Peacekeeping training is over; one month into the mission in KOSOVO

On By Redpoint Leadership CoachingIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

Lots has happened since I first reported for my peacekeeping training in Stans/Switzerland at the beginning of January.

Time for a quick update. I will dig deeper into my experience once I have a bit more peace 🙂 and quiet.

Most importantly, this upfront: The transition to military life has been remarkably smooth. Not something I necessarily expected after almost 20 years out of the service. I have no trouble with some of the formalities and indeed find myself insisting on some of them when my younger fellow officers are more lenient.

So far the experience has been everything I was hoping for. I loved the diversity of the three months of peacekeeping training in Switzerland. We receiving training in all of the following areas:

  • Tactical shooting with rifle and pistol
  • Map reading and GPS
  • Off-road driving
  • First aid
  • Mine awareness
  • Counterintelligence
  • Protection against chemical/nuclear warfare
  • Fire fighting
  • Stress management and team building
  • Military report writing
  • Communication and radio techniques
  • Communication strategies and interview techniques
  • Rules of Engagement
  • Gender awareness and code of conduct

We were also digging deeply into the history of the Balkans and were (and still are!) working on getting a better understanding of the difficult and troublesome ethnic and socio-economic conflicts in Kosovo. It was (and continues to be) a steep learning curve.

During training, I very much enjoyed the leadership challenges and joys that came with leading a 30+ strong, highly skilled and motivated team of Liaison and Monitoring folks. A very impressive group of people indeed! Our backgrounds range from professional military personnel to people with no military background whatsoever but very strong educational and professional experiences. Most people are in their late 20s and I, at almost 50, am among the oldest.

Two of the highlights of the training were:

  • The final, three-day Rules of Engagement (ROE) scenario exercise during which we simulated our real work in Kosovo. We were meeting with mayors, school principals and village speakers during the day and had to compile our findings into reports at the end of the day. We also lived and worked in a house much like we do now in Kosovo.
  • The three-day recognizing tour of Kosovo during which I had the occasion of shadowing my predecessor, flying over Kosovo in a Swiss military chopper, and listened to numerous, very interesting military briefings. This was also my first exposure to international military camp living. Quite the experience indeed!

After three months of peacekeeping training we were deployed to Kosovo at the end of March. As a team commander, I am heading a Liaison and Monitoring Team. The main task of the Liaison and Monitoring Teams is to be the ears and eyes of the Kosovo Force (KFOR). We are here to ‘feel the pulse’ of the population and to serve as an early warning system to the Commanders of KFOR. We are a non-kinetic element and are armed only for self-protection.

Each team is assigned an ‘Area of Responsibility’ which we report on. We spend our days meeting with local politicians, government officials, village speakers, school principals, religious leaders and business owners. We distill our findings into daily reports, which we forward up the chain of command. These reports help the commander get a better sense for what is going on on the ground and to be able to proactively take action should any trouble arise.

My team lives in a house in the middle of a small town. The house serves both as our group’s home as well as our military base. The mix and match of group house living (think shopping, cleaning, cooking, dishes etc.) and military structure (think briefings, reporting structures, hierarchy) poses wonderful leadership challenges, which I of course thoroughly enjoy!

Aside from getting into our daily routine and finding our way of doing things, the highlights of our time so far include:

  • The friendliness and hospitality of the local population. Not a single day goes by that we are not warmly greeted on the streets and waved to by children. During almost every meeting we receive thanks for our work here.
  • A visit to the Serbian Orthodox Decani Monastery in the West of Kosovo. This historic and outstanding beautiful monastery established between 1327 and 1335 is packed with history which we enjoyed learning about during a tour. It’s still guarded 24/7 by Kosovo Force troops. It’s a bizarre and sad sight to see a monastery transformed into a military fortress.
  • Participating in the 25 km Dancon March organized by the Royal Danish Army. Seeing my knees holding up ok this year, I decided to treat this as my first competitive event in almost nine years. The required weight was 25 pounds plus arms, and I ended up jogging most of the way and was thrilled to finish second among professional soldiers half my age. Yes, I admit it: It made me feel good! 🙂

I am very much looking forward to my leave in a few weeks when I will be traveling back to the States and spend time with my boys. I will report back with more in depth news over the course of the summer.

