into the challenges they face in leading their organizations, and help them make their organizations a better place to work.

“We believe this survey is one of the most valuable tools OPM provides to agencies,” says Katherine Archuleta, Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).  “It helps agency leaders know and understand their employees, even at the department and office level.”

The results of the 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) are now out (read them yourself at www.fedview.opm.gov), and, to few people’s surprise, employee satisfaction and commitment have decreased since the last survey—in 64 out of 64 questions.

Nearly 400,000 federal employees, working at 82 different agencies, responded to the 2014 survey between April and June 2014—fewer than half of all employees.  At a briefing on the survey, Archuleta told reporters “we have to remember that this has been a very difficult time for federal employees.  It’s going to take time for them to recover from an extended period of sequestration, furloughs, and a government shutdown.”

Only 56.9 percent of federal employees were satisfied with their jobs in 2014. compared to more than 70 percent of private sector employees—and only 38 percent had confidence that anything would be done with the survey results.

Sixty-two percent would recommend their organization as a good place to work, continuing a downward trend since 2011, and only 55 percent were satisfied with their organization overall.  Finally, only 38 percent of employees said that their senior leaders generated high levels of commitment and motivation.

It’s not a pretty picture—and results for a number of federal agencies were significantly worse than the norm.  When morale is low, employees are not engaged.  They don’t feel a responsibility for the success of their organization.  Quality suffers, and tension keeps people from doing their best work.

On December 23, Archuleta; Shaun Donovan, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB); Beth Cobert, OMB’s Deputy Director for Management; and Meg McLaughlin, Deputy Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office issued a memorandum to the heads of all executive departments and agencies, titled “Strengthening Employee Engagement and Organizational Performance.”

In it, the signatories referred to the results of the latest FEVS, and stated that the Obama Administration “is committed to improving employee morale, but there are no single solutions to improvement.  Rather, it will take actions at all levels of the organization to achieve our improvement targets.”

They suggested “simple fixes” like celebrating successes and increasing partnership conversations with unions, and “more challenging solutions” such as regular and meaningful performance discussions with supervisors and managers.

The memorandum charged every federal agency to identify a senior accountable official responsible for ensuring the agency’s commitment to improving employee engagement.  They also charged every agency to review, by January 31, 2015, the agency’s progress on employee engagement and its focus on these issues.

By 2016, all SES performance plans must include a measurable component related to action planning or results to improve employee engagement.  Every agency must incorporate engagement into their annual human resources performance plan, as well.

“This has been a very big focus across the administration,” Cobert told the Washington Post.  “It is something we talk about at virtually every President’s Management Council Meeting.  It is something the President talks about and stresses at cabinet meetings.  I know this is something the most senior levels care about.”

In subsequent posts, we’ll make some recommendations to the new “senior accountable officials” on what might be done to improve morale.  Since this is a coaching blog, though, you can be sure that one of our recommendations will be to increase and improve the level of coaching throughout the federal government!