A new professional challenge in 2017

On By Redpoint Leadership CoachingIn Leadership, Leadership Coaching, UncategorizedLeave a comment

 

After more than a year of research, planning, and reflection, I have decided to take on a new professional challenge in 2017. I have been accepted to serve as a military peacekeeper/observer through the Swiss Armed Forces company SWISSCOY stationed in Kosovo in former Yugoslavia.

I will serve as a team commander in the rank of captain and will be responsible for a Liaison and Monitoring Team (LMT).

Much like every other male Swiss citizen, I served in the Swiss military but retired as a First Lieutenant when I moved to Australia in 1995. More than 20 years after my last day of service, I will once again put on my uniform, this time to receive training in all aspects of military peacekeeping.

SWISSCOY is a 200+strong company of men and women. Entirely made up of Swiss soldiers, SWISSCOY has been stationed in Kosovo and Bosnia since 1999, immediately following the Yugoslav war.

Members of SWISSCOY serve voluntarily (no conscripts) but are compensated. Everyone is armed for self-defense with semi-automatic rifle and pistol, but as peacekeepers our greatest hope is we’ll never need them. SWISSCOY is under the command of the Kosovo Force (KFOR) of NATO but is UN mandated. Thirty one nations contribute to KFOR, including Germany, Turkey, Poland, the USA, and Canada.

My engagement will start with three months of training in Stans/Switzerland from January 2017 to March 2017, together with the men and women with whom I will serve. We will then be deployed from April 2017 to October 2017 in Kosovo.

After my deployment, I will to return to Seattle and Redpoint Leadership Coaching.

There are three main reasons for me to leave my comfortable life in Seattle and seek out this new challenge:

1. Making a meaningful contribution for a better world: As a citizen and resident of the privileged western world, I view it as my obligation to give back and make an ever-so-small personal contribution to those who are less privileged, in particular those who suffer from the aftermath of armed conflicts. As many of you know, my dad’s mission work has inspired me deeply.

2. New challenge: I am looking forward to fulfilling my mission with a newly formed team in an unknown environment. While I have no doubt this won’t always be easy, I am very much looking forward to the new challenges and ahead. I am also looking forward to digging deep into the history of the region and getting a thorough understanding of the current conflicts in the Balkans.

3. Gaining new leadership experience: I am looking forward to the close collaboration with local civilian leaders and military leaders of SWISSCOY and other nations as well as taking on the leadership of my own team. I have no doubt that I will gain new, valuable leadership experience that will be personally enriching and will serve me well in my future as an Executive Coach.

As with every change, there are inevitable downsides as well:

Away from my family: I will be away from my two sons, Luc (11) and Liam (9), for nine months. While I will have three weeks of home leave during the deployment, it will be difficult for all of us to be apart for that long. In order to ease the separation, we are planning to communicate regularly via skype/phone/text/email. I communicated my reasons for pursuing this opportunity early and openly with my family, and while they understand my motivation, they are sad to have me gone for that long, as I’ll be sad to be away from them. I take some comfort in hoping my boys will learn the importance of giving back from my example, the way I learned it from my father.

Away from my business: I will have to scale my business down during my absence (and scale it back up upon my return). Thankfully, I have a network of strong colleagues I can refer my existing clients out to. Nevertheless, it will take some time and energy to build my business back up.
If you are interested in keeping tabs on what I’m up to during my service, I will communicate via Facebook, LinkedIn, and my blog at https://redpointcoaching.wordpress.com/category/coaching/
I look forward to staying in touch with you during my service.
For more info on the training I will be undergoing:

For more on SWISSCOY’s mission:

How To Run a Great Meeting

On By Redpoint Leadership CoachingIn Accountability, Coaching, Decision making, employee drama, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Leadership Coaching, lLeadership Training, meetings, Team BuildingLeave a comment

By Urs Koenig, PhD, MBA
Leadership Coach
http://www.redpointcoaching.com

‘One either meets or one works’ – Peter Drucker

‘Shadowing’ my clients at meetings they lead or participate in is an important part of my leadership coaching. It is a highly effective coaching technique that allows for just-in-time feedback to my clients.

Through these shadowing sessions, I get to experience many different meeting settings and styles. Time and time again I am amazed how poorly some of these meetings are run (yes, even by some of my clients…). No wonder our people complain about meetings: they are boring, the boss just drones on, we don’t actually accomplish anything, etc. etc.

By following three very basic principles, you will be virtually guaranteed to run a solid – maybe even a great – meeting. You will help your team achieve bigger goals, resolve and even prevent unhealthy conflict, and promote good teamwork.

Like with many things in life, the 80/20 rule applies: apply these basic three principles to your meetings (20%) and you will take care of 80% of the usual meeting dysfunctions.

Before I get to the three principles, one thing upfront: only have a meeting if you need a two-way conversation. Meetings are meant for discussion, debate, and decision making. If you merely need to relay information one way, consider other methods (such as email).

 

Define Outcome Goals for Every Agenda Item

Get into the disciplined habit of sharing outcome goals with your team at the onset of every discussion. Start every agenda item with the following sentence: “The outcome goal of this discussion is to….”.

Here is a list of things I hear all too often that are NOT outcome goals:

  • ‘talk about…’
  • ‘further discuss…..’
  • ‘tell you all about…’

 

Here is a list of good outcome goals:

  • ‘make a decision on….
  • ‘develop a clear plan for…’
  • ‘brainstorm and capture ideas for ….’
  • ‘get buy in for….’
  • ‘receive input on…’
  • ‘get everyone’s questions on … answered’

By forcing yourself to define an outcome goal, you clarify for yourself and your team why this is worthy of discussion.

 

Clarify How You Will Make Decisions

Before capturing any decision you are making during the meeting, clarify how you will make it. I have experienced countless cases where leaders did not communicate how they will make their decision leading to huge frustrations on the team’s part.

Here is the classic scenario: the leaders simply wants input from the team, but in her mind it’s clear that she will make the decision on her own after listening to her team’s discussion. As far as she is concerned, the team has consulting/influencing power but no decision-making power. The team members, on the other hand, assume that they actually have decision-making power (e.g. through a vote) and are stunned that the leader wraps up the discussion by stating that she will announce her decision next week.

To avoid the frustration, the leader could have clarified at the onset of the discussion: ‘I will make the decision next week after hearing everyone’s opinion and input today.’ Alternatively she could have said: ‘We will make this decision by majority vote,’ or

‘It is important to me that everyone is 100% on board with the decision we reach. Hence we will make the decision by consensus.’

No matter how you will decide, communicate your decision-making process upfront, thereby avoiding misunderstandings and frustration!

 

Capture Decisions, Next Steps and Accountability

Many people dislike meetings because they feel nothing ever gets decided or acted upon. Don’t run one of those meetings.

Your goal as the meeting chair is to make sure that all team members understand what has been decided on at the meeting, what the next step is, who will take it, and by when.

Once you have reached a decision, have your team members verbalize/paraphrase their understanding of the decision. You will be amazed how this simple exercise of paraphrasing surfaces misunderstandings about decisions you assumed had been made!

Don’t keep minutes – capture decisions, action items, ownership, and timelines. After the meeting, send brief notes out to all the participants of the meeting.

These notes might look something like this:

 

Decision?

Fill the open position in our department by end of September 2015.

 

Next deliverable?

Draft job ad in conjunction with HR and email to all before next meeting. Finalize at next team meeting.

 

By whom?

Bill (Director of Marketing)

 

By when?

Email job ad to all before next meeting

Be sure to bring these notes forward to your next meeting. Start the next meeting with a review of the outstanding action items from last meeting. You will be surprised at how productive your people will be when they know that they will be held accountable in front of their peers. If they haven’t made progress, use this time to figure out why and help them remove obstacles.

I believe that even the late, great Peter Drucker would have agreed that meetings which follow these three basic principles would be worth attending!

 

Lesson in self-restraint: How do you handle almost getting killed? by Urs Koenig, MBA, PhD

On By Redpoint Leadership CoachingIn Communication Styles, Leadership CoachingLeave a comment

Anyone can get angry, that is easy. But to be angry with the right person, to the right degree, at the right time, for the right purpose, and in the right way – that is not easy.

-Aristotle, The Nichomachean Ethics

planeDale Carnegie liked to tell the story of Bob Hoover, who was a famous test pilot and frequent performer at air shows. Hoover was returning to his home in Los Angeles from an air show in San Diego. Suddenly, both engines stopped in mid-flight on the aircraft that Hoover was flying. Using his skills and some deft maneuvering, he managed to land the plane, but it was badly damaged. Thankfully, neither Hoover nor the two passengers that were flying with him were hurt.

Hoover’s first act after the emergency landing was to inspect the airplane’s fuel. Just as he suspected, the WWII propeller plane he had been flying had been fueled with jet fuel rather than gasoline.

Upon returning to the airport, he asked to see the mechanic who had serviced his airplane. The young man was sick with the agony of his mistake. Tears streamed down his face as Hoover approached. He had just caused the loss of a very expensive plane and could have caused the loss of three lives as well.

No one would’ve blamed Hoover for ripping into the mechanic for his carelessness. But Hoover didn’t scold the mechanic; he didn’t even criticize him. Instead, he put his big arm around the man’s shoulder and said, “To show you I’m sure that you’ll never do this again, I want you to service my F-51 tomorrow.”

Turning Those Flabby Abs Into Sexy Six Packs by Urs Koenig, MBA, PhD

On By Redpoint Leadership CoachingIn Executive Coaching, executive presence, Leadership, Leadership CoachingLeave a comment

Read what Marshall Goldsmith, who first pioneered our stakeholder based leadership coaching has to say about:

1. Hard Work, and;

2.The Difference Between Simple and Easy When Achieving goals

I absolutely love this article and hope you will too!

sixpackabsSaid Goldsmith, “I don’t watch much TV. But on a recent Saturday morning, I found myself channel-surfing for about 15 minutes. I was amazed at how many of the ads were about getting in shape. Here are some of the exact phrases I heard:

 

“Six-second abs.”
“Easy shaper.”
“Incredible – a miracle!”
“It feels terrific! Let us show you how easy it is!” “Quickly turn your flabby abs into that sexy six-pack!”

My favorite was one that claimed that “visible results” could be achieved in two three-minute sessions!

I am from Kentucky. Excuse the language, but a phrase from my childhood captures my feeling for these claims: “What a pile of bullsh- – t!”

If you want to know why so many goal setters don’t become goal achievers, you can pore over a bunch of enlightening academic studies about goals or you can watch infomercials for 15 minutes. Where did we ever get the crazy idea that getting in shape is supposed to be quick and easy? Why do we think that there will be almost no cost? Why are we surprised when working out turns out to be arduous and healthy foods don’t really taste that good?

I see the impact of this kind of thinking all the time. I recently got a call from Mary, an EVP for human resources, who was dealing with integration of people and systems after her company had made a large acquisition. “Don, our CEO, has been hearing some serious grumbling about Bill, our chief information officer,” she groaned. “Bill is 56 years old and has great experience. No one else in the company can match it. Unfortunately, he wants everything to be done his way. There are some brilliant people in the company we acquired who have their own ideas. Several of their top people, including our new COO, are expressing concerns about Bill. Don wants this issue resolved now! He has suggested that we get an executive coach to work with Bill. Given Bill’s busy schedule and our immediate needs, Don would like to see a dramatic change in Bill within a couple of months. Because Bill is also very impatient, he won’t work with a coach who will waste his valuable time. Do you think that you can help us? When could you start?”

Like all of the folks who buy these miracle products to help them get in shape, Mary wanted a miracle coach to immediately change Bill.

I pointed out that Bill was a 56-year-old executive. Just as with diet and exercise, Bill’s behavioral habits took years to develop and won’t go away overnight. We all set goals to get some aspect of our lives in shape. All too often, we fail to meet them. Why? There are four major challenges that we mistakenly assess:

1. Time: “This is taking a lot longer than I thought it would,” or “I don’t have time for this.”

2. Effort: “This is a lot harder than I thought it would be,” or “I’m tired. It’s just not worth it.”

3. Competing goals: “I had no idea I would be so busy this year. I’ll just have to worry about this later.”

4. Maintenance: “After I got in shape, I celebrated by indulging in some of the actions that forced me to set my goals in the first place.
Now, for some unexplained reason, I’m back where I started. What am I supposed to do? Go on some kind of diet for the rest of my life?”

We often confuse the words “simple” and “easy.” The changes I help people make are generally very simple. However, they are never easy. Just as with diet and exercise, changing behavior involves hard work. It takes time.

During the next year, Bill will be barraged with competing goals that will distract him from his efforts to change. He needs to realize that lasting leadership development is a lifelong process. A temporary change in behavior to “look good” in the short term will only create cynicism if Bill doesn’t stick with it. I can help Bill if he is willing to put in the time and effort. If not, hiring me would probably be a waste of everyone’s time.

Look in the mirror. Not just at how you look but who you are. If you want to be a better leader, a better professional, or just a better person – don’t kid yourself. To achieve meaningful goals, you’ll have to pay the price. There’s no product, no diet, no exercise program, and (I hate to admit it) no executive coach who can make you better. Only you can do it. If your source of motivation doesn’t come from inside, you won’t stick with it. This may not be material for a Saturday morning TV ad, but it’s great advice for any real achievement.

MGpictureBy Marshall Goldsmith, reprinted from Fast Company Magazine August 2005

How To Drive Success In Your Business (And Family) by Urs Koenig

On By Redpoint Leadership CoachingIn Company culture, Company values, executive presence, Leadership, Team Building1 Comment

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Want your staff and children to be more successful?

Yes, of course you do!

It’s oh so very easy:)  Simply cultivate the following combination of traits in your employees and your kids:

 

  1. A Superiority Complex. Instill in them a deep seated belief in their exceptionality.
  1. Insecurity. Make them feel that who they are or what they have done is not good enough.
  1. Impulse control. Teach them the ability to systematically delay gratification.

It’s odd to think of people feeling simultaneously superior and insecure. Yet it’s exactly this contrary combination that two Yale law school professors found that generates drive. In their book , “The Triple Package: How Three Unlikely Traits Explain the Rise and Fall of Cultural Groups in America,” they detail how a chip on the shoulder and a burning desire to prove yourself, combined with the ability to sacrifice present gratification in pursuit of future attainment creates a  winning combination for success.

Chue & Rebenfeld, whose work was recently featured in the New York Times found a seemingly un-American fact about America today: for some cultural groups, the American dream of upward mobility is much more alive than for others. Some of the winners include Indian Americans, Iranians, Lebanese and Chinese. These groups, on average, earn almost double the national income.

Among religious groups, the success of Mormons in corporate America is well documented. Jews make only about two percent of the United State’s adult population yet make up a third of the current Supreme Court and about a third of American Nobel Prize winners.

Merely stating the fact that certain groups do better than others, as measured by income and test scores, can set off a firestorm and accusations of racism. It’s almost too obvious to state but these facts don’t make one group ‘better’ than others and material success does not equal a life well lived.

Groups rise and fall over time. This points to the fact that there are cultural forces at work here and debunks the idea that groups succeed because of innate biological differences (third generation Chinese American students for example perform no better than their white peers).

In isolation, each of these traits is insufficient, and potentially damaging. A superiority complex often leads to complacency, insecurity can be crippling and impulse control often results in an inability to experience pleasure.

Success is propelled by the combined triple package of superiority complex, insecurity and impulse control. These simple qualities are cultural, learnable and hence open to anyone. We can model and teach them in our business and in our own family.

I have personally experienced how some of the world’s top management consultancies such as McKinsey, BCG, Bain et al.  do an outstanding job at cultivating the above traits. These firms pride themselves on hiring only the top students from business schools. Once hired, you belong to the ‘chosen few’. There is no question that these firms employ some of the brightest people and yet almost every single consultant I have ever met has deep seated insecurities about never being good enough, which makes them work so incredibly hard.

Ask yourself the following questions:

  1. A Superiority complex
  • What stories and metaphors are you using to instill a belief of exceptionality in your people?
  • How do you ensure people who work at your company feel like they are ‘the chosen one’? Part of a superior elite?
  • What rituals are you employing to foster the belief that your business is the ONE that is going to make it big and leave the competition in the dust?
  1. Insecurity
  • How are you creating a culture of ‘good enough is never good enough’ in your business?
  • How do you get your people to relentlessly strive for continued improvement?
  • What stories are you sharing so that you make it clear that ‘around here, we are never satisfied with the status quo no matter how good it is’?
  1. Impulse control
  • What systems and incentive do you have in place so that folks are committed for the long haul?
  • How do you ensure that your people become exemplars of your company’s culture and vision?

And of course, don’t forget: nothing is more powerful than modeling behavior you want to see!

 

In 2014: Design The Best Place To Work, by Urs Koenig, PhD, MBA, Principal, Redpoint Coaching

On By Redpoint Leadership CoachingIn Accountability, Coaching, Company culture, Decision making, Executive Coaching, executive presence, Family Business, Leadership, Leadership Coaching, Team BuildingLeave a comment

by Urs Koenig, PhD, MBA, Principal, Redpoint Coaching

jsw_kidbuildingAs we embark onto 2014 I would like challenge you to design the very best place to work! How would this organization of our dreams look do you ask? Read on…

Rob Goffee, an emeritus professor of organizational behavioral at the London School of Business, and Gareth Jones, a visiting professor at the IF Business School in Madrid, posed the question about what the company of our dreams looks like to hundreds of leaders. They summarized their findings in the May 2013 edition of the Harvard Business Review (“Creating the best workplace on earth: what employees really require to be their most productive”)

Here is what they found. In the organization of our dreams:

  1. I can be myself
  2. I am told what is really going on
  3. My strengths are magnified
  4. The company stands for something meaningful
  5. My daily work is rewarding
  6. Stupid rules don’t exist

These principles might all sound like common sense. Who wouldn’t want to work in a place that followed them? Most leaders and all of our clients are aware of the benefits of such a ‘dream organization’, which many studies have confirmed. And yet, no organization we are aware of possesses all six virtues.

Why is that so? Several of the attributes run counter to traditional and well established practices and deeply ingrained habits. Others are complicated and costly to implement. Some conflict with each other. All of them require you as the leader to carefully balance competing interests and to rethink how you allocate your time and energy.

So as Goffee and Jones point out, the company of our dreams remains largely aspirational.  I therefore offer the below assessment as a challenge to you and your people to aim at creating the most productive and rewarding working environment possible.

The Dream Company Diagnostic

How close is your business to the ideal? The more checks, the closer you are.

  1. Take the assessment yourself
  2. Have your senior team and a cross section of your people take the assessment
  3. Compare the findings and discuss inconsistencies

Let me be myself

___ I am the same person at home as I am at work

___ I feel comfortable being myself

___ We are all encouraged to express our differences

___ People who think differently from most do well here

___ Passion is encouraged, even when it leads to conflict

___ More than one type of person fits in here

Tell me what’s really going on

___ We’re all told the whole story

___ Information is not “spun”

___ It’s not disloyal to say something negative

___ My manager wants to hear bad news

___ Top executives want to hear bad news

___ Many channels of communication are available to us

___ I feel comfortable signing my name to comments I make

 Discover and magnify my strengths

___ I am given the chance to develop

___ Every employee is given the chance to develop

___ The best people want to strut their stuff here

___ The weakest performers can see a path to improvement

___ Compensation is fairly distributed throughout the organization

___ We generate value for ourselves by adding value to others

Make me proud I work here

___ I know what we stand for

___ I value what we stand for

___ I want to exceed my current duties

___ Profit is not our overriding goal

___ I am accomplishing something worthwhile

___ I like to tell people where I work

Make my work meaningful

___ My job is meaningful to me

___ My duties make sense to me

___ My work gives me energy and pleasure

___ I understand how my job fits with everyone else’s

___ Everyone’s job is necessary

___ At work we share a common cause

Don’t hinder me with stupid rules

___ We keep things simple

___ The rules are clear and apply equally to everyone

___ I know what the rules are for

___ Everyone knows what the rules are for

___ We, as an organization, resist red tape

___ Authority is respected

Decide where you believe the most important deficits are and take action during 2014 in order to move your organization one step closer towards the very best place to work.

Marshall Goldsmith on the Value of saying “No”

On By Redpoint Leadership CoachingIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

MGpictureMarshall Goldsmith on..

…the value of saying ‘No’ and turning ideas and people down:

Say two no’s for every yes. You never want to turn down a chance to get involved in something good, but in my experience, dead ends outnumber opportunities in almost any walk of life. For every good idea, there are dozens of bad ones.
When someone asks for help, unless it’s inappropriate or thoughtless to say no, weigh every yes as if you were spending money. If it distracts you from your goal, don’t do it — no matter how tempting the upside seems. Check out Urs’ article on keeping a stop doing list. 

Stop Overdoing Your Strengths By Urs Koenig, PhD, MBA

On By Redpoint Leadership CoachingIn Accountability, Coaching, Executive Coaching, Leadership, Stakeholder Centered Coaching1 Comment

strengthsweaknessroadsignI consider myself a pretty successful person. I am proud of what I have achieved academically, professionally, athletically and in my personal life.

While working towards my achievements over the last 40+ years I have displayed some of the following strengths:

  • Focused and highly goal oriented
  • Very structured
  • Single minded 

At times I also have been guilty of overdoing my strengths by showing up as

  • Too Rigid
  • Inflexible and loosing sight of the big picture

A lot of us have been told that we shouldn’t spend too much time on improving our weaknesses but rather get them to an acceptable level and then focus on perfecting our strengths. The logic behind this thinking goes something like this: you will never be really good at your weaknesses.  Get them to a good enough level and then surround yourself with people who are strong where you are weak. Use your energy to move your strengths from excellent to world class. Become outstanding at one thing vs. being slightly above average at a few things.

While I agree with the notion of focus and becoming outstanding at a few select things, there is a key point missing in the above argument:

BallandchainBy relentlessly focusing on further enhancing our strengths we often neglect to realize that we can indeed (and very often do!) overdo our strengths! Remember my own example above. It is easy for me to go from being highly driven, goal oriented and focused to too single minded and inflexible!

So here is one of the few absolute truths I believe in and frequently quote in my leadership coaching:

Every weakness is a strength overdone.

I am focused and structured. When I overdo it, I am becoming inflexible and rigid.

Your boss might be highly empathetic and sensitive. When overdoing his strengths, he looses sight of the business agenda, or worse, becomes a pushover.

Your direct report is self confident and a strong presenter. She often overdoes her confidence and comes across as arrogant.

Ask yourself*:

  • What is my biggest strength both in my personal as well as my professional life? How might this strength overdone show up as a weakness?
  • What is the first step I can take today to address my ‘strength overdone’?
  • *And if you are as brave as our coaching clients are, you will also ask someone who knows you well and be willing to tell you the unvarnished truth.

Redpoint Sponsored Chris Ragsdale finishes Race Across America as top American

On By Redpoint Leadership CoachingIn ultra cyclingLeave a comment

After a full year of race preparation, Chris finished the 2013 3,000 mile non stop bike Race Across America in 10 days, 23 hours and 20 minutes.

You will read more about the leadership lessons Chris learned from his adventure in our next ChangeAbiltiy. In the meantime read two excerpts from his race report (full version here: http://www.ragsdaleridesagain.com)

“The final days were dominated by the thoughts of seeing my family. They were at the finish line day’s before me, never before have I experienced time in this way. The beauty of the land around me and the caring support of the crew next to me were a muted back ground to the vision of being with my wife and kids again. It was all that mattered but I needed to take the slowest and most painful way to experience that vision. It had to be done that way and it was torturous and unlike anything I have experienced. I felt isolated and alone, there was nothing anyone else could do. The only thing that made a difference was the rotating speed of the wheels beneath me. And it felt as if there was tar in my hubs. I simply couldn’t go as fast as I needed to, the last days would take an eternity. Since finishing the race I have dreamed about it almost every night. Some times waking in the middle of the night ” did I finish? did I make it?” Are they nightmares or just reminders?”

“Often when looking into an Ultra race I will look at the record books. That is the frame work for possibility. It is the measuring stick upon which I judge my potential.  I’ll go on to train, plan, and visualize according to the best case scenario. I like that process, I feel inspired, motivated. I’ve been fortunate over the years to have created some records. On this occasion I was much closer to the back of the race then I was the front. But my process was the same. Dream big, do what I can in the here and now, focus my energy, believe, my thoughts and feelings matter but the only thing that makes a difference is what I do about it. The crew and I made it to Annapolis 10 days 23 hours and 20 minutes after taking off from Oceanside. Official finishers of the solo Race Across America.”

Congratulations Chris! Redpoint is proud to be your partner in your 2013 Race Across America adventure.